Rachika Nayar & Nina Keith

Within her first few years of releases, Rachika Nayar’s compositions of digitally processed guitar reimagined the limits of the instrument for modern electronic music.

The ghostly and mutated production of her debut, Our Hands Against the Dusk, transfigured her guitar beyond recognition into fractured ambient landscapes, while its maximalist follow-up, Heaven Come Crashing, expanded into a sonic world of desperate passion, supersaw synths, and rapturous breakbeat fantasies. After acclaim from The New York Times, The Fader, Vulture, Stereogum and Pitchfork, her planned performances included visits to Dekmantel, Club to Club, Pitchfork Festival, and a tour alongside M83.

Her releases might explore disparate styles, but across them, a through-line remains: a resonant sense of emotional abandon that is at times haunting and durational, and at others, romantic and reckless with breakneck velocity.

Rachika is currently completing a new collaborative album with the LA multi-instrumentalist and producer Nina Keith for release in the summer of 2025 via Domino’s esteemed Smugglers Way imprint. The result of their combined talents and wild eyed inspiration is a record that is as beautiful as it is bold, a passionate fairy tale of innovative sonic delight and profound emotional exploration.

These sounds carry us over glittering lakes and through iridescent rainbow-coloured mists, ascending to the highest heights only to plummet back down to the deepest depths: so many colours, shades, and temperatures Rachika Nayar wrests out of her electrically amplified guitar when she sends her sounds through distortion filters and electronic manipulators of all kinds. At donaufestival, Nina Keith will accompany her with analogue instruments, tape loops, and self-made electronica. The duo’s first album is due to be released this summer: majestic and sublime otherworldly music.