Neutral Love by Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore

Amirtha Kidambi and Matteo Liberatore’s duo of voice and guitar creates improvised aural landscapes that are glacial and highly evocative, unfurling through dynamic gestures that are at once spacious and restrained. Juxtaposed against the frenetic pace characteristic of the New York improv scene, the pair applies the compositional aesthetics of Feldman or Oliveros to a free environment. The project is set apart from Kidambi’s work with Lea Bertucci, Mary Halvorson or Elder Ones and Liberatore’s collaborations with musicians including Elliott Sharp, Mark Kelley and Catherine Sikora. Each piece explores the unique possibility space created by the union of voice and guitar, delving deep into specific permutations including registral extremes, detuning and quiet mouth sounds, all without the use of processing. After a prolonged period of isolation, the duo emerged to record and play together for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The music is nuanced, patiently developing as the subtleties of gradual seasonal change or the awareness of sound in meditation. Like shifting color gradients and patterns on a canvas of Agnes Martin, timbral shading and repetition form large scale impressions. Neutral Love investigates an emotional inner world, taking its name from The Passion of G.H. by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, a narrative monologue of a woman’s existential spiral. While Kidambi and Liberatore come from radically different backgrounds, they draw from universal sonic signifiers, like the ringing of the bell at a Hindu temple threshold or the echo of church bells across the piazza of a small Italian town, invocations to prayer and reflection. The duo’s interactions simmer beneath an anti-climax, begging the listener to observe one’s surroundings, turn inward, and confront the self.