Not the soundtrack to the classic Nick Roeg film - starring an astonishingly alluring Jenny Agutter - but to a two year video travelogue undertaken by Viennese musician, film-maker and New York resident Thomas Simon.
World Music clashes with Nine Inch Nails as Simon tampers with personal recordings of local musicians captured on location in Brazil, Nepal and India, adding his own overdubs back in the studio. One Giant Leap’s comparable concept was main-stream and radio friendly; Simon opts for harder noises and greater experimentation but fails to shrug off the notion that this is Goth/Indie in a sari.
Too many tracks – ‘Music is The Cure’ the main culprit – display little imagination beyond the myopic extrapolations of a white Westerner hop-scotching on a cultural package holiday. Ambient tracks ‘December’ and ‘Rio Vermelho’ benefit from the absence of Simon’s Reznor-like vocals and are mildly diverting.
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Predictably, not one of the sixteen tracks shrugs off the perennial soundtrack challenge of ‘no picture = no context = no point’. Nothing insults the ears, but ultimately the efforts engender indifference rather than interest. Where ‘Walkabout’ should instigate a yearning for true indigenous sounds - as Damon Albarn achieved with his ‘Mali Music’ album – it encourages you to play safe and hanker for the Occidental ‘folk music’ of Eno, Numan and early Cure.
www.endorphinrecords.com
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