Audiopile Review: Nicolas Jaar is hardly one to sit still. A serial collaborator who releases work under various pseudonyms, he has become synonymous with both quality and variety—simply put, the guy doesn’t miss. No work is a greater testament to that than his latest release, Piedras 1 & 2, a condensed presentation of a sprawling five-hour radio play. This two-part collection is incredibly diverse, serving as a traceable evolution of his expansive palette. It incorporates the noisy, pop-leaning grooves of Sirens, the muddy textures of Cenizas, the abstract experimentation of Pomegranates, and the mysterious psychedelia of his work with Darkside. Piedras 1 leans heavier on melody, many of the tracks immersed in a fuzzy textured production, reverb-coated vocals, and reggaeton grooves that evoke the out-there-yet-danceable work of Arca. The songs are often quite catchy, while still carrying a meaningful weight despite the playful production choices. Piedras 2, on the other hand, is full of surprises, delving deeper into abstraction. Immersive ambient washes reminiscent of Ana Roxanne (especially on the standout meditation “I, You”), field recordings, free-form jazz, icy synths recalling early environmental ambient music, metallic IDM passages with an Autechre-like feel, and warm electro-acoustic flourishes all contribute to its densely layered, unpredictable, and melancholic beauty. Even though this is only a segment of the original piece, it stands as a massive accomplishment for Jaar.

The initial seed for this project was planted in 2020 when Nicolás Jaar wrote the song “Piedras” for a concert at the Museum of Memory & Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, which commemorates the victims of human rights violations during the military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. Between 2022-2023, it took on a new form as a radio play entitled Archivos de Radio Piedras, which was shared on a dedicated Telegram channel. In 2024, the play was converted into a 24-channel installation at the University Museum of Mexico City (MUAC), where it was exhibited for five months. Piedras 1 & 2 is a collection of the tracks featured within the play, all new music by Jaar, but partly presented within the play as the music of Salinas Hasbún (the name a composite homage to Jaar’s grandmothers, Graciela Salinas and Miriam Hasbún). The play follows two friends mourning the disappearance of Salinas Hasbún, a musician and writer who vanished in the early 2020s. Although they live in a future where technology is advanced, they resort to DIY radio methods because the anonymous group “Las 0cho” has launched a worldwide attack on undersea internet cables, causing a global internet blackout. The play’s central theme revolves around the idea that truths, memories and identities speak from the cracks, or the “in-between” spaces. This concept is supported by the way much of the narration unfolds — in the liminal spaces between radio frequencies. The instability and transitory nature of a constantly shifting radio dial becomes not just a metaphor but the structure of the play itself. It’s in these moments of noise, static and interference that the deeper revelations of the story emerge. This disjointed, ever-changing medium mirrors the way memory and trauma operate within the play — non-linear, slipping through the gaps, found in fragments or ordinary moments, rather than direct transmissions of “official” historical accounts. This notion reaches its climax at the end of the narrative, when a text is discovered in which Salinas speaks of finding a new number in a small pond in a cave mentioned in the first episodes of the radio play. Embodied in the salt lakes of northern Chile, home to the world’s oldest bacteria, this randomness disrupts the rigid order of binary code, paving the way for a transformation of digital life.