With goosebumps I listened to “Phantoms” the first time, a release by Forrest Fang. Beautiful ambient that reminded me immediately of the earlier work of Brian Eno, Robert Rich and Harold Budd. And every time again when I put on this record I’m touched by the subtle combination of spheric ambient and traditional non-Western instruments.
The American-Chinese Fang uses a row of different instruments. Next to the synthesizers and violins he uses instruments like cumbus, khustar, saron, kora, sueng, kulintang, baglama, kendang and the Japanese palm harp. The use of these instruments knows his absolute highlight in the 24 minute long masterpiece ‘The Hallucination of Hung Fung’, which is perfectly introduced by the 11 minute long ‘A Walk through the Clouds’.
After searching the web for some information, I’m actually quite surprised that I hadn’t heard anything of Forrest Fang before: his music is being related to Brian Eno but also to the minimalism of Terry Riley, and he even performs on some of Robert Rich’s releases. To me, Forrest Fang is another grandmaster in the ambient music.
If you already know Forrest Fang, then you know what to expect and all that’s left for me to say is: this is ambient like it’s supposed to be. If you – just like me – are not familiar with his music, than all that’s left for me to say is: try “Phantoms”, because this is ambient like it’s supposed to be.
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