Rachel’s is an evolving, revolving Louisville collective of a decade-plus, bent on genre-bending in a soundtrack-building, trailblazing way that morphs found sounds and abstract noise patterns into brazen instrumental post-rock categorically (and rather coarsely) classified as classical. Systems/Layers–the band’s epic 2003 collaboration with New York’s experimental dance and theater troupe The Siti Company–displayed the outfit’s most adventurous compositional sense yet, seemingly challenging Sigur Ros to a quarrel of post-rocker themes with “Water from the Same Source” and modernizing the lessons of Beethoven with the sonorous, sweeping expanse behind “Esperanza.”
Works from every Rachel’s release are on the evening’s slate for their Thursday, March 3 show at The Artscenter, as the band makes a 13-stop East Coast run in advance of the second-ever full-length live production of Systems/Layers in New York on March 17. What’s more, this may be your only chance to pick up the band’s latest EP, an uber-limited run issued by Jamestown, N.C.’s extraordinary experimental syndicate Three Lobed Recordings. You will remember this. The show starts at 9 p.m.; tickets are $12.
