Things we like: Lisa Cameron and Ernesto Diaz-Infante

The Austin-based percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Lisa Cameron has deep roots in improvised music and psychedelia, having drummed with Denton avant-polka outfit Brave Combo (a new project with founder Carl Finch is in the works), Texas psych originator Roky Erickson, and ATX space-rock juggernaut ST 37, and she gets around. Just a  couple of weeks after I saw Cameron play a set of stunningly telepathic free improv with Damon Smith, Alex Cunningham, and Sarah Ruth Alexander at Fort Worth's Grackle Art Gallery earlier this year, a buddy in NYC saw her kicking the traps with ST 37 when they opened for Acid Mothers Temple there. 

A fellow traveler of Cameron's since 2012 is the prolific Bay Area Chicano composer-guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante. Their collaboration was first captured on Sol et Terra (2013), a hypnotic confluence of echolalic stream of consciousness and tribal thump -- some of which was used in the soundtrack for Marjorie Sturm's documentary film The Cult of JT Leroy -- first released on writer-poet Bill Shute's Kendra Steiner Editions in 2015. Psychedelic music generally comes in one of two flavors: that which attempts to replicate the psychedelic experience, or that which is produced by people experiencing expanded states of consciousness. While I can't attest to the state of mind Cameron and Diaz-Infante were in while performing this music, Sol et Terra's flow has the same meditative and ritual quality one associates with mind expansion.

The music on Water is Life -- recorded in the summer of 2016 -- is informed and inspired by the protests, then ongoing, against the Dakota Access Pipeline by the Standing Rock Sioux, who recognized the pipeline's construction as a threat to their region's water supply, as well as ancient burial grounds and cultural sites. Instrumentation for the four-hour session was minimal, with Cameron using only percussion, contact mics, and a lap steel, while Diaz-Infante played an electric guitar straight through the amp with no effects. Despite the use of amplification, the resultant music has a primordial, dawn-of-time sound, with Diaz-Infante reminding us that the guitar is also a percussion instrument. As the music unfolds, quietly but relentlessly, one hears a summons to action ("Watery Water"), a lament for the Earth (after clashes with militarized police -- impressionistically depicted by welters of slide-driven harmonics in "Standoff at Blackwater Bridge" -- and courtroom battles, the pipeline remains in operation), and a statement of ongoing determination (the closing "The Twilight of Capitalism"). 

More recently, I discovered that Cameron and I share an enthusiasm for Jefferson Airplane's third LP, After Bathing At Baxter's. I dig the ragged counterpoint of the Airplane's three-way vocal blend, the song structures still surprise me after 50+ years of listening, Kantner's 12-string is jazzy like McGuinn's, and Jack Casady's bass is my favorite instrumental noise from the whole San Fran development. Come to find out that Diaz-Infante's home studio is located next door to the legendary house where the Airplane resided during their '60s heyday. 

You can detect some emanations from that spirit on Ghosts of the JA, recorded in Diaz-Infante's studio in 2019 and released earlier this year on San Antonio-based Loma Editions. (A guy I worked with at Record Town in Dobie Mall on the UT campus back in '79 reported similar resonance from a house he lived in that Roky Erickson formerly occupied.) The song titles here are packed with allusions to the Airplane's Baxter's, Surrealistic Pillow, and Volunteers albums, and the sound has the full-on lysergic rush that was always seeping out of the interstices in the Airplane's best music. Replete with echo, delay, and snatches of feedback, the overall effect of Ghosts of the JA is dreamlike, haunting, and a little sinister. All three of the collaborations between these two musicians attest to the evocative power of spontaneous composition.