By taking the all-encompassing, overwhelming experience of a rave and plunging it into hazy ambient soundscapes, the Brooklyn composer Rachika Nayar combines the bodily sensation of a packed dance floor with the reflexivity of an ambient show. Clouded in fog, Nayar processes her guitar and turns its sounds into thick layers of music – sometimes crystalline and lush, at other times murky and oblique. 

Nayar’s full-length NNA Tapes debut Our Hands Against the Dusk (2021) leaned more towards washed out ambient, digitally mutating her improvisational guitar loops, and combining the contorted textures with shimmering synths, orchestral strings, and piano. Heaven Come Crashing (2022), her widely celebrated sophomore album, finds ways to embrace the excitement of a warehouse rave, with pummelling amen breaks and thundering electronic breakdowns. Performed live, in a cloud of smoke, Nayar’s music allows for total immersion.