Considering Son of Lion was filmed in the lawless northwest frontier, a place that America is bombing and where Osama Bin Laden is supposedly hiding the fact that the film was actually made is an achievement in itself. The fact that the director is an Australian, initially knew no one there and wrote and cast film with non professional locals is positively mind blowing. The soundtrack is a similar unexpected achievement. It’s comprised of a variety of traditional regional instrumentation, sitar, tanbura, tabla, harmonium, rabab, recorded in Sydney by a variety of Sydney based musicians under the guidance of ex Go Betweens Amanda Brown who also contributes strings and keyboards. Much of the soundtrack are a series of short cues, anything from 27 seconds to two and a half odd minutes that just flow into each other subconsciously. Rag Bhupali however clocks in at 16 minutes and is just beautiful and mesmirising, time and space seem to just evaporate when you listen. The album initially begins as a series of mild ragas though gradually an ominous cinematic drone seeps its way quietly into the mix. Brown’s music comes across as authentic to the region, liberally using traditional compositions, though her compositions and the possible improvisations of her musicians are all quite complex, very musical and incredibly evocative, the only crime being that they are cues, basically setting the atmosphere without too much progression. It’s incredible to think that prior to this project she had not been exposed to the music of this region where Afghanistan meets Pakistan and their musics intersect. Aside from a very off-putting Bollywood meets indie rock remix which is tacked on at the end, this is an incredibly evocative, meditative work, and very much deserving of the If Award it won recently. This is a great soundtrack. I just hope the film can live up to it.
Bob Baker Fish
