Forrest Fang — Animism

The Chinese-American Bay Area musician Forrest Fang has progressed from the pure synthesiser compositions he started in the early eighties to arrive at his current approach that blends acoustic instruments into his ambient synth soup. Animism, his twelfth or thirteenth full length release, sees stringed instruments from Istanbul and Turkey join gongs from South East Asia, Spanish mandolins and a Native American flute (amongst other exotic sound sources) to form a series of eight tracks to evoke the title's 'spiritual
essence'.

While Fang has stated his influences range from the West Coast Minimalism of Terry Riley to the ambient musics it subsequently triggered from Brian Eno to Robert Rich, Animism sounds firmly from within the latter camp, and is even mastered by Robert Rich. Indeed, the opening track, 'Tailing Wind', quickly draws comparisons to Eno and Hassell's 'Fourth World' as breezy synth tones elegantly float, curl and twist under a parade of percussive ethnic timbres to bridge classic ambience and tribal rite.

While both evocative and pleasant, this formula of world music meets ambient soundscape often sees individual sounds fight for space in the heady mix. The full splendour of 'The Chameleon's Paintbox', for example, whose rich strings form a plucky Eastern dance, ultimately becomes muted through the increasing amounts of surging synth wash throughout. Elsewhere melodic refrains that so successfully suggest non-Western cultures feel somehow tainted as they're commodified into an overtly hi-tech process. It can leave the listener wishing for more clarity surrounding the interesting instrumentation - perhaps a more minimal compositional approach that serves to present and preserve the unique characteristics of individual sounds. Instead, the intent seems to be to melt the wide array of old and new instruments into each other to form a set of overfamiliar flavours learnt from Western documentaries about foreign customs or when browsing through the high street equivalent for incense and imported rugs. So, while frustrating as an immersive listening experience, it's better taken as a literal ambient work - played unobtrusively in the background.