This is the one. Joined by Cecilia Lopez on synthesizers and Brandon Lopez on double bass, Forbes Graham scrawls out the last vestiges of a lost civilization. Tiny soundscapes are like bursts of light stretched out through time and space, searching for a physical plane to glom onto. Graham always makes music with a tactile edge, but when joined by both Lopezes, it becomes more fraught and enticing.
Trumpet waves spin in the distance, separated by a wall of electronic glitter and subterranean claws. Brandon Lopez’s bass techniques are unfathomable in their depth and breadth, and he can conjure seemingly impossible sounds and stitch them together seamlessly with a precise, flowing spread. Airy, metallic sequences dance in the moonlight, spectral and hollow at their core. Cecilia Lopez paints pointillist sonic architecture that throws acidic spots at the underlying fabric, leaving decaying holes spreading outward like a glorious disease.
Lilting electronics fumble through the seething mud on “Forming Those Battle Plans” as Lopez turns his bass into a creaking, dying breathing apparatus. Each note reaches for an invisible horizon, pushed back by Graham’s brassy squelch. It’s so transportive that if I close my eyes for a while, I have no idea where I’ve landed when I open them again.
Another Day, Another Vector is strange and beguiling beneath Graham’s guiding spirit. When he serenades the granular spectrum with a dark, whimsical trumpet solo in the dying embers of “We Are In The Disc,” chasing basslines into the abyss, it’s hard not to imagine the endless aural corridors stretching out in every direction. Closer “Ran Out of Bells…” runs the line ahead of an impending hurricane, some kind of free jazz infusion from a future we’ll never see. Each sound holds its own space as each of these musicians is dialed into the moment, but the collective combination becomes much more significant than each individual piece.
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