*The Following Press Release Was Issued By Clandestine PR*
Rachika Nayar Shares Two New Songs “Our Wretched Fantasy” & “Our Wretched Fate” (feat. Maria BC)
New Album Heaven Come Crashing Out Now via NNA Tapes
Playing Select Album Release Shows In Brooklyn, Chicago & Los Angeles
RIYL: M83, Yoko Kanno, Grouper, Julianna Barwick, Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Kelly Moran, Elysia Crampton
Rachika Nayar (Yulissa Benitez)
“her forthcoming follow-up is, both sonically and thematically, cosmic in scope.” –The FADER
“[Nayar] moves away from the gentle hues of her past music, venturing toward expansive, cinematic production.” –Pitchfork
Brooklyn, NY-based guitarist and electronic producer, Rachika Nayar, shared two new tracks “Our Wretched Fantasy” & “Our Wretched Fate,” the final preview from her album Heaven Come Crashing, released August 26th, 2022 via NNA Tapes. Although the singles book-end the album, the two tracks were made as one extended piece and flow into each other seamlessly, sequentially. The latter of the two features vocals from collaborator Maria BC and gradually builds until the track verges towards near self-obliteration.
The double single follows previous singles “Heaven Come Crashing” & “Nausea,” which earned attention and acclaimed from Stereogum (5 Best Songs of the Week), The New York Times (The Playlist), Brooklyn Vegan (Our Favorite Songs of the Week), The FADER (live interview & Song You Need track premiere), NPR Music (Viking’s Choice), Paste Magazine (Best New Songs) and Pitchfork (Selects playlist & track review), among many others.
On Our Hands Against the Dusk, Nayar used her guitar as the primary source for sound design, mutating the instrument beyond recognition through layers of digital processing. Soon after, the album’s companion EP, fragments, demonstrated the types of raw guitar-playing that would be transfigured into those grander compositions—miniature genre sketches that touched upon everything from post-rock to Midwestern emo. With these two 2021 releases, Rachika resculpted the limits of both guitar and electronic music, placing her at the forefront of various contemporary music scenes in her current home of New York City and more broadly amongst the likes of Fennesz, Julianna Barwick and Tim Hecker.
Heaven Come Crashing retains Nayar’s mangled guitar stylings, but expands the color palette by looking not so much to the fretboard, as to the dance floor and the silver screen. Influences enter into the frame ranging from ’90s trance, to early M83, to Yoko Kanno anime soundtracks. With its M1 piano stabs, supersaws and glimpses of Amen breaks, the album charts a luminescent space between 5 a.m. warehouse raves and the urban freeways of its cover image—romantic, nocturnal, and reckless in its velocity and emotional abandon.
On the topic, Nayar says: “I both love and feel so wary of melodrama, because its entire premise is to be uncritical. Taking your most massive emotions at face-value feels so fraught when they partly originate with structures you can’t control, with structures you maybe even feel at war with.”
Within this conflicted relationship to its own theatrics, the album wages a battle between surrendering to desire and incinerating it. Heaven Come Crashing invites the listener to revel within fantasy, before helping light the match to burn it down—one final embrace in the dream world before it shatters to pieces.
Heaven Come Crashing is out now via NNA Tapes and is available to preorder here.
Tracklist
1. “Our Wretched Fantasy”
2. “Tetramorph”
3. “Death & Limerence”
4. “Nausea”
5. “Promises”
6. “Gayatri”
7. “Heaven Come Crashing” (ft. maria bc)
8. “Sleepless”
9. “The Price of Serenity”
10. “Our Wretched Fate” (feat. maria bc)
Shows
Oct 1: Brooklyn, NY @ Public Records
Oct 6: Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
Oct 8: Los Angeles, CA @ 2220
Select Praise
“a master of lush guitar manipulation” –Bandcamp Daily
“blissful, shimmering, widescreen electro-pop” –BrooklynVegan
“an experience that captivates all the senses” –The FADER
“a shield and a map to use and find your way home. Incredible” –Foxy Digitalis
“Chopped up and assembled layers of improvised guitar (with guest vocals and cello) are shaped and composed into organic-sounding, melodic flow states of ambient bliss.” –New Sounds
“pitting the warped sound against the original. It feels as though the instrument is searching for its essence.” –The New York Times
“Brooklyn-based musician Rachika Nayar makes music that tantalizes and challenges the senses... Nayar captures the intense rise with skittish drum-and-bass percussion and electronic squeals, mimicking the exhilarating feeling of ego death and freedom.”
–Paste Magazine
“visionary ambient music” –Pitchfork
“a compelling, deeply engaging listen… both admirably eclectic and beautifully focused.” –PopMatters
“through all the wonderful textures, there’s an essence that doesn’t need to be explained, it can just be felt.” –The Quietus
“Nayar’s compositions obliterate boundaries. They feel embodied and situated in the fragmented experience of life at the edges of what can be expressed.” –Slumber Magazine
“a collision of synths that overflows with abundant glee. Nayar pulls back from that maximalist expression in the last minute with a coda of celestial wandering that ties the whole track together and leaves the listener wanting even more.” –Stereogum
“Nayar’s music illuminates the forces that shape us and the forces that push us away from our centre” –The Wire Magazine
Links
rachika.net
rachika.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/rachikanayar
facebook.com/urgirlrachika
music.rachika.net/biglink
