In the Summer of 2002, I was invited to the musician John Berndt’s Sound/Shift in Baltimore. It was there that I first had the pleasure of meeting up with the cellist Helena Espvall, who was also performing. We began a friendship that continued through her frequent travels to the Bay Area to perform, play and record. She participated in the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival in 2004, which happened to be based on Berndt’s Sound/Shift concept. I was honored Pax Recordings co-released Helena’s solo album “Nimis & Arx” with Steven Tobin’s Fire Museum Records label in 2006. Helena's boyfriend and now husband, Derek Espvall recorded Helena and I in 2013, as did KFJC radio station, and that became one of my favorite works— ‘A Hallowed Shell of Ash and Rust’ on Erototox Decodings. And over the years, as Helena came out to perform in the Matti Bye Ensemble at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, we seized the time to also record. Some of that music made its way into Marjorie Sturm’s films (“The Cult of JT Leroy” and “Show Me What You Want To Show Me”).
Throughout a lot of this time, Marjorie and I always hoped and discussed that one day we would go to Lisbon, Portugal, where Helena and Derek live. We finally made it there. This release, “a shadowed fulguration”, is an album celebrating and appreciating our long musical friendship and collaboration.
—-Ernesto Diaz-Infante

Pax Recordings is excited to announce its 20th Year Anniversary release with Ernesto Diaz-Infante's solo, acoustic guitar, composition, "For M.F." - an hour long, spatial sound work that honors the ruminative and creative life.

The music was recorded in October, 2013. It is being released in sync with E D-I's fiftieth birthday and in celebration of his forty some odd years of multi-instrumental sound and music making. E D-I has recorded over twenty five albums of music, half of those solo and the others in all sorts of eclectic collaborations including releases with musicians Helena Espvall, Chris Forsyth, and Gino Robair.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante is Native Californian and received his MFA from CalArts. He resides in San Francisco with his two children, and partner Filmmaker Marjorie Sturm. E D-I scored the soundtrack for her award-winning documentary, "The Cult of JT LeRoy" that was released in 2015.

Recorded in Oakland, California in 2006, during a long journey that took violinist Ernesto Rodrigues and guitarist Manuel Mota from Vancouver, Canada to Long Beach, Southern California, with stops in Seattle and San Francisco, this encounter between two Portuguese musicians and Californian improvisers Gino Robair (energized surfaces/voltage made audible) and Ernesto Diaz-Infante (acoustic guitar), invigorates the open debate over the different forms of musical expression related to improvisation/instant composition. These forms of communication evidence a particular interest in exploring the most delicate aspect of the sound world. The chosen elements–acoustic and electric strings as well as various electronics/percussions– interact to work out a fascinating, enchanting angle regarding timbric and textural possibilities and instrumental combinations. The voices interweave with ductility and take advantage of the broadened dynamic spectrum, which goes from intervals of silence to the resonance of a meticulous yet delicate low volume activity, and these aspects are accentuated by the clarity of the recording, which was a result of a competent and assertive placement of microphones. Yet the most interesting aspect is perhaps to witness the development of a collective language, nurtured by the spontaneous inspiration and a remarkable ability to react in real time to the stimulus of the other ensemble members. There are some moments that sound close to the reductionist/”near silence” approach, others to electroacoustic experimentation and some even to the European schools of free improvisation. However, what is mostly heard throughout the recording is an organic compound boiled on a low flame, made up with the different forms and techniques of the contemporary free musical expression, and it privileges as a whole the richness of color, a purified sense of collectiveness and a surprising kinetic motion between serenity and restlessness. Natural, spontaneous music, filled with mystery, angular, exploratory and intense: just like we dreamed it. --Eduardo Chagas

Portuguese to English Translation: Gerardo Alejos

All the States Between is an electro-acoustic work constructed through the U.S. Mail, using (and working within the limitations of) two low-tech four-track cassette recorders. Ernesto Diaz-Infante laid down his tracks in San Francisco in late 2001 on recycled tapes, using a Tascam Portastudio 424, turntable, Shure SM57 mic on TV screen and broken CD player, San Francisco MUNI/BART field recordings, Sony TCM-313 cassette-corder, jack plug, violin, and voice. Matt Hannafin added his two tracks in New York in February 2002 using a Yamaha MT120, Samsom R11 mics, percussion kit, hand cymbals, stainless steel handbells, qaraqeb, Ghanaian windmill bless, iron ankle bells, newspaper, bentwood tambourine, and miscellaneous rates and shakers. The work is constructed in two parts, corresponding to the duration of the original tapes.

Part I (tracks 1-7) 46:39
Part II (tracks 8-11) 30:44