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New Monuments, Kidambi’s third album at the helm of her rotating collective Elder Ones, is both an artistic tour de force and the most incisive clarion call in her catalog. A four-part ode to “all those who tirelessly organize and resist against insurmountable headwinds,” it finds Kidambi incorporating more text into her music than ever before, stirring strands of traditional singing into a stew of extended technique, using repeated phrases to articulate messages too urgent to transmit via abstract sound.
About a third of the way through the project’s opener, “Third Space,” for instance, her squeaks and moans fade out along with a theremin-like synth and Lester St. Louis’s frantic cello bowing, making way for a steady groove in the bass-and-drum rhythm section (Eva Lawitz and Jason Nazary, respectively) that’s mirrored by Matt Nelson’s soprano sax and a morphing mantra from Kidambi: “You/They/We don’t belong here.”
“Farmer’s Song,” a track inspired by the North Indian farmers’ protests, charts an opposite course, starting with a structured, phonemic groove before denaturing into abstract English. Kidambi stretches the syllables of English words beyond their snapping points, separating and reattaching them to their meaning at will. This alchemy is accomplished over an immensely complex slurry of analog synths and live instruments, including Kidambi’s quavering, hand-pumped harmonium.