August

Artist: Forrest Fang

Your latest CD, Phantoms, was eight years in the making. What was it about the music or the project that kept you coming back to it for all that time?

I have a somewhat organic approach to recording that tends to stretch out the amount of time it takes for me to complete a project.  At the beginning, I tend to improvise quite a bit and will experiment with different playing and recording techniques, without thinking about where the sounds may eventually end up.

After I accumulate enough sonic material, I hopefully start to see the outline of an album, and then try to work some of my raw material into structures that eventually evolve into pieces.  Sometimes this approach works well, and other times I have to knock things back down so I can start rebuilding them again.

In the case of Phantoms, I decided to take a breather from it midway through its recording because I wasn't hearing enough space in it for acoustic instruments.  During that break, I finished up a collaborative album with guitarist Carl Weingarten called Invisibility.  That time away enabled me to reapproach recording Phantoms from a different perspective and to finish the album.  Hopefully, that process won't take as long the next time around.

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