Forms of Things Unknown – Cross purposes

Forms of Things Unknown is a new project by a man who calls himself Ferrara Brain Pan, who is a wind-musician. Ferrara Brain Pan uses all sorts of wind-instuments to create his music, ranging from various flutes to saxophone to different ethnical instuments such as the yidaki and the shakuhachi.

Ferrara Brain Pan is probably known only by a few for his collaborations with Boyd Rice (NON) which remained unreleased, Faust and Darmstadt Pharmacy (with Ure Thrall of Asia Nova).

On this 30 minute MCD, Ferrara Brain Pan delivers a strange mix of dark ambient, dark folk and experimental music. The two dark ambient tracks are really excellent and haunting. These are followed by three tracks of mediaeval influenced folk songs (consisting of flute and voice). These folk songs are very strange and remind me of something Current 93 could have made.

The use of two styles makes this CD a very strange release. I must say I like the dark ambient tracks a lot more that the folk tracks and it would be better to release separate ambient and folk CD?s I think.

I hope to see more releases by Ferrara Brain Pan, especially a full length dark ambient album. It would be nice to see a re-release of the excellent Darmstadt Pharmacy release for example, which is a recording of Ferrara Brain Pan and Ure Thrall doing a live set. Unfortunalely only 100 CDR?s were made of this and it is long sold out. Being a happy owner of one copy, I can definately recommend it.

artist: Forms of Things Unknown
label: Panaxis Records
details: 5 tracks [PNXS 001]