Long Walk Home - Music From The Rabbit Proof Fence

Soundtracks like this one are part of an increasingly rare breed. Long Walk Home hasn’t been filled with specially commissioned tunes and rarities from the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins, Pulp and REM. Neither has it been stuffed with dialogue snippets, songs that never actually featured on the film and music ‘inspired’ by the movie.

Far from it. This is a classic OST – the kind that enhances and embraces the moods of the film, rather than simply adding the cool tunes that you know (and want to buy) to its closing credits.

Even Peter Gabriel’s vocals do not appear on this record. Instead, didgeridoos, birdsong, tribal chants, strings, piano and menacing drumbeats are all blended together in a surprisingly spare and effective manner to create and evoke a panoply of emotions.

There are moments of real beauty here – check out the wistful melancholy of ‘Gracie’s Recapture’ or the gorgeously dramatic chants ebbing and flowing through ‘Ngankarrparni’ and ‘Cloudless’. Gabriel also has a surprising knack for conveying lurking menace through his music. Halfway through ‘Moodoo’s Secret’, angry beats kick in against the eerily minimalist strains of the melody-line. Up the ante just a little and – I kid you not – it could be the backdrop to a Prodigy or Tricky tune.

The only drawback to this album as a listening experience is that – much like reading a script rather than watching a play on the stage – it is incomplete. None of these tracks has been conceived as a standalone tune, and not all of them hold their own as such.

Which isn’t to say that Gabriel has done his job any less well.