WHEN SCIENCE FAILS

In my limited exposure to the Space Rockers of Farflung this 2002 release stands out as the anomaly in their catalogue. Instead of the guitar-heavy acid rock of other Farflung efforts, the album presents an altogether different, slow-burn brain-fry...crockpot psychedelia for the new millennium.

It was commissioned as a film score, for an obscure Slovenian feature named 'Varuh Meje' ('Guardian of the Frontier'), unseen by this cinephile but resembling in outline an outdoors adventure with mystical/sexual pretensions (imagine an eastern European update of John Boorman's 'Deliverance'). The film was barely released but managed to eke out a few awards on the festival circuit, despite lukewarm reviews on IMDB. The soundtrack might actually have been the best thing in it, although I'm guessing very little of the music survived the final cut. Was it just too far-out for such an earthbound allegorical narrative?

One thing is certain: whatever else it might be, this album ain't Prog. The sound is more a blend of Post Rock minimalism and Krautrock electronica, spiked with echoing guitar shards and ominous synthesizers. Information about the session is hard to find, but it's possible the drummer was on vacation at the time, leaving the various rhythms to be generated by other, non-human means: odd pulsations, and so forth. Note the hypnotic, mechanical groove under 'Something in the Water', recalling an early CLUSTER experiment. Or the sound of creaking oarlocks during the long, hidden epilogue, twisting a similar effect from the first NEU! album into something more anxious and malevolent.

The music was a welcome change of pace for such an otherwise aggressive band. It doesn't grab the listener by the neck and demand his attention, but insinuates itself under the scalp and into your unconscious mind. Here's proof that even the noisiest headbanger can sometimes learn to use his noggin more effectively.