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Rachika Nayar & Nina Keith – Disiniblud (2025)
Review:
Born from a longtime kinship, almost a spiritual sisterhood, composers Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith’s affinity for wondrous fantasy blossoms on their delicate self-titled collaboration, Disiniblud. Nayar’s digitally altered math-rock riffage and Keith’s modular synth embellishments coalesce into a sublime, indietronica journey exploring fantasy as a form of liberation. Disiniblud teems with a chipper, warm tone as swirls of high voices and glitchy skitters flutter in the ears like butterflies. This spectacle is fairytale-like, with the duo’s similar neoclassical leanings leaving many enchanting moments to parse. Chimes continually coil as deep piano stabs swell into sweeping gusts of maximalist sound, rising to the highest realm of vibrant fantasy. Nayar and Keith’s fingerprints, similar but different, feel like one. Disiniblud is woven by the lives of its creators, moving forward with their wounds and years of exploration to form a transcendent embrace. The esteemed collaborators brought into their fold further cherishes this togetherness. From the opening notes of “Give-upping”, Julianna Barwick’s voice emerges from segmented takes, pieced together to deliver a message of reinvention: “If you could give up / Something good could happen for once if you let it.” Stuttering pianos and candied bit music flirtations make way to immense joy, like frolicking through a forest. The bubbling “Blue Rags, Raging Wind” with Amigone is Tenniscoats-esque with its endless ceramic loops and poignant strings, emanating a cosy and deeply textual atmosphere. The seven-minute “Serpentine” is aptly titled: A labyrinth of acoustic strums and Cassandra Croft’s voice, splintered, unfolds into an elegant, bassy break-heavy catharsis. “It’s Change” is a woodier, floatier affair featuring kindred artists Willy Siegel of Ponytail, Katie Dey, and Barwick once more, where the first words spoken match the buoyant music’s ever-changing nature: “Something happen? / No / It’s change / Begin it.” The titular track “Disiniblud” is the sparkliest, its accompanying video artfully celebrating the transgender community with an all-trans cast, displaying a gleaming visual representation of the duo’s emotional prowess. All move lovingly and unitedly in nature, affirming of their wondrous and diverse bodies, at home in Disiniblud’s magical world and nurturing a necessary queer utopia. Later, the boisterous conclusion “My flickering gift to you” is graced by Tujiko Noriko’s mother tongue, the sparse soundscape erupting into a monolithic wall, until intently settling down to a place of saccharine peace. Disiniblud is an escapism, just as it is a remedy to acknowledge the “wounds and wonder” mentioned by Keith, that make us who we are. This realm happens to be the grace Nayar and Keith have given themselves, earnestly combining their strengths. Disiniblud’s variegated, near-folk leanings, then, are precious and must be held close to the heart. — northerntransmissions.com
Track List:
01 - Give-upping
02 - Blue Rags, Raging Wind
03 - Serpentine
04 - No more to see
05 - [it could happen]
06 - It's Change
07 - Traces in the window
08 - whole30 Fight Club
09 - Disiniblud
10 - [as is most (bimbo it out)]
11 - My flickering gift to you
Media Report:
Genre: ambient, electronic, post-rock
Origin: Brooklyn, New York, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26)
Note: If you like the music, support the artist.
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