“The results speak for themselves: Forest Standards, Vol. 1 is a fascinating record, full of slippery arrangements that allow all three players to showcase their endlessly creative approaches to their instruments.”
— Downbeat
“With each installment of his series Forest Standards, David Lord is world building. It requires a certain amount of buy-in from the listener, but once you accept that certain rules of melodicism are in play—and that they exist in a rhythmic environment that can be both familiar and quite alien—the music attains a connective ease, as if it were a ray of sunlight, or your very next breath. An easy parallel to draw would be to the curious melodicism of Mary Halvorson; but where Halvorson’s inclinations typically lean toward chaos, Lord’s guitar explorations arrive at a destination not too far removed from a state of peace. The fourth installment in the series is bird-of-a-feather to its three predecessors: meandering pieces that retain a tight, in-the-moment focus—experimental music as strange as it is beautiful, and hints at reworkings of something very old and lost to time.”
— Dave Sumner, Bandcamp Daily
“The album is a wonder of craft and ingenuity, and only a document so well recorded can give up the secrets told by drums and glockenspiel in the same gesture with such facile conviction, a juxtaposition which, like the music, needs to be heard to be believed.”
— Dusted Magazine
“This is an inventive player freed from convention, the peer pressure of conservatories or a need to fit into any competitive big town scene. He’s creating on his own terms and what this rara avis comes up with here are subversive little gems.”
— Bill Milkowski
“Lord’s sound is situated in that jazz-to-folk spectrum traversed by fellow guitarists Bill Frisell, Steve Tibbetts, and Mike Baggetta. There are moments of potent enchantment on this one.”
— Bandcamp Daily
“David Lord is a true creative genius. Strikingly unique and exceedingly intricate.”
— Babysue
“I consider myself very fortunate to have worked with some pretty innovative guitar players over the years such as Marc Ribot, Mary Halvorson, Derek Bailey, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Bern Nix, Jeff Parker and Joe Morris. Although he is not yet well known, I put David Lord in that same league. Please check out his debut release. You won’t be disappointed.”
— Chad Taylor
“Exploratory and new... [David Lord] creates imaginary landscapes for the listener to explore time and again with repeated listens.”
— Pop Matters
“There’s a patience and curiosity in equal measure, experimentation mixed with ease. Which is all to say that this LP is absolutely killer. You need these new Standards in your life.”