Ernesto Diaz-Infante - Amor Celestial

Released: April 5 

On his first album with Tape Drift Records, Ernesto Diaz-Infante brings a certain type of psychedelic exploration to the guitar with his free-form compositions. Amor Celestial is comprised of two long-form running at just over twenty minutes each and both are deceptively simple to start but toy around with complexity throughout their individual run-times. Both have an element of drone intertwined with the more complex guitar parts, provided mainly by the use of Tibetan singing bowls with little processing aside from the compulsory mixing treatments. It rarely changes much which gives an splendid back drop for the wide range of guitar parts that appear and disappear. 

As for the guitar work, it's so varied that it is difficult to describe exactly what is going on. There are some parts in which it feels like the guitar is just there to build on to the drone layers and other times in which the guitar openly clashes with the soft drones. There are no real delineating parts to either track, which makes it feel as though each are simply one continuous movement with variations - some subtle and others undeniable. Diaz-Infante plays around with a great deal of different tones and textures in his guitar work but seems to have a definite preference for clean tones with just a touch of reverb. To me, it almost feels like an avant-garde variety of surf rock in both tone and composition, with Diaz-Infante playing around with unusual chord structures and light yet abstract tones. Combine this with an overarching meditative quality and it creates a perfect soundtrack for lying in the warm sun while considering the intricacies of life.