Paris/Lisbon is one of the most intimate albums of American prolific experimental guitarist and free improviser Ernesto Diaz-Infante, once a disciple of Wadada Leo Smith and head of the Pax Recordings. This album is a journal of fourteen, short free improvisations that Diaz-Infante recorded on his 20th Anniversary celebration/trip with partner-filmmaker Marjorie Sturm (who runs with him the Pax Recordings) to Paris, France (four improvisations at Hotel du Dragon) and Lisbon, Portugal (ten improvisations in an apartment) in June of 2023. The atmosphere of these improvisations is relaxed and gentle and all pieces rely on simple, intuitive themes that highlight Diaz-Infante’s idiosyncratic language and the way he transforms the acoustic guitar into an untimely exotic sonic generator with extended techniques. Sturm plays a Nepalese flute on three pieces, and the improvisations with her introduce a sensual interplay.
Live at the Luggage Store Gallery collects two performances of Diaz-Infante with his son, guitarist Ezra Sturm (who is also responsible for the cover artwork), the first a live one at Outsound Presents The Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series, and the second a rehearsal at Next Door to the Jefferson Airplane Studios, both in San Francisco in March 2024. This is the third album of Diaz-Infante and Sturm for the Florida-based net label Muteant Sounds, following Puzzle (with Michel Kristof, 2023) and The Escape (2024). The father and son play electric guitars and the album is described as «guttural dueting yet maybe dueling free-form experimental guitar performances». Both pieces are powerful and noisy, fast and raw conversations, and offer a manic and uncompromising wild ride, but the rehearsal one allows more spacious interplay.
Amor Celestial offers two cosmic drones, played by Diaz-Infante on electric and acoustic guitars, electronic tanpura and singing bowls, and recorded, edited, and mastered by Diaz-Infante at Next Door to the Jefferson Airplane Studios in San Francisco on Christmas Day in 2023. Diaz-Infante sculpts the feedback and the distortion of the electric guitar as tangible, vivid sonic material and transforms it into highly resonating, effects-laden textures in the first piece and in the second piece he weaves minimalist, repetitive, and resonating strumming and bowing patterns of the acoustic guitar into a meditative texture. A celebration of the cosmic infinite that demands to turn the volume up.
Easy To Disappear Into This Fog is an exotic and meditative but much more reserved, 27-minute drone piece performed live phone-in Performance on the WDBX 91.1FM ITDE in Carbondale, Illinois, in August 2009. Diaz-Infante plays slow-shifting, minimalist, simple and sparse patterns on the Mexican bajo sexto and adds resonating drone sounds of the electronic tanpura and singing bowl. The album’s title references poet Cassie Lewis’ poem «In A Dark Room»: «Dissolving into the pool in a splash of white, / I saw you. In summer, / the town goes to the drive-in. / The edges of the coin keep moving / as I stare at images through goggles, they / fog out».
Eyal Hareuveni
Ernesto Diaz-Infante (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electronic tanpura, bajo sexto, singing bowls), Marjorie Sturm (Nepalese flute), Ezra Sturm (electric guitar)
