Forbes Graham is an American, Boston-based experimental composer, trumpet player, sound and visual artist whose work explores themes of simultaneity, perceptibility, transformation and collage. The title of his new solo album, I Continue, corresponds with his first solo album, I Won’t Stop (Blacq Lghtn, 2008) and continues his search to expand the sonic range of the trumpet with electronics. I Continue was recorded at Scholes St Studio in Brooklyn in June 2022 and is released by the K7 series of the experimental Infrequent Seams label.
In this 28-minute album, Forbes’ heavily processed trumpet becomes an otherworldly sonic entity, with its own, futurist language and syntax. You can describe this album as a series of cryptic transmissions from a faraway higher intelligence, or as a quizzical sci-fi journey. The cover offers another enigmatic framework: «May be an image of concrete, corrugated steel and doubt». Either way, Forbes takes the trumpet to the most extreme sonic terrains and transforms it into a new, adventurous and uncompromising sonic beast.
Another Day, Another Vector features Graham – on trumpet, drum machine and laptop (and he also did the cover painting), with New York-based double bass player Brandon Lopez and synth player Cecilia Lopez on analog synth in a free improvised session at Firehouse 12 in New Haven in August 2021. Here the futurist, sci-fi sonic architecture of Graham meets the like-minded, bold aesthetics of both Lopezes and the idiosyncratic voices of these three resourceful improvisers and sound artists unite into dark and otherworldly textures. But the atmosphere of this session is more sparse and abstract, allowing nuanced conversations and quite often you can hear the trumpet with all of Graham’s extended breathing techniques and even free-bop licks, without any enhanced effects and processing. Still, Another Day, Another Vector has the same transportive qualities as I Continue but travels the spaceways into a more habitable location.
Eyal Hareuveni
Forbes Graham (trumpet, electronics, drum machine, laptop computer), Brandon Lopez (double bass), Cecilia Lopez (synthesizers)
