Synthesist/multi-instrumentalist Forrest Fang’s mesmerizing and emotive electronic-ambience glides upon hypnotizing impressionistic floating formations. Spacemusic, world music and deep atmospheric zones combine and organically dissipate into a flow of drifting vapor trails. With a rich range of unconventional acoustic instruments, the 73-minute album is a fascinatingly filigreed multi-layered work.
Virtuoso Chinese-American sound-shaper Fang moves from the aquatic depths of his previous release, 2016’s The Sleepwalker’s Ocean, into the open sky of Following the Ether Sun. The result is a refined hybrid of Western and Eastern influences: a complex imaginary world of mysterious yet engaging melodies, textures, and rhythms.
“This release grew out of my work on ‘Sleepwalker,’” says Fang. “I developed several rhythmic ideas that I ultimately shaped into a larger sonic environment filled with ambient and ethnic touches. The sounds are both acoustic and electric, some treated, others not, but with an open-endedness I associate with the continuous sky above. In this space, the ‘ether sun’ represents a personal ideal or goal that I continuously try to attain but never quite reach. The fun is in following it and trying to harness its energy and warmth, if only for a short time.”
Besides synthesizer, violin, and an array of hand-based percussion instruments, Fang also plays uncommon stringed instruments such as the dan bau (Vietnamese one-stringed monochord), cumbus (Turkish lute), Japanese palm harp and kora (African lyre).