LONG WALK HOME - MUSIC FROM THE RABBIT-PROOF FENCE

Ambient is PETER GABRIEL's instrumental soundtrack album Long Walk Home summed up in a word. Don't buy this expecting a repeat of Passion, although there are some sections that do build up to that level of power. It may be that this has to do with the musical stylings of the Aboriginal peoples that GABRIEL is working with here, but I don't know enough about the music of that part of the world to be sure. Rather, this is an album that you might almost put on as a background while reading a book, and it works well that way. Because of the repetitiveness that appears in some parts, I had to subtract a star. However, if you do like more ambient music like later TALK TALK or CHROMA KEY's latest, then you should consider getting this film score to the movie The Rabbit-Proof Fence.

While some of the tracks are more indistinct and rather unstructured (though still flowing quite nicely) and some seem like short snippets or themes more than anything, there were certain songs that definitely stood out to me. "Stealing the Children" is perhaps one of the darkest, most violent-seeming pieces, and very appropriate considering the horrible injustice it's accompanying in the movie: it's very much a mechanical intrusion upon a purer world and one of the most memorable segments. One of the most moving sections is "Running to the Rain", a glorious, sweeping track that truly evokes the vastness of the open desert landscape and sky of the Australian outback. One of the most developed pieces on the album is "Go Away Mr. Evans", which is followed by the excellent "Moodoo's Secret" which makes wonderful use of Aboriginal chanting, and builds into a more "Western"-seeming piece...if that can be truly said of anything on this album.

Certain tracks experiment instrumentally with themes that appear on Up, most notably "Sky Blue" towards the end of the album in songs like "Gracie's Recapture", "Ngankarrparni", and "Cloudless" (some of the best moments on the entire album)...but a snippet of "Signal to Noise" also appears in the beginning of "The Return". The choral parts for the "Sky Blue" theme are movingly sung by the Blind Boys of Alabama, a gospel group from Talladega that's been around for a very long time. I do apologize for not doing as in-depth a review as I ordinarily do, but it's kind of tough to do that for an ambient, instrumental album like this.