Nicolas Jaar
Cenizas

When talking about Cenizas, the first word that comes to mind is ayahuasca. Between the sound exploration of Nicolas Jaar and the vine of the spirits, the infusion of Amazonian plants and herbs with visionary effects, there is a connection. A healing power. A cure that has to do with the soul, set in a spiritual journey. And if ayahuasca was used by Amazon shamans, Jaar is a shaman of electronic music.

For the boy born in 1990, the ashes -this is what cenizas means- unfolded in the form of sound waves are the result of an enigmatic introspective exploration. On his psyche and his own life. Cenizas is an open-heart and open-mind letter, as he writes on his site, presenting the project's origin:

“For a period of time, I also quarantined myself alone somewhere on the other side of the world to be able to work on music for months on end. I didn’t want to keep feeding the system. Its hunger, its past. I didn’t want to work from ambition. Where I would work to impress first, and love second. I wanted presence first. Love first.”

Healing is a slow and sometimes lonely path. And it's no coincidence that his baritone voice echoes among the sepulchral samples of “Hello, Chain” urging "patience is our virtue."
And if we must talk about echoes, everything Nicolas has absorbed in his young career is deconstructed, managing to emerge from deep in the distance, to compose the pieces of a personal healing. Returning to the ayahuasca treatment, after its preparation, it is usually drunk in a ceremony. And also in this, Jaar infuses Cenizas with a ritual value. We hear him sigh at the opening "say you’re coming back," only to vanish into the solemnity of “Menysid” with its ethnic and metallic samples, as if the ancestral rite has begun.

You enter structures that resemble life cycles. From the isolation spoken in the mother tongue "en las cenizas vamos a armar, no saber nada, es mejor" which highlight the urgency and necessity to confront oneself before reopening to the world. You cannot escape, and the sinuous, labyrinthine sax of “Agosto” that ensnares you, forcing you to follow it in its free-jazz nuances - Jaar also cites Coltrane as an artistic influence- is the proof. It's a plunge that plays with the deepest doors of perception, to use terms dear to Huxley.
Unconscious and subconscious clash, and pain is the fundamental cycle with which one fights. A dense cycle entrusted to "Mud" and its apocalyptic tribalism "skies and all bleed, and no one can hear, the cry from the ground."

To open up to the final cycles of Cenizas, one must rid oneself of all internal impurities, aspiring to be completely emptied, Vaciar -to empty- indeed. Divide the old from the new.
Which also seems to be a metaphor for Jaar's production. Evolved into a concentrate of minimal ambient textures and syncopated atmospheres culminating in “Faith Made of Silk.” A fragile but liberating crescendo proving the ability to see a horizon around oneself: "a peak is just the way towards, a descent, the forces on the hill, manifested by what you perceive as wind, look around not ahead."

Perhaps it might not be the end of the Cenizas journey, perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s another opportunity for meditation. A value that Jaar himself has ensured anyone listening to the album can experience.
An intense meaning, more relevant than ever. Reminding us that no matter what life cycle we find ourselves in, the doors to exit must also be sought in art.