A collection of music from the sci-fi /fantasy television series Farscape, split into two sections highlighting the work of SubVision (Chris Neal, Toby Neal and Braedy Neal) who scored season one and Guy Gross who took over for season two.
The ‘Theme from FARSCAPE’ itself is a driving, forceful affair with male grunts and female wailing (courtesy of Avigail Herman) and is actually rather catchy and likeable. But what follows does not stand up as well with a succession of percussive synth based cues that are standard fare, despite attempts to spice things up with some exotic flavouring. The best of these, ‘Fields of Joy’ (from the episode Thank God it’s Friday, Again) has an engaging Eastern influence and ‘Parting Comrades’ (from Family Ties) is nicely melodic. But much of the rest is either workman-like or simply rather dreary.
Season Two by Guy Gross is solidly put together, although very little makes any real impact. ‘Crichton x3’ (from My Three Crichtons ) features a smart motif, but it never really develops amidst the sound effects and atmospherics, while the suite from The Way we Weren’t is probably the best sustained in purely dramatic terms.
To summarise, the SubVision work has a fair amount of exotic influences which give the music a certain appeal, but nothing really matches up to the charm of the series theme itself. Incidentally, SubVision senior member Chris Neal also composed the memorably haunting music from the film Celia (1989). Gross’ work on the other hand is a little more substantial but also more conventional.
There’s often a tendency for television series music to play it safe and dig just beneath the surface of the work presented here and that is exactly what you find. Moments of imagination and inspiration shine through only very occasionally and ultimately the music is reduced to no more than simply another production-line commodity.
Mark Hockley
OST
