Buy it... only if you consider yourself a die-hard fan of the show, because this product offers a very fragmented overview of the less interesting music from its first two seasons.

Avoid it... if you expect any sense of cohesion or adherence to traditional norms of television science fiction scoring.

Farscape: (SubVision/Guy Gross) For the Sci-Fi Channel, the Jim Henson production of "Farscape" proved to be a popular series in demand during its four seasons in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Along with many of the concurrent sci-fi series on television at the time, "Farscape" was a darker, more seductive, and morbid edge on the previous "Star Trek"-dominated genre. One area in which the two franchises differed completely, at least at the start, was their music. Through its unceremonious end on television later in the 2000's, the "Star Trek" franchise always budgeted the funding to score all of its episodes with a moderately-sized orchestra. Conversely, series such as "Farscape" had to rely on the performing talents of just a few individuals who had to use mostly synthetic elements to fill the soundscape. And just like the more ambitious stories and characters of the series, the music for "Farscape" takes a more contemporary and electronically imaginative approach to its attitude and purpose. Appealing to a younger generation of sci-fi fans, "Farscape"'s theme and underscore continues to edge more towards new age, alternative, and electronica realms rather than the commonly established methods of scoring such shows in the past. Whether or not that approach to scoring the genre appeals to you likely depends heavily on your appreciation of each individual show. Many traditional "Star Trek" fans took a while to grow accustomed to Christopher Franke's modern application of synthesizers in the cable series "Babylon 5," and the trend towards even smaller budget television scores continued to lead to more and more bizarre results. The title theme for "Farscape" defied the traditional majesty of space-inspired themes and instead opted for the alternative rock genre, with a singular, repeating alternation of chords performed by keyboards (and probably guitars) highlighted by various electronica vocals that have been mixed to their tonal extremes. As for many of these scores, mixing is really the key when you're confined to so few resources with which to create an adequate volume of sound. In these regards, the difference between the first and second seasons of music for "Farscape" is not only noticeable, but represents a significant change in attitude for the show.

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The music by the group SubVision (which consists of Chris Neal, Braedy Neal, and Toby Neal) is an awkward cross between the styles of Chris Franke and experimental world composer Mychael Danna, merging harsh electronic loops and motifs with an almost East Indian or occasionally Arabic tilt and thus producing a sharper, more exotic sound. The music by Australian Guy Gross, starting in the second season of the show, represents a more standard use of electronics, resulting in a combination of Mark Snow's ambient underscores and Don Davis' synthesized action music for small budget films. Gross' contribution to the franchise would become dominant through the later years of its run, and he would eventually push to gain a budget for orchestral recordings when the spin-off "Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars" series debuted several years later. Especially in context with those later scores, the music from the first two seasons of "Farscape" is difficult to appreciate in retrospect. The title theme, while simplistic, has a great sense of attitude and is by far the most interesting single track on the initial GNP Crescendo album of 2000. The SubVision cues from the first season often break into nonsensical electric guitar ramblings that do not form any cohesive whole, and the Gross cues, while highly listenable, are more subdued material that lack the bite that made the first season, at the very least, intriguing. As such, the GNP album remains a fragmented experience, with only the material by Gross appealing outside of the title theme. If you've never seen the series, then there's no reason to pursue the album. Fans of the franchise, however, embraced it thoroughly at the time. The album itself is very well arranged, with suites from a significant number of episodes and superior packaging. For fans of "Farscape," this would be the only early album to come down the pipes, and unfortunately, with the failure of the GNP label in the near future, the product became out of print and very difficult to find (sometimes fetching prices as high as $50). The La-La Land releases for the franchise in 2004 are a worthy alternative and offer, arguably, superior music. For non-fanatics, the music on this album will seem like just another fringe element in the spectrum of modern, cost-effective television scoring. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download