If there was one thing to take away from Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington’s all-encompassing sensory spectacle at the Palace Theatre, it’s that the duo’s cerebral sound is an entirely new force in a live setting, and if you haven’t witnessed Darkside in the flesh, you haven’t really experienced them at all.
Supported by a notably impressive opening set from Modular-signed Sydney act Movement, the headlining duo eventually emerged through a thick shroud of blue-lit smoke to assume their respective positions either side of a moon-shaped mirror, which would later reveal itself as one of the most simple yet effective stage productions to grace the Palace.
Throughout the night, the mirror would spin in slow rotation, reflecting zig-zagging beams of light through billowing smoke to create dazzling light displays that were a brilliant visual pairing to Darkside’s aural aesthetic.
On stage, Jaar and Harrington work from separate stations but operate in complete symbiosis; Jaar, the Chilean-born beats prodigy, performs behind a hub of technology hardware where he produces Darkside’s backdrop of dizzying, orbiting electronica, while Harrington adds the second dimension to their psychedelic formula with his smoky, reverb-soaked six-string that weaves its way perfectly in between.
Their one hour and 45-minute long, six-track set was a brilliant live reconstruction of last year’s critically acclaimed debut album Psychic, with their studio recordings stretching out into slow-burning, high-intensity 12-minute marathons filled with masterful improvisation, making it a completely unique experience compared to hearing it through headphones.
Jaar’s warbling production would build at a cruelly gradual pace, drawing out palpable suspense from a crowd desperate for a drop, simmering at near-boiling point for minutes before finally tipping over into a bombastic climax. The night ebbed and flowed between these different levels of intensity, up and down, taking the room through a portal of unpredictable but ultimately rewarding soundscapes.
The two-piece really are masters of controlling an atmosphere, knowing exactly how long to have someone hanging on the edge of their seat before rewarding them for their patience, perhaps well demonstrated by the stranger in front who grabbed this reviewer’s shoulders and screamed “This is all I ever wanted!” when the teased-out introduction of ‘Freak, Go Home’ finally gave way for the night’s first wall-shaking breakdown.
From the disco-kick groove of ‘The Only Shrine I’ve Seen’ to Jaar’s piercing falsetto at the peak of ‘Golden Arrow’, the crowd erupted into rapturous dancing made so much more cathartic thanks to the juxtaposing stretches of brooding atmosphere created by the likes of the echoey ‘A1’ (taken their debut 2011 EP).
The biggest reaction of the night must’ve been for ‘Paper Trails’, which triggered clapping throughout the sea of dancing bodies as soon as Harrington’s gliding fretwork began to play out that familiar bluesy riff, before Jaar’s deep croon started a proper singalong.
With the clock bordering on the two-hour mark after a two-song encore, it was time for punters to snap out Darkside’s spell and back to reality.
As the crowd filed out into the cold air on Bourke Street, trying to readjust after the onslaught of stimulation that happened inside, the only thing everyone could really make sense of was that Darkside’s extraterrestrial chemistry is on a whole other plane – above and beyond anything else out there right now.
