Disiniblud
ABOUT
Nina Keith and Rachika Nayar were drawn to one another like mirror images or two sisters reuniting after a lifetime of separation. Four years ago, the artists met in Brooklyn's two-block–by–two-block Maria Hernandez Park after fan-girling each other’s music online. Dishing about messy post-lockdown long-distance lesbianism, heartfelt investments in Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, and a shared high-school love of the Eternal Sunshine OST, the two found their surface similarities gesturing toward a deeper shared existential worldview.
Their kinship—which Rachika describes originating from some “inner-child sisterhood place”—is the heart of their collaborative project Disiniblud and their fairytale-like self-titled LP via Smugglers Way. The two’s self-described “wordless conversation,” the album orbits such themes as mortality, reinvention through destruction, and sublimating fractured histories into music—all resulting in a work that suggests sweeping transformation can come from embracing old wounds with childlike wonder.
The two LA-based artists meet on complementary but seemingly disparate musical grounds. On her 2022 breakout LP Heaven Come Crashing, Nayar departed from her usual ambient guitar in favor of maximalist synths, sub-bass, and flickers of Amen breaks. Her distinct fusion of post-rock and electronica earned her accolades as Pitchfork's Best New Music, on several best of the year lists (The New York Times, Stereogum, Fader, GQ, Bandcamp, etc), and as the opening act on tour with M83. Keith, meanwhile, is best known for her self-trained approach to composition, as evident on her 2019 debut MARANASATI 19111 and its delicate medley of cello, piano, clarinet, and flute, used to explore a personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents. She expands into new territories on her forthcoming releases, like the single “Come Back Different” featuring Julie Byrne, by incorporating modular synths and intricate vocal arrangements with the help of various collaborators. Their combined artistic strengths exalt together on Disiniblud.
"The imagery [of the album] for me is like standing together in the abyss of our memory and reckoning with both the ineffable wonders and atrocities of our life experience," says Nina, "like we’re holding and protecting each other through that process and finding a way to take both the light and dark.”
“It’s not about healing and moving past the darkness,” clarifies Rachika.
Nina adds, “It’s taking both with you in the satchel and carrying it with you everywhere you go… that’s the only way you can really metabolize it.”
This protection Nina refers to can be as uplifting as encouraging one another to re-enliven a part of their musical repertoire—for Rachika, it might be math-rock guitar abilities at which she shrugs that Nina insists on coaxing out of her; for Nina, it could be her vast hard drive of abandoned modular synth sketches that Rachika inspires her to put to use again (at the climax of the track "Serpentine" featuring Cassandra Croft, for instance). Nina describes this in metaphor like showing off an outfit she used to wear all the time three years ago that now feels outdated, but then "the other one of us sees the jewel there and brings it out." Sometimes, protecting each other through the process can also be, Rachika explains, "us both arriving at the studio in tears, holding each other for 10 minutes… but instead of picking apart whatever struggles with words, we'll just start playing—and then a door opens for both of us."
Though these two have such a strong intuitive connection, making music together was often unintentional. The first time Rachika visited Nina in LA before her own move, she handed Nina her suitcases and immediately sat down at Nina's new piano. Nina quickly set up microphones to record the moment of spontaneity without disturbing her, thus producing the song “Nice rocks in my mouth” (unreleased), which they worked on for two days straight without so much as a concrete plan. "Serpentine" is another result of loose improvisation: Rachika absentmindedly playing guitar on Nina's bed while water dripping from Nina’s sound installation “Periphone” audibly struck metallophone bars in the background. Out of a 72-minute long recording, they found a thirty second excerpt to loop behind Cassandra’s soaring soprano vocals.
This fluency and fluidity also intertwines with the way they'll experiment with new instruments and techniques under their mutual guidance and support. Nina refers to it as "cosplaying as each other." Rachika might try her hand learning the instruments in Nina’s studio (such as piano and clarinet), while Nina will experiment with bass put through Rachika's guitar pedals and unique methods of audio time-stretching.
"I think we encourage each other to do things outside the ‘identity’ of our solo projects, especially musical abilities from our deep pasts we've put aside for feelings around gender or shame," Rachika says. "But it’s through the other’s eyes we get to bring it somewhere new."
Above all, their practice emphasizes comfort and trust before engaging in childlike play—a state of being that sheds bounded self-consciousness in favor of open imagination. Nina envisions this as she and Rachika's younger selves packing a satchel, holding hands, and daring one another to run away into a place of "wounds and wonder," only to discover an unforeseeable magic in an amalgam of post-rock, glitchy indie electronica, ambient, and pop genres in this co-created realm.
"Blue Rags, Raging Wind," the most neoclassical entry on the album and rife with xylophone-esque patters, exemplifies this core of "inner childlike joy," says Rachika. It was born one day out of a fun, uninhibited moment riffing out polyrhythms together on a sound installation in Nina's room. The title track "Disiniblud" also recalls "going into a three-year old mind" for the purposes of free exploration. Much of the song's mixed metallic percussion and whirring electronics came from banging on various kitchen supplies with a stick and then processing the recording into a major key anthem.
"I think there's something crucial about childhood and playfulness in my approach to life,” says Rachika, “rediscovering what potential existed before the limits other people decided for you and finding out what queer things happen if you lean into those previously closed paths."
Rediscovering the past and excavating these "memory networks, all of these different fears and internalized structures on how to survive in the world" can be fruitful, says Nina, but even more than that, "something miraculous can happen when you burn it to the ground." Gaining and growing often involves the process of letting go, too, as expressed in the opener "Give-upping" featuring Julianna Barwick. Lush with buoyant piano melodies, Barwick's fluttering vocals beckon to the listener from the other side of an "infinite knowingness," says Rachika, to—as the lyrics instruct—"Give up/ Give up/ For once if you let it." The song taps into a longheld Buddhist truth of clinging to past experiences as a source of one's own suffering.
Rife with almost merry-go-round samples from three different vocalists (Katie Dey, Julianna, and Willy Siegel of Ponytail), "It's Change," is also a mantra of impermanence in its own right. "There is no ground beneath us," insists Nina. "You have this perfect life? It's already gone… it’s just dust. The structures you’ve built in your life, everyone you know, will eventually pass, and that awareness allows you to see how precious it all is without clinging to this projected reality.”
All things go and this acknowledgement recognizes that, as Rachika describes, “catastrophe and freedom are twin realities bound together.” With that release and even intentional destruction, there comes a sense of peace in this larger story—a “fairytale of two sisters ripping everything apart to find the jewel in each other.”
Their kinship—which Rachika describes originating from some “inner-child sisterhood place”—is the heart of their collaborative project Disiniblud and their fairytale-like self-titled LP via Smugglers Way. The two’s self-described “wordless conversation,” the album orbits such themes as mortality, reinvention through destruction, and sublimating fractured histories into music—all resulting in a work that suggests sweeping transformation can come from embracing old wounds with childlike wonder.
The two LA-based artists meet on complementary but seemingly disparate musical grounds. On her 2022 breakout LP Heaven Come Crashing, Nayar departed from her usual ambient guitar in favor of maximalist synths, sub-bass, and flickers of Amen breaks. Her distinct fusion of post-rock and electronica earned her accolades as Pitchfork's Best New Music, on several best of the year lists (The New York Times, Stereogum, Fader, GQ, Bandcamp, etc), and as the opening act on tour with M83. Keith, meanwhile, is best known for her self-trained approach to composition, as evident on her 2019 debut MARANASATI 19111 and its delicate medley of cello, piano, clarinet, and flute, used to explore a personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents. She expands into new territories on her forthcoming releases, like the single “Come Back Different” featuring Julie Byrne, by incorporating modular synths and intricate vocal arrangements with the help of various collaborators. Their combined artistic strengths exalt together on Disiniblud.
"The imagery [of the album] for me is like standing together in the abyss of our memory and reckoning with both the ineffable wonders and atrocities of our life experience," says Nina, "like we’re holding and protecting each other through that process and finding a way to take both the light and dark.”
“It’s not about healing and moving past the darkness,” clarifies Rachika.
Nina adds, “It’s taking both with you in the satchel and carrying it with you everywhere you go… that’s the only way you can really metabolize it.”
This protection Nina refers to can be as uplifting as encouraging one another to re-enliven a part of their musical repertoire—for Rachika, it might be math-rock guitar abilities at which she shrugs that Nina insists on coaxing out of her; for Nina, it could be her vast hard drive of abandoned modular synth sketches that Rachika inspires her to put to use again (at the climax of the track "Serpentine" featuring Cassandra Croft, for instance). Nina describes this in metaphor like showing off an outfit she used to wear all the time three years ago that now feels outdated, but then "the other one of us sees the jewel there and brings it out." Sometimes, protecting each other through the process can also be, Rachika explains, "us both arriving at the studio in tears, holding each other for 10 minutes… but instead of picking apart whatever struggles with words, we'll just start playing—and then a door opens for both of us."
Though these two have such a strong intuitive connection, making music together was often unintentional. The first time Rachika visited Nina in LA before her own move, she handed Nina her suitcases and immediately sat down at Nina's new piano. Nina quickly set up microphones to record the moment of spontaneity without disturbing her, thus producing the song “Nice rocks in my mouth” (unreleased), which they worked on for two days straight without so much as a concrete plan. "Serpentine" is another result of loose improvisation: Rachika absentmindedly playing guitar on Nina's bed while water dripping from Nina’s sound installation “Periphone” audibly struck metallophone bars in the background. Out of a 72-minute long recording, they found a thirty second excerpt to loop behind Cassandra’s soaring soprano vocals.
This fluency and fluidity also intertwines with the way they'll experiment with new instruments and techniques under their mutual guidance and support. Nina refers to it as "cosplaying as each other." Rachika might try her hand learning the instruments in Nina’s studio (such as piano and clarinet), while Nina will experiment with bass put through Rachika's guitar pedals and unique methods of audio time-stretching.
"I think we encourage each other to do things outside the ‘identity’ of our solo projects, especially musical abilities from our deep pasts we've put aside for feelings around gender or shame," Rachika says. "But it’s through the other’s eyes we get to bring it somewhere new."
Above all, their practice emphasizes comfort and trust before engaging in childlike play—a state of being that sheds bounded self-consciousness in favor of open imagination. Nina envisions this as she and Rachika's younger selves packing a satchel, holding hands, and daring one another to run away into a place of "wounds and wonder," only to discover an unforeseeable magic in an amalgam of post-rock, glitchy indie electronica, ambient, and pop genres in this co-created realm.
"Blue Rags, Raging Wind," the most neoclassical entry on the album and rife with xylophone-esque patters, exemplifies this core of "inner childlike joy," says Rachika. It was born one day out of a fun, uninhibited moment riffing out polyrhythms together on a sound installation in Nina's room. The title track "Disiniblud" also recalls "going into a three-year old mind" for the purposes of free exploration. Much of the song's mixed metallic percussion and whirring electronics came from banging on various kitchen supplies with a stick and then processing the recording into a major key anthem.
"I think there's something crucial about childhood and playfulness in my approach to life,” says Rachika, “rediscovering what potential existed before the limits other people decided for you and finding out what queer things happen if you lean into those previously closed paths."
Rediscovering the past and excavating these "memory networks, all of these different fears and internalized structures on how to survive in the world" can be fruitful, says Nina, but even more than that, "something miraculous can happen when you burn it to the ground." Gaining and growing often involves the process of letting go, too, as expressed in the opener "Give-upping" featuring Julianna Barwick. Lush with buoyant piano melodies, Barwick's fluttering vocals beckon to the listener from the other side of an "infinite knowingness," says Rachika, to—as the lyrics instruct—"Give up/ Give up/ For once if you let it." The song taps into a longheld Buddhist truth of clinging to past experiences as a source of one's own suffering.
Rife with almost merry-go-round samples from three different vocalists (Katie Dey, Julianna, and Willy Siegel of Ponytail), "It's Change," is also a mantra of impermanence in its own right. "There is no ground beneath us," insists Nina. "You have this perfect life? It's already gone… it’s just dust. The structures you’ve built in your life, everyone you know, will eventually pass, and that awareness allows you to see how precious it all is without clinging to this projected reality.”
All things go and this acknowledgement recognizes that, as Rachika describes, “catastrophe and freedom are twin realities bound together.” With that release and even intentional destruction, there comes a sense of peace in this larger story—a “fairytale of two sisters ripping everything apart to find the jewel in each other.”
VIDEO
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