Rachel's - Music For Egon Schiele

Quarterstick Records - LP

UK & US, 2010

Classical / Contemporary

Rachel's second LP, showcasing their then radically new crossover of modern classical and post-rock, a post-modern revision of 20th Century American music probably influenced by Angelo Badalamenti / David Lynch, and that would itself influence a cohort of experimentalists, from Tori Kudo's Maher Shalal Has Baz, to Jim O' Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi and, more recently, acts like TLF Trio. Warmly Recommended.

Probably more appeased than their debut LP, Handwriting, Rachel's second opus nonetheless deals with a doomed figure of European modernism, Viennese expressionist painter Egon Schiele. But it does so by focussing on the intimacy of his studio, his complex relationships with Wally, his muse, and his wife, Edith. It contains some strikingly bright moments "Wally, Egon & Models in the Studio", but these don't exactly conjure the sense of calamity that hover over the world, then and now.  (VG+/VG+)