Customer Reviews

Full on Night / Precise Temperature of Darkness

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Their revision of "Full On Night" is hopefully indicitave of a new direction. To me it's like a combination of previous Rachel's material as well as a more edgy Godspeed You Black Emperor (Slow Riot...) feel, while still also incorporating more of a free-fusion jazz element (think of the Jaco Pastorius, Bruce Ditmas, Pat Metheny and Paul Bley collaboration). As for the Matmos material--reminds me slightly of Autechre's EP7 but with more of the typical DAT tape frittery associated with "glitch" groups... nothing special but obviously worth a listen! Anyway this disc is worth picking up just for "Full On Night"!

Wow! Rachel's have been dancing the line between hardcore classicism and the impetus of rock music since their inception, but never as well realised as this. "Full On Night" is a reworking of a track off their debut "Handwriting" album that drifts seamlessly between episodes of grace, poise, abandon and downright hedonism. The Matmos re-interpretation is a lengthy exploration of textures that is way up there with the finest that Autechre and Pole have had to offer. Crucial!

Two cuts on this EP. Rachels with a version of Full on Night from Handwriting, their first release. They are so...complete-- that they scare me. Lush, redolent, edgy, supple, evocative... I have never made an unequivocal statement like this, but I've been around a long time and I've listened to a lot of underground/post rock music-- and before the mid-nineties, there was never a band (ensemble) like this: As recording artists, they have no equal.

Matmos....has potential, but this odd pairing with Rachel's seems kind of unfair, juxtaposing a dry, interesting band with what I won't scruple to call the greatest American alternative studio band of all time.

Around the middle 2000s, when I was trying to explore music more modern than covered by critics like David Keenan and Joe S. Harrington, I discovered the amazingly passionate sounds of late Talk Talk and Godspeed You Black Emperor!. I was utterly stunned at the time by the epic power and intensity of such music and the manner in which, whilst still based at roots upon electric guitars, it managed to produce at utterly new sound quite unlike anything I had heard before. I also discovered such bands as Slint and van der Graaf Generator who were the originators of the post-rock sound.

In an effort to discover more post-rock music, I was led by Piero Scaruffi to Rachel's who were on Slint's label Touch and Go during the middle 1990s and who were seen by such critics as Scaruffi as one of the major players in that genre during the period. Though I was not very impressed by what Rachel's seemed to be doing when I first listened, I nonetheless bought their first, 1995 album Handwriting. To say it was a disappointment is an understatement. Even though at the time I did imagine that there could be a much softer version of the post-rock sound, "Handwriting" was totally devoid of the intensity which attracted me so strongly towards post-rock in the first place. As my mother said, it sounded like minimalist classical music disguised as rock, and after a while I gave up on its entirely.

"Full on Night" was itself originally a song on this debut album by Rachels but is here combined with a song by Matmas, whom I had known for their collaboration with Björk. It is fair to say, though, that there is nothing of value to this album at all: the emotionless sound of Rachel's and the annoyingly noisy sound of the Matmos work are both nothing I can relate to at all. For someone with high hopes of moving my music into water I had not charted beforehand the work is all the more disappointing, but there was never s ingle thing in this thirty-minute album to lure me in.

In th interest of brevity, I'll simply say here that this record doesn't have the same appeal as "Egon Schiele" or "Selenography." Both songs on this disc dissolve into cacaphony, for which I have little patience, especially given Rachels' abilities to do so much more.

Two great artists come together and make a terrible, terrible record.

For Rachel's pls. refer to their absolutely amazing album Music for Egon Schiele.

For Matmos, refer to their gorgeous lp The West.

For Matmos w/ somebody else, clearly refer to the new Bjork album Vespertine.

Avoid this album. It is a clunky, awkward, bleak mess.