HAILING from the borough of Brooklyn, ambient composer Rachika Nayar has left her previous nominative chrysalis as Rachika S behind to spread her wings as a potent ambient guitar sound artist; as wholly witnessed by this first single, “The Trembling Of Glass”, taken from her March debut album, Our Hands Against The Dusk. Take a rapturous listen.
Like Christian Fennesz and other scions of that particular textural scene, it’s not always apparent that guitar is the initial sound source, so chopped and refashioned, morphed and rebuilt is it; from more ‘tronica-like staccato which infers, at points, an implicit ‘Philip’ to the song title; to a straighter, clean arpeggio towards the tune’s conclusion, it’s an intense journey.
Nayar explains: “I arranged nearly the entire song from processing one guitar progression into a bunch of different sounds, which then reveals itself in its raw form at the end of the piece from beneath the fog of all those textural mirrors.
“For myself, listening to it brings to mind: Nostalgia. Memory. Pulling back the veil, and the painful clarity of seeing yourself anew.”
And that’s the key to understanding the forthcoming album; the music as a very personal mirror of the self. As an Indian-American trans person, she’s navigated many communities – even more so, redoubled, living in a borough as full of different experiences and voices as Brooklyn.
Written over the past four years, Nayar’s debut winds through vivid recollection – ecstasy, ambivalence, grief, and calm, all built from an initial seed of looped guitars into exhilarating and experimental sound, full of depth and sustain and inventiveness.
Rachika Nayar’s Our Hands Against The Dusk will be released by NNA Tapes on digital and cassette formats on March 5th; you can pre-order your copy from the label now.
Follow Rachika on Facebook, Instagram, at Bandcamp and at NNA Tapes.
