Rachel's - Systems/Layers

Pitchfork 85

When Systems/Layers, the fifth album by Louisville stalwarts Rachel’s, dropped in 2003, it seemed they’d broken through. Elevating their compositions from lovely postmodern takes on classical music to a unique strain of orchestral post-rock, Systems/Layers featured a truly synthesized mesh of chamber music and electronics that sounded like little else. Alas, as Rachel’s had always been more project than band, a period of inactivity followed the record while members worked on other things, and then cofounder Jason Noble fell ill to cancer, dying in 2012. As a result, Systems/Layers remains their final statement, whether or not they’d intended it as such.

In the thirteen years that have passed since that record came out, the little nook of a genre which Rachel’s helped birth—classical sounds with indie sensibilities, film-music moodiness and digital experimentation—has grown into a more easily identifiable vein of music couched under the umbrella term “post-classical” (a term that used to refer to minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, who modern audiences might likely just see as “20th-century classical”). Promoted by labels like 130701 and Erased Tapes and typified by the commercially successful and recognized soundtrack work of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter, and Ólafur Arnalds, as well as up-and-coming artists like Resina or Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, post-classical is now a small but thriving world. And Systems/Layers’ status as a godfather record to the nascent genre is undeniable.

Now the band and their label Quarterstick have finally seen fit to capitalize on these recent trends by issuing the beloved Systems/Layers for the first time on vinyl, their only record not to have had such a release. Though it isn’t common for thirteen-year-old records by small bands to be reissued without a label change, the CD-only Systems/Layers had entered a kind of a quasi out-of-print status as listeners move to a vinyl-and-streaming binary. Thankfully, the small label Quarterstick has leapt in to rectify the situation.

It’s also a fitting tribute to the departed Noble, whose sensibility rings out of Systems/Layers. Each of the five Rachel’s records has a unique voice, guided mostly by which members of the collective had greater hands in the songwriting. Handwriting and Sea and Bells were cowritten by all three core principals—Rachel Grimes, Jason Noble and Christian Frederickson—while Egon Schiele was entirely written by Grimes and Noble’s role was reduced to production. Systems/Layers, with its postmodern merger of music and technology, sounds closer to Noble’s later solo work as Per Mission than anything else in Rachel’s catalog.

Fans who haven’t listened to Systems/Layers in years may be pleased to learn that like all Rachel’s records, it doesn’t sound like it’s aged a day and could just as easily be taken as a new release from 130701. Part of this is due to the engineering and mixing talents of Shellac’s Bob Weston, who guides the band toward a sound that is naturalistic and in-the-hall. On tracks like “Esperanza” or “Packet Switching,” the violins swell and soar so high it feels as if you're looking up at the ceiling from the orchestra level of a concert hall.

Which, to be fair, may have actually been where the sounds were recorded, as much of the album was recorded live with the SITI Company dance troupe in places like Skidmore College and Indiana University Southeast for a performance piece sharing the same name. The exact nature of the compositional relationship with SITI is unclear, but all of Systems/Layers has a blended, ephemeral feel that feels more like a 60-minute sound experiment than the collection of discrete compositions that made up previous records. Many of the cuts—even the more traditional Satie-esque solo piano of “Anytime Soon” or the darting “Arterial”—end or begin with crossfading segues from adjacent tracks. And many of them depart standard structures entirely, such as “where_have_all_my_files_gone?,” which would sound completely at home on Jóhannsson’s latest Orphee, threading an encircling wall of strings into a throbbing synth burble before transitioning into “Reflective Surfaces,” which blends gamelan and voice samples into a cacophonous churn. And on “Last Things Last” the band finally incorporates actual singing (with a guest appearance from Shannon Wright) in a track that in context feels like an intriguing change of pace despite its relative slightness as a stand-alone track.

Best of all are “Water from the Same Source” and “Air Conditioning.” The former offers a stately six-minute representation of Rachel’s formula: gently circulating strings, piano, bass and rock(ish) drumming. It has been featured already in such films as Hancock and La Grande Bellezza and it’s easy to imagine it finding a permanent life soundtracking moments of contemplative emotional transition in film. “Air Conditioning” follows a similar script but is even more condensed: three minutes of nagging, heart-tugging strings via a repeated droning viola riff and soaring violin and cello, before melting away into a hazy fog of samples and found sounds.

One thing that distinguishes Systems/Layers from its modern peers is its unpretentious woolliness, which stands in stark contrast to the grandeur-seeking impulses of Jóhannsson and Richter. There’s a charming innocence and gentle defiance that imbues their music with a modest magic, one that also makes it more comprehensible why the band has remained on the margins.

The reissue wraps by including the band’s final release from 2005, the eighteen-minute outtake collage “Technology Is Killing Music,” which is slotted neatly as the whole of Side 4. Made up entirely of bits of song and sound from the recording of Systems/Layers, it serves as a nice companion to that record and a perfect endpoint for the band, framing a true blueprint for late 2000s and 2010s post-classical. Additionally, the decision to add it rather than stretch out a sixty-minute record onto four LP sides is a generous and welcome choice, allowing listeners to avoid the subtly annoying problem of “2XLP vinyl reissues” requiring an overabundance of record flipping.

It’s uncertain if Rachel’s will ever receive the broad recognition they deserve as forebearers of a vibrant and essential new genre of 21st century music, but it may be that Noble, their easy-going and dearly departed leader, may not have cared either way. For a group who knowingly produced expensive, hand-crafted vinyl packaging for records they knew only a small group of people would buy, sharing their music was always a labor of care and love and provided a kind of satisfaction in and of itself. At least now, it’s all out there.