Rachel's
The Sea And The Bells

Rachel's - "The sea and the bells"

Post-rock improvisations enveloped by classical orchestral arrangements, the coils of an idolized romanticism and the immediacy of varied folk music combined with a completely new way into avant-garde structures; these are the objectives and peculiarities of the American ensemble - led by cellist Christian Frederickson, guitarist Jason Noble, and pianist Rachel Grimes - who have opened the doors of art to a promising "Chamber Rock".

Often changing the "group's" lineup - which always counts at least twenty musicians specialized in classical or rock - experimenting and perfecting themselves in their nonetheless attractive first albums "Handwriting" and "Music For Egon Schiele," Rachel's released the album in 1997 that would identify them and their new way of composing: "The sea And The Bells."

A concept album with a pure, vivid, and easily overwhelming sound, like the sea waves and the sea-faring sensations it is inspired by, like the disturbing and haunting view of a water expanse without shores, like perhaps the verses of Pablo Neruda.

Immediately, the swift course of the ship in "Rhine & Courtesan", whose renaissance orchestration is abruptly interrupted in the middle by the noises of an hypothetical below deck, shows us the tendency towards the theatrical of the entire work; one can thus let oneself be submerged more fluidly by tracks like "Sirens", where we will find frenzied strings perhaps representing the sirens' song, or by the enigmatic echoes under a storm in "To Rest Near To You", or the dark, spasmodic "Night At Sea".

But the undisputed gems of the album consist of the piano reflections in "Tea Merchant's" - a sublime lament, with an emotionally applauding crescendo -, in the Michael Nyman-like minimalism of the strings in "Cypress Branches", in the aching effluences of precious notes and perfectly formal architectures of "Lloyd's Register", and in the ethereal air of "All Is Calm". With the cryptic ambiguity of the soft "His Eyes", Rachel's music slowly withdraws, vanishing into the last echo of the foam, leaving the listener to the dark cloak of silence and contemplation.

What stands before us is thus an original, important, inspired, ambitious work; it is the synthesis of inviolability and evolution, a territory not barren but fertile, not unripe but young.

Must listen.