Rachika Nayar is readying her fragments EP for release on August 13th. The effort is part of RVNG Intl.‘s THERE series, which celebrates the label’s Lower East Side storefront space Commend with music inspired by its creative efforts but recorded by the participating musicians in their own home studios. Today we listen to “august 31st,” Nayar’s follow-up to the EP’s lead single, “clarity.”
The musician’s use of delay petals to create guitar loops is on full display across fragments and the new track. The practice has long stood as a means for meditative self-exploration and restoration for the artist and a way to generate song ideas. And while her 2021 debut, Our Hands Against The Dusk (NNA Tapes), also utilized this method, the guitar was further blurred through processing on that album. Here, the focus is on the loops themselves.
On a song like “august 31st,” the result is clear-eyed and full of transcendent emotion. Focused around a resonant, mantra-like repetition of guitar, the loop exudes a blissful joy. The perfect “backdrop” for Nayar’s further improvised melodies, this song soon blossoms into vibrant patterns of introspective expression.
