Under his Against All Logic alias, Nicolas Jaar writes music that sounds like it’s trying to break out of itself. Textures undulate and basses overwhelm, while vocals flutter in and out of focus as if someone were flicking through channels on a decrepit television. The project’s first LP, quietly released on his Other People label at the beginning of 2018, folded half a decade’s work into one of the most accessible albums of his career. Now that A.A.L. is a known quantity, Jaar returns with 2017 - 2019, trading the warmer house music of his debut for a warped techno counterpart.
“Fantasy,” the opener, is all crunchy transients and harsh digital noise and—is that Beyoncé? Success has only further emboldened Jaar, who twists snippets of Bey’s classic Sean Paul collaboration “Baby Boy” into a hypnotic, mangled hook. But this sample is a red herring, as is the laidback gait of “If Loving You Is Wrong,” which follows. The classic soul flips that defined 2012 - 2017 are largely absent from that point on, replaced by frenetic clangs and extended, bristling percussion workouts like “With an Addict.”
2017 - 2019 has been rendered more purposefully than its predecessor, each track flowing into the next. It presents an identity for Against All Logic that transcends the previous mid-tempo crowd-pleasers, one that’s unafraid to draw from various club subgenres while injecting Jaar’s customary washed-out tape atmospheres. The harsh spirals of noise and pneumatic hi-hats of “Deeeeeeefers” sound like they’re pulled from a revised Justice cut or Thomas Bangalter edit, while “Penny” makes the case that “lo-fi house” might not be dead after all.
The most exhilarating moment on the album appears courtesy of its sole feature, Lydia Lunch, whose voice and philosophy Jaar borrows for “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard.” A longtime advocate of her work—he reissued her 1990 spoken-word piece Conspiracy of Women (C.O.W.) after layering clips from the recording into his live show for years—Jaar recontextualizes the no-wave icon’s uncompromising ferocity using brash distortion loops that make Yeezus sound tame by comparison.
“Because you can’t beat ’em, kill ’em/If you can’t kill ’em, fuck ’em/If you can’t fuck ’em, kill ’em/If you can’t do it good, do it hard,” Lunch snarls amid waves of mutilated feedback. It’s not the first time Jaar has remixed her, but “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard” turns what would otherwise be an intriguing experiment into a bona fide floor-filler. When the beat comes crashing down and Lunch’s manifesto echoes across a cacophonous explosion of drum machines, her brusque chant transforms into a menacing clarion call for the dancefloor. For the rest of the album, Jaar channels that same energy. The tracks pulsate with chaos and—on the introspective closer “You (forever)”—an occasional glimmer of hope.
