Forrest Fang - The Sleepwalker’s Ocean mp3 album

Forrest Fang "The Sleepwalker's Ocean" 2xCD"The Sleepwalker's Ocean" double album is the latest offering by Forrest Fang, a Chinese-American virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, who undoubtedly belongs to the most unique electro-acoustic innovators constantly perfuming his sonic sculptures with fascinatingly piquant and exquisitely filigreed Middle and Far East insignias and masterfully amalgamating them with Western-charged atmozones. His two previous albums "Animism" (June 2012) and "Letters To The Farthest Star" (March 2015) are perfect examples of such soundsculpting bravura, but these words can be easily applied to Forrest Fang's complete discography counting around 13 solo albums, one collaboration with Carl Weingarten and additional two recordings released under his Sans Serif moniker. "The Sleepwalker's Ocean" is out since January 2016 on Projekt in limited edition of 300 copies, packaged in a 4-panel eco wallet featuring stunningly gorgeous images by Kinga Britschgi, in Idaho based visual artist. Additional credits go to kindred Bay Area resident Robert Rich for his mastering wizardry, while Projekt's Sam Rosenthal is responsible for additional design work.Utilizing not only traditional instruments like synths, violin or electric guitar, but also a line-up of richly fragranced instruments such as Marxolin (bowed psaltry), electric mandolin, saron (gamelan instrument), lavta (plucked string instrument) or càntaro (clay pot), this uniquely transporting journey unfolds with 8 and a half minutes long composition "Gone To Ground". A thrillingly exotic palette of magnificently weeping and mesmerically tinkling strings is precisely coalesced with soothingly embracing blankets hanging above. A truly nectarous listening experience, Forrest Fang is back at the very top of his extraordinary musicianship!!! "Message In The Sand", only at few seconds longer than its predecessor, moves through more enigmatic terrains at the beginning, but then the scenario is again stolen by euphoric rhythms, where glitteringly ear-tickling gamelan signatures meticulously commingle with delicately hypnotic tribal drumming. This aural splendor is permeated by Robert Rich's intangibly serpentine flute patterns. Another utterly immersing ride!!! Then follows the main theme, "The Sleepwalker's Ocean", which is divided into 6 parts and clocks over 33 minutes. The first "Cloudburst" glides into warmly expansive horizons counterpointed with glimpses of distant rumbles and delightfully airy gossamer clinks. "Bog" dives with its perplexingly serpentine drone alchemy deeply into intriguingly subterranean Eden. "Night Ferry" inconspicuously sneaks in, where emerging serenity soon transforms into spellbindingly shimmering vaporous ripples contrasted by titillating stringed meridians. "Geiger" spreads the wings and glides towards gracefully immense panoramas, persistently propelled by diaphanously pulsing subtleties, while clandestinely permeated by ethereal biotic traceries. What a beauty!!! "Lumin" is slightly lighter in its drifting intensity, yet still keeping safely on strikingly amorphous path. Shorter "Waywards", the last part of "The Sleepwalker's Ocean", reveals with lyrical piano with additional, lushly poetic embroideries, all guarded by balmily engrossing sheets reinforced here and there by calmly sinuating chiming ephemerons. 7-minute "Driftwood" is ignited by intensely expansive drones, which are instantly illuminated by subtle gamelan contemplations. "Not Forgotten" is driven by voluminously monochromatic stratum, imbued by shimmeringly tinkling undercurrents and masterfully reinforced by awe-inspiring panoptic magnitudes with stirringly mind-bending vertexes. An epic, 11 minutes long conclusion of the first disc, bravo, Forrest!!!The second CD features "An Alternate Ocean (The Salton Sea)", a long-form piece clocking over 54 minutes. It emerges with gorgeously sonorous driftscape, gliding, rising and ebbing with multidimensional grandness through jaw-droppingly immense horizons. Monochromatic magmas, solitary organic glimpses, nebulously rumbling fragments, evanescing quietudes, intriguing transitions, surreptitious crescendos, ear-piercing climaxes, transcendental ecstasy..., it's an all-inclusive drone amalgamate at its most transporting and presenting Forrest Fang at the peak of his dronescaping trickeries!!! I won't hide it, this composition is certainly one of those phenomenally immersing, intensely enrapturing and mercurially chameleonic long-form zones. A true eargasm!!! Bravo, Maestro!!! "The Sleepwalker's Ocean" double album meticulously showcases a gamut of distinguishably infused signatures of its sole protagonist, not only his infinite virtuosity in sculpting richly blossoming sonic perfumes, but also unlocking the gates to the deepest realms of enigmatically-driven droneforging. "The Sleepwalker's Ocean" is another tour de force recording by Forrest Fang and due to its ambitious magnitude, a truly triumphant accomplishment!!! So I am not surprised the 2CD is already sold out at Projekt's webstore, but I believe there still might be available some copies through other sources. And who knows, maybe Sam will consider in the future a possible re-print of this milestone. And by the way, Forrest Fang is now working on his newest album, so definitely stay tuned!!!Richard Gürtler (Sep 11, 2016, Bratislava, Slovakia)

The Sleepwalker’s Ocean, Forrest Fang’s first 2-CD studio album, is a hypnotic deep-ambient exploration of the fantastical and elusive realm of the subconscious. Following quickly upon his 2015 Letters To The Farthest Star, Fang gave free reign to his intuitive and instinctual side on this release, allowing the sonic landscape to drift into his interior world of elusive and impressionistic thoughts and images.“To me,” Fang says, “the ocean is not only a symbol of emptiness and space, but also one of unknown depth and mystery. It is much like a dream that seems so real and vast yet is formless because it originates in the mind. For this release, I took a more open-ended approach, allowing in more spontaneous sonic ‘accidents’ and textures, especially on my first long-form piece, ‘An Alternate Ocean (The Salton Sea).’ The layered soundscape of my ‘ocean,’ populated with these accidental characters, ebbs and flows in a vast imaginary sonambulent space.”While Fang embraces the American minimalists and the ambient soundscapes of his contemporaries, he also draws on the gentle percussive textures of Javanese gamelan and on pentatonic scales used in traditional Asian music. Besides using violin, electric mandolin, electric guitar, keyboards and various textural treatments to create complex layers of sound, Fang also plays lesser-known instruments such as Marxolin, saron (Javanese gamelan), and lavta (Turkish lute). Robert Rich contributes his otherworldly flutes to “Message In The Sand” and mastered the release.The album opens with “Gone To Ground,” a spacey, multi-layered electronic track that combines tape-delayed violins and lavta with an unfurling ostinato of interlocking synthesizer parts. The second track, “Message In The Sand,” emerges from a relaxed ambient bed of sustained keyboards and electric guitar to form a cross-cultural rhythmic gumbo of saron (Javanese gamelan), bamboo flutes and cántaro (Mexican clay pot). Next is the album’s centerpiece, “The Sleepwalker’s Ocean,” a six-part ambient suite which travels from primal intensity to radiant placidity—moving through rain clouds, a thickened bog, a nocturnal ferry and a luminescent band of light. In this universe, a gamelan shares space with the familiar sounds of a mellotron, and a virtual Geiger counter shares space with an angelic organ. The first disc concludes with the contemplative and bell-like soundscapes of “Driftwood” and “Not Forgotten.”The album continues on the second disc with a single long-form electronic track, “An Alternate Ocean (The Salton Sea).” This 54-minute piece offers an alternative view of the imaginary ocean suggested in the title track. The “ocean” is more sustained and celestial than its cousin with an inward focus and a hint of Asian influence that brings the album to a state of quiet repose. For Fang, this extended piece “gave me the chance to realize my virtual world on a larger and more organic scale.”

The above text is straight from the Projekt web site.