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**Darkside - Psychic ★★★★☆**

In the grand tradition of musical partnerships that shouldn't work but absolutely do, Darkside emerged from the Brooklyn underground like some beautiful accident of circumstance. When Nicolas Jaar, the wunderkind of cerebral electronic music, collided with Dave Harrington's guitar wizardry sometime around 2011, few could have predicted the hypnotic alchemy that would follow. Their 2013 debut "Psychic" stands as testament to what happens when two restless creative spirits decide to abandon their comfort zones and dive headfirst into uncharted sonic territory.

The backstory reads like a fever dream of New York's creative underground. Jaar, already established as a purveyor of sophisticated house music through his Space Is Only Noise album, found himself drawn to Harrington's sprawling guitar work during late-night jam sessions. What began as informal explorations gradually crystallized into something more purposeful – a project that would see Jaar step away from the laptop and embrace live instrumentation, while Harrington's guitar became a conduit for electronic manipulation and processing.

"Psychic" occupies a fascinating no-man's land between genres, refusing to be pinned down by conventional categorization. It's electronic music, certainly, but not as we know it. The album breathes with organic life, its pulse more human heartbeat than drum machine. Jaar's production aesthetic – all space, shadow, and suggestion – provides the perfect canvas for Harrington's guitar, which shapeshifts between recognizable six-string textures and something altogether more alien. The result is a form of ambient techno that feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic, like discovering a lost krautrock masterpiece in some parallel dimension where Neu! collaborated with Aphex Twin.

The album's opening salvo, "Golden Arrow," sets the tone with its hypnotic guitar loop and skeletal percussion, building tension through repetition and subtle variation. It's a masterclass in restraint, proving that sometimes the most powerful moments come from what you don't play rather than what you do. "The Only Shrine I've Seen" pushes further into the void, its processed vocals floating like spectral transmissions over a bed of shimmering electronics and treated guitar. Here, Darkside reveals their debt to dub music's spatial innovations, using echo and reverb not as effects but as instruments in their own right.

Perhaps the album's finest moment arrives with "Paper Trails," a nine-minute odyssey that begins with what sounds like a lost Morricone soundtrack before morphing into something that wouldn't sound out of place in a Berlin techno bunker. The track's genius lies in its patience – the way it allows ideas to develop organically, never rushing toward resolution. It's music for 4am contemplation, for those liminal moments when the world feels simultaneously infinite and intimate.

"Freak, Go Home" offers the closest thing to a conventional song structure, its insistent rhythm and memorable hook providing an anchor point in the album's otherwise fluid landscape. Yet even here, Darkside subverts expectations, allowing the track to dissolve into ambient textures just when you expect it to explode into full-blown dance floor euphoria.

The album's production deserves special mention – every element occupies its own carefully carved space in the mix, creating a sense of three-dimensional depth that rewards close listening through quality speakers or headphones. This is music that reveals new details with each encounter, its seemingly simple surfaces concealing layers of complexity beneath.

In the decade since its release, "Psychic" has aged remarkably well, its influence audible in everything from ambient house to experimental rock. The album anticipated the current vogue for genre-blending electronic music by several years, proving that Jaar and Harrington were onto something genuinely prescient. After a lengthy hiatus, Darkside returned in 2021 with "Spiral," but it's "Psychic" that remains their defining statement – a singular vision that captures lightning in a bottle.

"Psychic" succeeds because it never tries too hard to be anything other than what it is: two musicians following their instincts into unknown territory. In an era of algorithmic playlist culture and instant gratification, it stands as a reminder of music's power to transport, to transform, and to transcend the boundaries we place around it. Essential listening for anyone interested in where electronic music goes when it grows up.