Two minutes and thirty seconds into the title monitor of Rachika Nayar’s Heaven Come Crashing, a completely large drum and bass beat drops. As a fan of Nayar’s debut report Our Hands Against The Dusk, it caught me off guard. That album has no percussion on it in any respect. Heaven Comes Crashing is nearly fully drum-free, too. There are some rapid-fire mechanical hi-hats on the second monitor, “Tetramorph,” and the again half of monitor six, “Gayatri,” has what appears like a snare buried deep within the combine. But it surely isn’t till monitor seven that Nayar delivers an sudden drum explosion, earlier than instantly retreating to the soothing wash of “Sleepless,” only one track later.
Nayar’s distinctive model of guitar-heavy ambient-adjacent music performs nearly like a model of M83 from an alternate universe. One the place as a substitute of turning to ‘80s pop music for inspiration, Anthony Gonzalez mined his instrumental epics for each final drop of emotion. Heaven Comes Crashing is as emotionally heavy because the title would suggest however makes use of surprisingly few phrases to get there. The one vocals come courtesy of Maria BC, who floats over the title monitor and the beautiful album nearer “Our Wretched Destiny,” the place she worldlessly belts out her laments.
There are lyrics on “Heaven Comes Crashing,” however they’re nearly indecipherable as Maria BC whispers beneath an ocean of flailing guitar traces and glowing drones:
Is it morning?
I don’t bear in mind going to sleep
How can we face the day
Like this?
You throw down your arms and rely to see
How deep it’s
As a substitute of phrases, Nayar turns to closely processed guitar, lonesome textures, and the occasional burst of trance chords to seize the determined longing on the album’s core. However the album can also be an indictment of the kind of abandon that always accompanies unbridled ardour. It’s bookended by “Our Wretched Fantasy” and “Our Wretched Destiny,” betraying a sure disgust for its personal emotional recklessness. Monitor three isn’t “Loss of life and Love”; it’s “Loss of life and Limerence” — opting to highlight unhealthy romantic obsession reasonably than fulfilling emotional partnership, by U2-esque guitar traces that finally drown beneath closely reverbed and out-of-tune tremolo-picked notes.
That’s adopted by the unease of “Nausea,” which builds from an unsteady drone to maximalist panic of ‘90s synths and one of many easiest and prettiest guitar melodies on the report. The ambient emo of “Guarantees” follows, main into “Gayatri,” which ratchets up the power and serves as a bridge to the explosive title monitor.