The title of this CD makes me think of Bo Diddley and Marcel Duchamp in one startling inner gaze! Maybe that is not so off either, with some Diddleyish strumming and some Duchampian ready-mades allowed into the vibrancy of the sounding space!

When this duo emerges again – their last release together; “Left & Right”, in fresh memory – it is with a slightly different set of circumstances and new ideas. The last recording was done in solitary confinements across the U.S.A., since Forsyth recorded his parts on the East Coast and Diaz-Infante in his region over on the hip West Coast, swapping musical clips across the continent like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg delivering poems by car or boxcar-boxcar-boxcar through the Grandfathers’ nights of the 1950s from New York to San Francisco and vice versa – but now by the faster means of the digital era… This set of recordings, though, was realized and made manifest with both musicians present, which of course is a totally different aspect of music-making; a more traditional way – but traditionalism is not to be expected when these extremely innovative, diligent and spiritual sound-mongers are at ease!

For one thing, they have extended their range of instruments since last time, now exploring for example an upright piano soundboard, toy piano etcetera, while alternate tunings also are utilized. Diaz-Infante applies screwdrivers, alligator clips and bells to enhance his acoustic guitar, while Forsyth uses a distortion box, a volume pedal and more.

The first piece – “NYC Journal excerpt (2000) piano/guitar” - works with extremes, which enhance each other, throw a bright light on each other. You hear Diaz-Infante in crystal clear, meditative piano threads; thin, sparse, transparent, with Forsyth’s self-inflicted electric static from the guitar’s input jacket! The effect is simply beautiful. The static itself resembles the eerie sounds of “Over de Dood en de Tijd” by Gilius van Bergeijk, which is a latter day homage to Schubert and his “Der Tod und das Mädchen”. Diaz-Infante and Forsyth pan the center of attention between the scratchy static and the wonderful timbres of the crystal piano, and my ears accept the sonic indecencies with pleasure!

“metallic strands… acoustic/electric #14” is a plucking, munching, trilling kind of journey, hand and fingers fumbling all over the resounding environment. This is probably – though genuinely mad – more in the improvising gender, out on a limb. There are more ways to make a guitar sing than Johnny B. Goode could ever have dreamt, and the brittle and sometimes crude flows out of the cornucopia of these two gentlemen who span a continent!

It strikes me, listening to track 3 – “sound is good all the time” – how much that piece has in common with some of the intuitive music of Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1968. I’m especially thinking of one of the pieces out of “Aus den sieben Tagen”; “Intenistät”, the way it came out when recorded in 1969, later issued as part of Volume 14 (seven CDs) of the Stockhausen Edition. Much of the handicraft notion (as if the music is hammered and sawed and polished in a carpenter’s workshop) is present on Diaz-Infante’s & Forsyth’s CD too, and maybe that is the farthest you can get on the road towards that elusive golden age of fulfilled improvisation, in which all the aspects of sound and motion come together in one line of vibrating sound, or a dense fabric of sound, like a standing wave through space and time. It’s a crunchy piece of work too, at times, in a mimicry of corn flakes flowing out of the package down into the bowl when it’s good-morning-time in the land.

Track 4 – “straight to it” – has Diaz-Infante coming on like he did on “Solus”, with notes tripping over each other in a heads-over-heels fashion, only this is no piano solo piece. Instead Forsyth’s electric guitar performs a shadow dance blotting-paper-close to Diaz-Infante’s spurting spirals of over-powering speed-keyboards. It’s fascinating to hear how these musicians are as one on this rather complicated piece. Again I get associations to Stockhausen, and this time to “Sirius”, in which the soloists sometimes achieve synchronousity that is out of this world. I’m very impressed by what these guys do on this track. It’s magic managing to keep this event together, especially when Diaz-Infante gets into a fury worthy of the faster pieces by player-piano-guru Conlon Nancarrow.

“pulled wires…acoustic/electric #13” again feels more at home in the down home improvising nitty-gritty of spellbinders, the guys performing on electrified and non-electric guitars, with all the bending maneuvers you can think of to twist and pull a set of strings; holy smoke and holy medallion!

“passing one another… acoustic/electric # 17” is a beautifier with comments on 1960’s and 70’s bar benders. Somewhere inside all this bravura and ingenuity a “Stairway to Heaven” is hidden, if only by color and atmosphere; I can feel it (like Hal said…). This definitely is a comment on the Byrds too, with a real 12-string feel to it, and groups like Yes receive homage! I wonder if Diaz-Infante and Forsyth thought about this when laying this tune down on digital media; no matter what – it’s beautiful and touching, full of color and bursting with feelings!

Track 7 is called “knock on wood… acoustic/electric # 11”. A lot of knocking on the acoustic guitar is going on; very percussive, while Forsyth twangs and bends his amplified strings in a splendor. The activity is intense, and I can see the guys bending towards each other in a “c’mon!” of startling energy! Diaz-Infante has attached bells to his acoustic guitar, which enhance, and comment on, his sleek fingerings.

Number 8 is “cut and dried… acoustic/electric 2”. Brittle and soaring acoustic Diaz-Infante guitar strings get the piece moving ever so lightly and gently, as Forsyth accommodates himself in this rather sparsely populated area with equally gentle electrifications. The speed picks up while the gentle touch remains, and we’re making our way through dense bamboo groves. Later Diaz-Infante is trying – in vain? – to shake the lice loose from inside his guitar, and the piece calms down abruptly, the shaking and scratching easing off into inter-track digital silence.

“to place in… acoustic/electric # 12” emerges out of a submarine sound world of shiny fish scratching bellies on sharp reefs as the light from above the surface reaches down in billowing movements to the swaying undersea plants. A seaman drops a mash of crushed rusk from the rail of his 19th century ship, and it floats down like a pointillist maze of guitar tones all around the two musicians.

The 10th and last piece on this CD – “trace out motion” - starts off with a Rileyish “In C” piano pulse, which changes pitch over and over again, while Forsyth tries to get inside the event with distant, short bursts of his electric guitar. Little bells ring like a saffron yellow Hare Krishna persuasion, as the bald-heads are giving you a book of Bhagavad-Gita on a busy street, telling you it’s a gift, looking sour as you take their word for it and leave without as much as a frown with the book, stacking it in your cozy quarters beside all the Jehovah’s Witnesses books and the bound edition of the Bardo Thödol; the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The tune takes on a guise of a mixture of Debussy, La Monte Young and Lubomyr Melnyk (impressionism, minimalism and continuous music), and the piece – and the CD - times out slowly and wonderfully into the silence of interstellar space, through which all energies flows for ever and ever.