Pick Your Poison: Monday 8-18-14

Darkside, the electronic duo of Dave Harrington and Nicolas Jaar, have been in existence for around two years now. Their debut album Psychic was one of 2013’s finest releases, and they followed it up with some incredible live shows that emphasized atmosphere as much as they did live instrumentation. Most recently, I happened to catch Darkside’s festival-closing set at Lollapalooza, which was sparsely attended seeing as how they were up against Kings of Leon, Chance the Rapper and Skrillex. The few hundred of us that were in attendance for that set know just how special it truly was, and you could count it among my top 3 highlights of this year’s fest. Well, over the weekend we got some bad news. They took to Twitter and announced that Darkside is “coming to an end, for now.” Their final show is going to be Sept. 12th in Brooklyn, and it quickly sold out. They also released two previously unheard songs, “What They Say” and the all-too-appropriate “Gone Too Soon.” Both are leftovers from the Psychic sessions and will appear on the WORK compilation, which will be released on September 29th via Jaar’s Other People label. As upsetting as it may be to see such a promising collaboration quickly die off, there’s still plenty of hope to take away from this situation. First is obviously the suggestion that even though they’re “coming to an end, for now,” that doesn’t mean forever. They may decide to reconvene in a year or two and make a new record for all we know. There’s not a definite finality to the decision, so there’s still hope. Secondly, at the very least Nicolas Jaar has proven himself to be a prolific artist in his own right, and his last album Space is Only Noise really got people’s attention a couple years back. No doubt he’ll continue down that path and I’m sure will release more great material. Harrington isn’t nearly as popular yet, but will continue as a solo artist, remixer and member of El Topo, and we’ll see where that takes him. So even though Darkside will be gone for the foreseeable future, there’s still plenty to look forward to. Anyways, let’s dive into today’s Pick Your Poison, shall we? There’s some great tracks in this set from Brian Lopez, Captain Murphy, Felix Champion, Shelpter Point, SOS and Turning Plates. In the Soundcloud section after the jump, stream new songs from Allah-Las, Caribou, Charli XCX, J. Cole, Peaking Lights and Vogue Dots, among others.