Cenizas

Nicolas Jaar - Cenizas
Critic Score
Based on 8 reviews
2020 Ratings: #60 / 871
User Score
Based on 799 ratings
2020 Rank: #235
Liked by 83 people
March 27, 2020 / Release Date
LP / Format
Other People / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

90
The Line of Best Fit

The resulting music is slow and contemplative, and defined by the kind of sound-play which makes Jaar special.

90
Exclaim!

On Cenizas, Nicolas Jaar unveils a static but emotional masterpiece, an album that doesn't challenge the listener as much as it invites them into his alien, meditative, astonishing world.

90
Loud and Quiet

As an album, Cenizas wanders, floats, drifts. Jaar’s work has always been experimental, but this record is without a doubt his most “challenging,” rife with exercises in drone, ambient, and noise, often at the same time.

80
Pitchfork

The Chilean American producer’s latest album is his most probing and existential, taking influences from all over his career and placing them into grim atmospheres that slip in and out of reality.

80
The Needle Drop

Nicolas Jaar's second album of 2020 is an evocative set of electroacoustic vignettes.

80
Q Magazine

Cenzias creates the precious illusion of space and motion.

78
Beats Per Minute

Though there are no hooks nor beats to catch listeners in his web of brilliance, Cenizas’ sonic allure and complete diversion into sounds rarely explored makes it Jaar’s most compelling project yet.

70
AllMusic
Particularly challenging at first, but rewards as the listener becomes more accustomed to its unique properties and atmospheres.
WhatTheFunk
62

Spiritual lockdown.

Impenetrable phoenix of electronic elegance, Nicolás Jaar is reborn from his ashes through a bewitching album, an exploration without limits, revealing an ever deeper and dreamlike universe. While the quarantine forces us to remain alone to reflect, to question ourselves, Jaar offers us a dark soundscape more introspective than ever.

This is only a farewell. Many have danced to his hit "Mi Mujer" or vibrated to his Boiler Room, but Nicolás Jaar's ... read more

CLJesse
78

You know an ambient album is good when even *I* like it. Give this thing a spin please.

MusicN
80

I'm not sure if this will hold up to multiple listens like something more immediate might, but writing this review now (a couple've days after I've first heard it) I love this a lot.
Edit 1: It's now a week after first hearing this and I love it even more.
Edit 2: This is a wonderful album.
Edit 3: After half a year of this being out, it has SLIGHTLY fallen out of my top 10's.

All 13 tracks reviewed/ poorly described:
Vanish (86) is an ethereal opener informing the listener of the darkness to ... read more

Dedtroy
100

FUTURISTICISM

annx
93

such a pretty voice

squese
60

extremely strange even for a nicholas jaar project. the subtlety of the sounds gives the songs a glass-like fragility that gives me the image of a wire statue when i hear it. though a beautiful frame it may be, it's brittle and extremely fragile. "Mud" is superb.

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Track List

1Vanish
3:11
88
2Menysid
3:58
81
3Cenizas
4:39
86
4Agosto
2:47
83
5Gocce
3:56
79
6Mud
7:13
89
7Vacíar
2:17
75
8Sunder
3:05
78
9Hello, Chain
5:26
83
10Rubble
3:01
77
11Garden
5:25
83
12Xerox
3:19
77
13Faith Made of Silk
5:23
85
Total Length: 53 minutes

Year End Lists

#38/Crack Magazine
#50/PopMatters
#58/Rough Trade
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Added on: March 11, 2020