Far Rainbow ~ No Medicine That Can Cure A Fool

Far Rainbow are Emily Mary Barnett and Bobby Barry. On No Medicine That Can Cure A Fool they introduce the listener to a deeply colorful world that’s alive and blended together rather uneasily by rocky, experimental seas and the oh-so-still ambient sky. At first, the ambient drones prepare to take you deeper into the music. Diluted cymbals crash heavily. A pulsing bass tries to conceal the dawn chorus and its song of sweetness and light. Chirping birds eventually lose their voices and are replaced by electronic copies that bubble out of the music like a deep sea sonar. No Medicine That Can Cure A Fool is colorful music that slowly spreads its wings. A drum suddenly kicks in and provides a steady rhythm to the sailing drone which, incidentally, has its own rhythm – it just isn’t a beat – and the frequency of the drone wavers up and down as if it truly were “At Open Sea”. The drone bobs up and down on the water, like a queasy, aquatic carousel. It’s a perfectly curved sphere that helps to keep the ambient world that surrounds it in tune and in harmony. The drone moulds the world, sucking up fervently and drawing in strongly its positive energy from the life around it. The cymbals chirp ever louder; the excitable drumming becomes increasingly active and ever more insistent. Even that fades away, and when it does it clears a path for other instruments and sounds. Faded colors jut in and out of the soupy synth, and the drums unfurl like a deranged petal in the midst of its teenage years.

On the next, darker track, a cavern lies carved into the side of the rock. A scrawled message and a dark prophecy hangs like a chalked noose on the side of the wall. Distortion creeps in, but it’s full of iridescent colors. Incredibly, the record has changed; the light has fizzled out. “Zero-T Problematics” is now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, experimental territory. The starker sound is a sobering comedown and a sour dose of reality after a soul-quenching high. Sounding like the distorted whistle of a gigantic, slightly psychotic grain-train, the music squeezes out its gentle noise as it clicks and clacks over the rickety tracks of sound. The bass that sits under the primary body of the music throbs and carries the sound as it passes through darker tunnels and tighter tubes. The synths are squashed into tiny cables as they try to come to terms with their new, bleakly-lit surroundings. The drums tell the listener that they are still travelling, and the synths swirl and twirl as they pass on by. Threatening to break out and unleash themselves upon the music, splayed cymbals and punchier beats gradually work their way into the track. Tuned into a lively station that plays nothing but industrial doom, the music reaches the point of no return and spirals out of control; out of existence. (James Catchpole)

Available here