The way The Boxing Lesson’s founding member Paul Waclawsky explains the story behind Fur State on their Bandcamp site, it could be an mystical tale from The Twilight Zone. These recordings were made back in 2004 when the band relocated to Austin, Texas from Los Angeles after having their music gear stolen. Presumably this is their first Austin music being laid down with a second-hand acoustic guitar, some subpar drum machines, and various other pawn shop finds. Now these lost recordings resurface six years later after the master tape was found right where they left it — inside an old boombox. The story seems like an epic fit for The Boxing Lesson’s psychedelic, space-rock presence, but it’s that precise persona that is absent on this release. Fur State offers eight instrumental tracks showing The Boxing Lesson stripped down to its bare essentials, and gives light onto a simpler, earlier version of what has become one of the standout bands of Austin’s local scene.

Since the Fur State recordings were made, Waclawsky assisted by partner Jaylinn Davidson reinvented the band with bigger guitars and bigger synthesizers. They have gone through a drummer or two and toured like there was no tomorrow. The culmination of which to date has been the release of 2008’s Wild Streaks & Windy Days, their first full-length. That album served up a healthy dose of beefed up guitar work and spacey atmospheric jams. It was like Pink Floyd and Robert Smith got together to drop hallucinogens. For this collection it’s like they are sipping green tea instead.

The songs of Fur State are merely titled by their track sequencing, giving further illusion to these bits being disregarded experiments. Yet nothing on here is a simple throw away.  Any one of these songs can easily be compared to a post-Amnesiac Radiohead instrumental. The drumbeat on “One” itself is very reminiscent of Radiohead’s “There There,” accompanied by some hazy synth action. The guitar also plays a big part on this project evident on “Three” where the frantic strumming feels like a high-speed chase.

The only track that takes a different turn is the abstract collage piece “Seven,” which melds together different media including answering machine messages and recorded road trip conversation. The technique is similar to what Lennon did with “Revolution 9” on the White Album, but actually makes more sense here given the context of the project.

The only thing holding Fur State back is it’s own status of being instrumentals recorded on an old 4-track. The outstanding acoustic flutters on the down-tempo “Six” are just screaming for some of Waclawsky’s ’70s era vocals to be sung over them. And with a third of Fur State’s running time taken up by the abstract “Seven,” it leaves under 25 minutes of lush instrumentals to enjoy. This is clearly not meant to be a proper follow up to Wild Streaks, but merely something to wet the palate before The Boxing Lesson dish up a another serving of cosmic slop. For that, this is a welcome sidestep.