Grief comes in waves. There’s the trickle then the downpour of experience as it reverberates; the eventual release of existential emotions held deep in the body. For Neti-Neti, the duo of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi and percussionist Matt Evans, the engulfing, changing, and visceral nature of grief underlies raw free improvisations, as Evans’ drums relentlessly pulse and Kidambi’s flexible voice interweaves. On their latest album, Echo of Being / Grace in Rot, the duo channels seismic waves into undulating improvisations that expand on their debut album, 2022’s Impermanence, and sharpen their musical practice to a fine point.
Recorded in a studio session and produced by Nick Zanca, Echo of Being / Grace in Rot captures Evans and Kidambi’s fervent style, emphasizing the effortless flow between and within tracks as well as the duo’s evolving structural framework and techniques. The album traverses many roads on its journey toward the center of grief (and back out), living along the rough edges of pummeling improvisation, focused drones, and even quiet meditations. Throughout, Evans and Kidambi pay great attention to piecing each phrase together on the way to finding a deep flow state. Often, they mirror and reflect each other’s motions, using a patchwork of acute rhythms as a means to meditation. On a track like “Alive in the Belly of a (Green) Bird,” Kidambi’s panting vocals interlock with Evans’ swishing drums, building more tenseness with each repetition until it all falls away into gossamer hums and eerie electronics; directly after comes the melancholy “Devoted Light,” during which spurts of drums burst between haunted drones.
The album’s best moments take these precise patterns and explode them into pure energy, channeling the searing emotions of grief into free exploration. “Every Wound is a Weapon” opens with an electric shock of pummeling drums and fiery vocals; rhythms appear then burst like popping balloons, with each phrase ending in guttural screams. By the end, the remnant of a sparkling breath is all that’s left. With album highlight “Memory in Veil,” Evans and Kidambi take a more quiet and textural approach, pairing droning hums with scratchy drums and echoing gongs. It’s frantic and yet wispy, like what remains after the chaos is stripped away, or the calling of a ghost from another room.
Though bubbling energy is the album’s guiding force, Echo of Being / Grace in Rot feels its most real when the chaos is stripped away and all that’s left is the molten core. Though so much of this album is wrapped up in tumultuous, free-flowing energy, it ends in a delicate and focused drone. On “Shraddha,” an oscillating tone crescendos and decrescendos like a wave coming in and out of shore, just a couple of rounded tones looping around each other. Nothing feels settled, yet everything is present, at once, at last.