Bryan Day is an American sound artist, musical instrument inventor, and conceptual artist from San Francisco. He uses scavenged electronics, repurposed mechanical components, and amplified materials, reimagining them into constructivist sound sculptures. Day met prolific San Francisco-based guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante in the 1990s and released several of his albums on his Public Eyesore label.
Utility Spirits is their second duo album, following Untitled Currents (also released by scatterArchive, 2024, with the pay-what-you-can-afford policy). Diaz-Infante plays the acoustic-electric mandolin with many objects here, and Day plays a tabletop setup of invented instruments featuring amplified measuring tapes, a MIDI-FM radio, and tunable instruments built with carbon-fibre rods, extension springs, and feedback-resonating electromagnets applied to any of the metal components.
The album features two live free improvisations, the first one in a local radio station at Stanford University in Palo Alto on the 20th Annual Day of Noise event in February 2025, and the second one at Day’s home studio in San Pablo in August 2025. The first piece, «Capillary Luau», suggests a dense, alien texture of suggestive, some explosive yet playful noises, which makes it impossible to know who is doing what and how. The second piece, «Stammering Rhizomes», intensifies these highly inventive, hyperactive, noisy, and resonant collisions even further.
The Neshama Alma Band is the long-standing duo of Diaz-Infante with his partner, flutist (and filmmaker) Marjorie Sturm, both based in San Francisco. Neshama means soul in Hebrew, and Alma means soul in Spanish. Clearing Clouds of Confusion consists of two extended, free improvised live radio performances at the University of California in Berkeley and in San Francisco in January and April 2023.
As with previous albums by The Neshama Alma Band, the music responds to moments of political distress. The opening piece, «Memphis Sunset», is a lyrical, mournful meditation for peace and justice for Tyrone Nichols, who was mercilessly killed by the Memphis Police Department for no apparent reason. Diaz-Infante’s spiky-percussive strumming of the electric guitar swings between the sounds of senseless shots to distant church bells or effects-laden, noisy, and distorted drone in an attempt to make sense of this reckless violence. The second piece, «Broadcasting Live from YELAMU, on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Territory», is a prayer-mantra for people everywhere to share the land. The Ramaytush people are a linguistic subdivision of the Ohlone people of Northern California, who have lived in the San Francisco area before the arrival of the Spanish. This piece revolves around a repetitive, cyclical-hypnotic pulse.
Eyal Hareuveni
Bryan Day (invented instruments), Ernesto Diaz-Infante (acoustic-electric mandolin, objects, electric guitar), Marjorie Sturm (flute)
