Psychic is the debut studio album by electronic music duo Darkside, consisting of Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington. It was released on October 4, 2013, on Matador Records. Darkside (often stylized as DARKSIDE) is an American band based in New York City. The band was formed in Providence, Rhode Island in 2011 by electronic musician Nicolás Jaar and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington, both of whom were students at Brown University at the time. Their debut studio album, Psychic, was released in 2013 and was followed up by Spiral, released in 2021 after a lengthy hiatus. In 2022, the band added drummer and percussionist Tlacael Esparza to its core line-up, ahead of the release of Live at Spiral House, an album consisting of improvised material recorded at the band's Los Angeles-based rehearsal space. Their first studio album as a trio, Nothing, was released in February 2025.
Psychic is the debut album of Darkside (the duo Nicolas Jaar, who I already knew, and Dave Harrington). It's a good dark and atmospheric album in some songs are ambient soundscapes, other a bit more uptempo with vocals. Highlights are "Golden Arrow", "Freaks Go Home" and "Paper Trails".
I was really into this one. Ambient-adjacent, and hit a real sweet spot of making good background music, and also rewarding close listening. Rounding up the 4.5
The kind of thing I would have loved at the time.
Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Golden arrow, Paper trails, Metatron
Really enjoyed this, one of the best electronic albums I’ve heard in a while, very atmospheric and layered. One I’ll keep coming back to.
Nice groove to this largely instrumental electronic album. Nice for sitting alone in the dark.
Very low key and chill beats. Listened to this twice, it worked much better on a late-autumn after dark dog walk than it did sitting in my windowless office at 2pm.
Música electrónica. Ni fu ni fa.
Not sure I quite got this. I liked it OK but it didn't exactly feel like music you sit down and listen to. It felt like the part of the soundtrack where the guy drives silently across country at night, or the closing credits of a noir anime. Moderately perplexed.
It's alright. Like a lot of this type of music, it sort of goes in one ear and out the other. 3 stars.
It's fine. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.
Quite nice
Some chill electronic that played while I listened
An album that defies genre convention. Is it a rock album? Psychedelic? Ambient or electronic? Either way, DARKSIDE manages to captivate in ways not often explored. Sound tumbles around like a pair of shoes in a clothes dryer, only to follow the wind up through the exhaust vent and out into the vast world, following threads that never seem to fully resolve. I have a theory that some albums exist moreso as auditory experiences rather than a collection of songs. Rumors by Fleetwood Mac? Those are a bunch of songs. Really good songs, but they're distinct and they have structure and they start and end quite cleanly. They do all the things you would expect from a music album. Psychic? This is an auditory experience. It mediates on certain ideas of sound and flow from one to the next with barely any specific points to be touched on. Sure, this album is divided into tracks which you might consider to be songs, but I found Psychic to be a lot more loose and hypnotic than that. Neat stuff. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: DARKSIDE has yet to really make a name for themselves outside of more niche circles, so I don't think so.
Always partial to a bit of electronica
Not my jam. I can see how people may enjoy this album, but the inherent conceit and mellowness bored me.
Dark and atmospheric, ok for a dark fall morning drive to work, but not really my cup of tea otherwise. Was samey and boring after a few tracks.
Backing tracks, which might sound OK once they're finished.
Another electronic album that my ears just don’t understand the significance. This seems to me like a Jungle album that was partially finished. It has some catchy beats but just feels unfinished. Like it could have a little bit more added to it and some vocals and it would be a pretty cool album. 4.6/10