REVERBERATIONS FROM SPRING PAST: Diaz-Infante/Fernandes/Montoya/Romus

reverberations from spring past

Diaz-Infante/Fernandes/Montoya/Romus

© 2006 Pax Recordings & all artist rights reserved. (646289028122)

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2006 release recorded live & in studio during the Spring Reverb 04 Festival in San Diego, California. brings together four West Coast veterans who combine their distinctive voices. "Reverberations" is wild, raw, energetic and headstrong." --tokafi

notes

Recorded live and in studio during the 1994 Spring Reverb festival in San Diego, California. Reverberations From Spring Past brings together four West Coast veterans who combine their distinctive voices to create a well informed, decidedly Californian sound. Ernesto Diaz-Infante (acoustic steelstring guitar), Marcos Fernandes (percussion, phonographies), Robert Montoya (electronics) and Rent Romus (saxophones, voice, toys) connect and collide as they engage each other in musical dialogue with confidence and clarity of intent.

tracks 1-7 recorded at hit single by Randy Fuelle and mixed by Marcos Fernandes and Robert Montoya.
track 8 recorded at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego by Jeff Wilson.

art and design by Andrew West. i-zone by Tam Kozman.
Inside wrap adapted from photo by Marjorie Sturm.

Abrazzos to Hans, Andrew and Tam. Hats off to Grawer, Jeff Wilson, Morris Minor, Mitch Lemay, and Art Crimes at KFJC. Thanks to Marjorie for feedback and inspiration.

BIOS:

Born in Salinas, California, ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, is Chicano (of Mexican descent). He received his MFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the Arts (studied with Wadada Leo Smith and Stephen L. Mosko) and has created musical compositions that span a broad perspective: transcendental piano, noise, avant-garde guitar, field recordings, lo-fi four-track manipulations, and experimental song. ED-I has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and his music has been broadcasted internationally. He has recorded more than 15 CDs of music and collaborated with numerous musicans. In 2000, his composition, I/O (for chamber ensemble), was performed by the California EAR Unit. He has been awarded residencies at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale (CIRM) in Nice, France, The Millay Colony for the Arts, Villa Montalvo, The Ucross Foundation, among others. He runs Pax Recordings record label which is dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and contagion of music from the margins of our culture and psyches. He lives in San Francisco with the filmmaker/video artist Marjorie Sturm and their son and daughter.

Born in Yokohama, Japan, MARCOS FERNANDES has long been active in San Diego as performer, producer and curator. He has performed in Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico and the US as a solo improviser, phonographer and as percussionist/sound artist with various ensembles, including Wormhole, a decade-long collaboration with percussionist/sound artist Robert Montoya. Fernandes runs the artist-based independent label Accretions, started two decades ago and which now features some of today's more innovative experimentalists. He is a founding member of the Trummerflora collective, dedicated to creative music in Southern California. Fernandes' recordings have appeared on Accretions, Bake/Staalplaat, Circumvention, Pan handler, Pax, Pfmentum, Phonography.org, Ribosome and Solitary B.

ROBERT MONTOYA has been active in the San Diego music scene for the past two decades as a percussionist, improviser and sound artist. In recent years, Montoya's work has focused on sample-based computer and electronic music which can be heard on the recent Trummerflora compilation, Rubble1 (Accretions 2004) and in his ensemble projects Wormhole with lomg-time collaborater Marcos Fernandes and mrlectronic with Lisle Ellis and Fernandes. He is a founding member of Trummerflora, a musicians collective dedicated to creative music. A Tijuana native, Montoya has performed in Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico and the U.S. He has performed and/or recorded with members of Trummerflora, the Nortec Collective, George Lewis, Le Quan Ninh, Mike Keneally, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Rent Romus, Eric Glick Rieman, Michael Dessen, David Gould , Scott R. Looney and Ultra 7.

RENT ROMUS is a force spanning twenty years of original improvised music, production, and performance. Romus is the founder and producer of Edgetone Records a new music label since 1991. He is also the curator of The SIMM Music Series at the Studio 6 Musicians Union Hall, and the famous Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series in San Francisco. He was the former Director of Promotion for the SFAlt Festival 2002-2004, and is currently the Director of Outsound.org an artist based collective for music production in the San Francisco Bay Area. Romus also runs a new music distribution network to brick and mortar stores for independent artist run record labels called UIRC (Ultra Independent Recording Coalition) currently available online as well as the Artistic Director of the Edgetone New Music Summit a national music festival held in the greater San Francisco Bay Area every summer.

reviews

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  • draw you into their wild world of improvised mixology!
    author: Tom Sekowski, Gaz-Eta

    An odd little recording, "Reverberations from Spring Past" is equally an electronic record as it is a true improvised set. From the very start of the session, you hear these four men are giving their all to draw you into their wild world of improvised mixology. Acoustic guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante is joined by electronics guru Robert Montoya, percussionist Marcos Fernandes and saxophonist Rent Romus. At every step of the way, they blow the perceptions of what this music "should" sound like. Is there too much electronics in their music or are they improvising too much? Or are they simply not jazz-enough for an ensemble that plays this "sort" of music - whatever sort that may be? Thing that I like about the record is the prominent interplay between Montoya's electronics gear and Fernandes on percussion and phonographies. Having played together for a decade with Wormhole, these two musicians have a sharp mind for collaboration. Squeaky, tweaked-up, high-pitched crescendos go hand-in-hand with percussive lines that seem to come from another planet. Nothing sounds linear in the universe of this band. Nothing sounds as if planned out ahead of time and more importantly, none of the music sounds chaotic in the least. From the jagged, hawking saxophone bursts to the scratched-up vinyl excursions to the delicately strummed guitar parts onto the horns and whistles [and various toys as well], the quartet have come onto a formulae of sorts. Play as you learn and learn as you play is what I think the quartet is after. Whatever the equation of that formula may be, it works in droves.

  • "Reverberations" is wild, raw, energetic and headstrong...
    author: Tobias Fischer, tokafi

    To a generation, who grew up on Rock, Jazz is something for later – for when you’re old and take your grandchildren to see that Dixieland band play at the seaside. Alternatively, the jazz-vibe has crept into contemporary dance productions, teaming up with electronic grooves and lush textures to create that relaxed and sophisticated lounge-feeling. In either case, it has definitely lost the sweat, the blood and the tears of those early years and become a synonym for carefree entertainment. “Reverberations from spring past” breaks with this modern-day complacency and puts Jazz decidedly back into the driving seat of a roaring roller-coaster hotrod. Without a doubt, this is not music for your lazy Sunday morning – “Reverberations” is wild, raw, energetic and headstrong, a revitalising coctail of aural acupuncture and tonal caffeine. Ernesto Diaz-Infante’s steelstring guitar pushes and shoves itself into a trance, like a spaced-out raga-master, Marcos Fernandes’ percussions crash, crack and crush like a giant magnet being dragged through your kitchen, while Robert Montoya’s sizzling and fizzing electronics irritate and irrigate the dried-out fields of your imagination. You press the “play”-button and you’re right in the middle of it, there’s no classical ouverture or slow build-up, everything is right there from the very first second, without a chance to rethink or consider. It’s as if the band is constantly glued to the tip of their seat, immersed in the pain of not being able to stop and the extatic joy of forging forward. If the ship-analogy may be applied, then the three aforementioned players are the sail and the body, shaping the form things are going to take and Rent Romus and his Sax are the rudder, guiding the way. In “Premonition”, his frenzied summersaults lead the band ever upwards towards the sky, in “Blues for Ezra” he lets down the drapes and colours the room all blue and mournful, while the melodic simplicity of “An Offering of Interconnectedness” lifts itself into this loop-mode, which you wish might go on forever. All of these band-erruptions are bathed in phonographic waves, field recordings and noises of the city and of unknown origin, which lend additional depth and texture to the tracks. Which brings an almost ethereal and unreal sensation to the record – one of the most beautiful moments happens when frantic “Premonition” abruptly stops and flows into the sounds of cars, passers-by and people talking. Suddenly, it all makes sense. The cover suggests a decent dose of flowerpower and the good spirit of the 60s and 70s indeed seems to have been present during these recordings – this makes for a wonderful summer record. Yet, “Reverberations” needs no allusions to the past, nor comparisons with the “great”. It is the best example that even the most fortified cliches will crumble, when faced with a brutally executed simple and good idea – Jazz is here and now and it’s for you!

  • Now this is what I call an improv ensemble!
    author: RKF, Dead Angel zine

    Now this is what I call an improv ensemble: Ernesto Diaz-Infante on acoustic steel-string guitar, Robert Montoya providing electronics, Marcos Fernandes on percussion and "phonographies," and Rent Romus on sax, voice, and "toys." Between the four of them there's about 75 years of improvised experimentation crammed onto this disc -- nine tracks of upredictable noises and improvisational strategies with a distinctly acid-jazz feel. The first seven tracks were recorded at Hit Single by Randy Fuelle and mixed by Fernandes and Montoya; the second two tracks are actually one long (17:33) piece broken into two parts, recorded at MCASD Downtown by Jeff Wilson. The studio tracks include a lot of incidental sound, most likely from field recordings, in addition to the actual playing, with a resulting sound much like a series of improv jams happening in a room with the window open. There's a nice balance between the clean studio sound and the sounds of real life, and while they're inclined to let things drift toward chaos if that's where the energy is going, for the most part this is relatively low-key, controlled chaos. It's also the first time in a while I've heard Diaz-Infante actually play his guitar (which he does real well) rather than just using it to make perverted sounds, which is nice. The long live jam, "an offering of interconnectedness (live at spring reverb 04) parts 1-2," has a different (but not overwhelmingly so) sound to it thanks to the location, but otherwise fits in well with the rest of the album -- in fact, in a sense it works as a summation of the ideas of the previous tracks, with plenty of time and room to stretch out. Fans of any of the individual players will not be disappointed by this swell collaboration.

  • One of the most engaging improv sets I've heard in a while.
    author: Jon Worley, Aiding & Abetting

    A nice little improvisational quartet: Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Robert Montoya, Marcos Fernandes and Rent Romus. What I like best about this particular set is the driving energy in the songs. There's not a lot of dicking around here. Rather, the folks have a destination in mind and they get there--with the requisite fuss, of course. One of the most engaging improv sets I've heard in a while.

  • a flux of dissonant transcendence...a rather calm, bittersweet album
    author: Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

    In the very welcome tradition of today's West Coast improvisating population, "Reverberations from spring past" fuses four of the best local talents to produce a rather calm, bittersweet album which mostly revolves around Diaz-Infante loosely strummed detuned guitar generating a flux of dissonant transcendence polluted by Montoya and Fernandes' sonic debris, electronic and percussion utilized as complementary incidental background "presence" rather than self-indulgent protagonism. Amidst this relaxed (but not too much) mess, Rent Romus lends his saxophone according to his deserved reputation, his (mostly) gentle phrasing underlining a potential, yet still non-existent rebellion while transmuting the predominant tides into deformed film-noirish soundtracks, with rain pouring down on the trash amassed in dark alleys. The record ends with a live segment from a 2004 concert at the Spring Reverb, in which the quartet accelerates their pulse quite a bit to end matters with a flux of energetic discharges.

  • A solid sender of a release, with nice strata throughout.
    author: Thurston Hunger, KFJC On-Line Reviews

    What is this, the new crime jazz? Improv alley assasin work? Nope, just four KFJC-friendly folks finding their collective voice. What’s interesting about this collaboration is that a lot of the “soloing” is done in the subtler regions, Rent Romus stars as the one fanned flame, while the other three are working more atmospherically if not aquatically. Ernesto Diaz-Infante’s guitar preparations have always been of the babbling brook, here they deftly flow with the electronic dialings and dealings of Robert Montoya. Montoya seems to be pulling up large envelopes of sound that press up against your ear rather than pierce it off. Similarly, check out how Marcos Fernandes’ percussion patter rides in and out of the waves of Ernesto’s guitar on say “Who Created the Canon?” On that track the smokey trails of Romus’ sax are what you chase, but deeper listening opens up high-freq precipitation from Montoya (I think that’s where the canon is invoked?) Check out Montoya’s opening salvo on “Elation Within…” glitch-pong sets up a reeling as much as rhythm. Overall Rent remains a force for me, his restraint as powerful as his melodic attacks. He doesn’t overuse the twin-reed run (but it does show up nicely in part 1 of the “Offering"). He also knows when *not* to blow, and let the sounds of his bandmates pool up. A solid sender of a release, with nice strata throughout.

  • A courageous effort from these veterans from California...
    author: Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly

    All four of them have their own distinctive voice...nice intimate playing by Romus in an environment of bubbling electronics, with inventive percussion and very linear guitar playing by Diaz-Infante. A courageous effort from these veterans from California...

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