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| Live,
Justin Harries,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F5
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For the more far reaching musician of the new century, branching out into altogether different forms of music other than rock is par the course. Where as your 80’s practitioner lived under the shadow of punk, and the next decade swept up the more adventurous into the maelstrom of styles coined ‘dance’, the zilches offer us a somewhat bewildering yet exuberant grab bag of forms. The assent of the beard scratching jazznics continues readily, whilst those of a more electronic bent look back to the heyday of Rober Moog. Hillbilly bluegrass gets a look in, hell, even prog rock, but unfortunately without the capes.
The Rachel’s go back even further, looking to a period before rock stirred the loins of the world’s youth. Comprising of ex members of the excellently monikered Rodan and the recorders of everyone’s favourite long player of the 90’s (Spiderland), Slint, the Rachel’s have forsaken guitars and drums for the more rarefied pleasures of strings and piano. In the early 90’s the members former bands ploughed furrows parallel, that of the heiniously complex patterns of ‘math rock’, so seeing these girls and boy get spartan behind viola, cello and piano comes as no surprise.
Taking inspiration form the painting of Egon Schieler, the threesome perform astringent, pared down music that neitherless remains warm and emotive. The location, that of the Union Chapel in Islington, added to the atmosphere immensely. Plunged into near darkness of the church the trio of instruments intertwined endlessly, and with Schielers quietly disturbed images projected above, time took a step backward. Sometimes the music veered close to the soundtrack of a ‘classy’ Carlton drama, but hey, in this atmosphere, with these acoustics, this didn’t seem like a bad thing.
By disregarding rock's histrionics, and fusing the sound world of the romantic pre Schöenberg to the churning, minimalist structure of Nyman and Adams, the Rachel’s have hit a more glacial nerve than most post rockers, one that judging by the young, large and unusually attentive attentive audience is very welcome.
10/06/00
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