Neti-Neti
Impermanence

Neti-Neti is the lo-fi ritual music duo of Matt Evans (drums/electronics) and Amirtha Kidambi (vocals/electronics) that formed amidst their mutual experiences surrounding grief after the death of loved ones. The duo shapes a vessel for processing this loss using hazy rhythmic interplay, dredging piles of noise, and serene moments of ethereal melodic counterpoint. Neti-Neti, translated as “It is not this, it is not that” from Sanskrit, is a contemplation on the nature of reality, life, death, birth and rebirth extracted from the Hindu text of rituals The Upanishads. This meditation serves as distillation of the duo’s relationship that emerged from the viscera of a year and a half of exchanging thoughts on the nonlinear nature of grief and its chaotic emotional trajectory, the abstraction of a person without physical form, and the trauma of one’s foundations being shattered, necessitating a total spiritual rebirth. Having never played together, the two met up for the first time in 2020 and recorded their first improvisations which became the source material for their first release Impermanence.

Impermanence is a crumpled, lo-fi collection of collaged improvisations for feedback drumkit and pedal manipulated vocals that follow the unpredictable and nonlinear process of grief like an abstracted improvisational “score”. Neti-Neti perform this music as a “mourning ritual” that extends beyond themselves to the audience, creating a space to hold and be present with loss in all its forms, personal and universal. The language of Evans’ and Kidambi’s improvisations is a primal, noisey, rhythmic, and melodic music that resonates in the ancient combination of voice and percussion.

Matt Evans – Drums / Percussion / Feedback
Amirtha Kidambi — Voice / Electronics

Recorded live at Fort Briscoe, Brooklyn on the 16th of November, 2020

Edited and Mixed by Matt Evans at Tunnel of Light Studios
Mastered by Weasel Walter

Cover art photography by Matthias Urban