Last month, we introduced Neti-Neti, the self-described “lo-fi ritual project” of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (Elder Ones, Mary Halvorson) and percussionist Matt Evans (OHYUNG, Ben Seretan), and their forthcoming release Echo of Being / Grace in Rot. Set for release via Dinzu Artefacts later this month, the album is a sonic meditation on loss and mourning, with “Kidambi and Evans tapping,” as we put it, “into both individual grief, collective trauma and well-worn traditions to charge the process with a sense of momentum and fluency.” Previous single ‘Grace in Rot’ established how intense this process can be, a track “visceral, cathartic and transportive,” we continued, “threatening to unravel under its own chaotic impetus while always reaching towards transcendence.”
With Echo of Being / Grace in Rot set for release next week, Neti-Neti have returned with the second title track as a new single. Offering another dimension to the album, the song is far more patient and restrained than the previous one, its slower, less frantic style evoking a different form of grief. The background tone, ever-present, across which the more pressing, volatile forms will spark and fade. Droning drum samples and textured electronics are joined by washes of Kidambi’s vocals and dappled bells, pulling the listener into a world strange, ethereal and potentially bottomless. One which mirrors the experience of grief in how it collapses the distinction between reality, memory and dreams.
