Forrest Fang, Phantoms (Projekt)

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American ambient artist Forrest Fang´s ninth studio album is also his second release on Projekt, a label whose dreamy visual aesthetics jibe perfectly with Fang´s musical ones. Fang distinguishes himself from his peers by his heavy reliance on a plethora of Eastern stringed instruments and percussion, usually only tantalizingly glimpsed through a processed electronic fog.

The album opens soft as the petals of a flower tickled awake by morning sunlight, before a more percussive and attention-grabbing ”non-Western" stringed instrument in Fang´s aresenal plucks out a meandering melody over a bed of sighs. On ”Little Angklung”, the strings diversify and ring out in concert with the peals of percussion, a wash of synthesized sound dyeing everything bright orange and pink.

It feels as though the further the album progresses, the deeper into a personal, imagined Orient Fang journeys. The fantasy begins to blossom as ”A Walk Through the Clouds” is undertaken, a gorgeous eleven-minute taste of heaven. It comes to full bloom with album centrepiece ”The Hallucinations of Hung Tung”, inspired by the bright, arabesqued and unreal pictures of this artist-fisherman (1920-87). The twenty-seven minute opus is seductively all-encompassing.

”Slow Rise”, ”Ebb in Winter”, and ”Float” bring the listener unhurriedly down to earth, descending downward at the speed of a feather descending from on high, dancing through the clouds being left behind. The gamelan bell tones of the final track seem to indicate we have come to rest again.

With a number of true pearls already to his credit, Phantoms may just be the most perfect one on the string.

http://www.projekt.com