Drone Records

GUZIK, ARIEL - Cordiox

Format: LP

Label & Cat.Number: VON Archives VON 023

Release Year: 2016

Note: rare LP by this highly interesting Mexican sound artist and researcher, who invented for this recording an incredible (four meter high) stringed instrument driven by magnetic forces through a huge quartz cylinder inside (producing piezo-electric effects), an acoustic tower that plays itself, resulting in beautiful metallic sounding resonances and drones; the "Cordiox" has 172 steel strings of 4 m. length inside and reacts to any vibrations of the environment, too; utterly fascinating!! Lim. 300

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €23.00

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"In the history of all Von releases and our quest for understanding the cross overs of visual and sound phenomena, Cordiox stands as the most hermetic and fabulous, not only for its immense quality and the importance of it as a document, but also because it follows up the tradition of invoking spectral imaging, visualising the invisible through sound and echoing cross-temporal vision.
Cordiox by Ariel Guzik. Represented México at the 55th Venice Biennale with a curatorial project by Itala Smelz. Recorded at San Lorenzo Church, Venice, by Alejandro Colinas and Emilio Gálvez y Fuentes, June 2013. Mastering and lacquer cut by Mike Grinser at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Edition of 300.

ECHO AND CRYSTAL by Ariel Guzik
Cordiox is an instrument consisting of different elements: the first is a hollow, pure fused quartz cylinder (a tube); the second is a set of strings divided in three harps; the third is a system of inter-articulated wooden bridges, the function of which is to couple the strings in the harps and the quartz tube. These components are contained within the mechanics of a relatively simple and visually light steel structure which bears a tension of almost eighteen tons of magnitude exerted on it by the strings. Also, an important part of the instrument is a system of controls, circuits and vacuum tubes, contained within a mahogany cabinet. The nucleus, or quartz tympanum, is 1.80 meters high, 45 centimeters in diameter, and five millimeters thick. The manufacture of this body is exceptional, because industrially fused quartz is regularly found in small scale, and its physical properties respond to the nature of the material in proportion to such scale. Quartz is a vibrating crystal, and it displays paradoxical electric properties because it is at the same time a powerful electrical insulator, and a unique producer of electricity. The mechanical-electric vibratory nature of quartz, a property it shares with DNA, bones, and some types of ceramic crystals, is known as piezoelectric effect. Thus, for example, the heart that beats the rhythm in countless watches and information and communication devices used around the world, is a quartz wafer a few microns thick incorporated into their mechanism, the vibration of which, directly related to the thickness of the crystal, oscillates stably between tens of thousands and billions of cycles per second. On the macroscopic scale, the vibratory property of quartz reaches frequencies which are so low that, due to their magnitude, enter the domain of sound.
The form and size - described above - of the quartz tube, specifically fused for the manufacture of this instrument, shape an unprecedented, reverberating object able to emit harmonies of unimaginable scope, organization, and purity. Besides being a sonorous resonator, the tubular quartz monolith (a flat body which, when rolled up, constitutes a three-dimensional body), behaves like a tympanum that perceives even the subtlest vibratory signal from the environment, and, due to its piezoelectric properties, expresses electrical charges when it is vibrating.
The instrument has around 172 four-meter long, steel strings, distributed among three interdependent harps. Some of these strings are overwound with a nickel, zinc, copper, and silver alloy thread. The average tension exerted by each string is a little over 100 kilograms, therefore the steel and wood structures in each of the three harps must bear a six-ton magnitude tension. Such extremely high tension in the strings endows them with remarkable harmonic resonance. The tuning of each harp maintains geometric proportions with respect to the others. While performing, the strings are being stimulated by magnetic fields. One of the functioning principles of this machine is to put into play two forces that are not antagonistic but complementary; these forces can be described by analogy based on the opposite principles of Taoist philosophy, that is, feminine-receptive-earth (the quartz crystal), and masculine-creative-sky (the vibrating strings). The magnetic breeze which excites the strings comes from chaotic signals being picked-up: an infinite repertoire of signals flowing into an organic, self-ordering phenomenon that I have named harmonic field.
This is a virtuous cycle of vibratory events derived from the residual thermal-electromagnetic noise in the environment, a stable fabric which, although homogeneous and nebulous, is made up (like dust, where every bit is unique in shape and composition) by infinite particularities: remnant signals of history. It is precisely on such particularities that Cordiox’s mechanism focuses. (It should be noted that the dynamics of dust, thermal noise, turbulences, vapors, and nebulous phenomena in general are mostly studied by science through their global and fractal statistics, rather than through the particularities and individual histories of their tiny components). These signals are detected in the instrument’s control panel by means of silicon semiconductors sensitive to surrounding thermal and electromagnetic noise. Each of the ten small detectors is encircled by an aureole of peridot, amethist, pink quartz, and garnet crystals, the purpose of which, devoid of any technically tangible function, is to crown and provide these detectors from which the magnetic flow governing the instrument is derived, with meanings. The electromagnetic events flowing into the strings are made up by periodic captures of these chaotic signals, through a mechanism of electronic clockmaking which I have named lluvoide.
The coupling of the crystal tympanum and the strings on a section of the stringing which corresponds to their fifth harmonic is achieved by means of an articulated system of maple, beech, and walnut wooden bridges which enables a dynamic exchange of energy between both elements.
Cordiox is the product of the creative work of a group of collaborators from multiple disciplines. Although its design is the result of a long research, its birth was hasty. It was built against the clock and had to come out of the laboratory before it was even tested. It wasn’t until the doors of the former Church of San Lorenzo were opened for its public display, only a few minutes after the exhibition was inaugurated for the 55th Venice Biennale, that it surprisingly emitted its first murmurs before a tense expectation in the audience. It was precisely that strained muteness which enabled Cordiox to make its voice heard in its true nature: that of an almost silent instrument, the expression of which is of extreme subtleness." [label info]

"Outstanding visionary stuff from Mexican artist Ariel Guzik – the kind of record that's a great introduction to his practice – and a sound relic from his mindbending Cordiox, a monumental stringed instrument animated by invisible magnetic forces.
Cordiox is a four-meter acoustical tower, a hyper sophisticated musical instrument created by Ariel Guzik. In its depths resides a quartz cylinder, which constitutes its central acoustical axis and took up almost half of the budget of this work. Exploring its ever-changing range of tones, drones and resonances Cordiox pushes to listen to his surroundings without the need of any speaker, making invisible resonances become perceptible, woven by a very complex net of wires within, as well as by four interconnected towers that seem to be futuristic reverbs inside a baroque building – reminding us of the scene in 2001: Space Odyssey where the astronaut Bowman, the astronaut, finds himself lost and isolated in the middle of a room decorated in the style of Louis XVI." [Soundohm]

"Incredible spectral ambient invocation from hitherto unknown Ariel Guzik, producing the first great drone album of 2017. Huge recommendation if you're into Harry Bertoia, Thomas Köner, Eliane Radigue etc.

A haunting play of space, place and parapsychology, Cordiox was recorded using a custom-made installation displayed at the National Pavillion in Venice back in 2013. The sound sculpture comprised of a main cylinder and 180 strings spaced out like a harp, effectively transmuting its environment and the presence of visitors into the four steeply psychedelic pieces on this record.

Using the church as a huge, unpredictable resonator, Guzik draws us into the church’s symphonic microcosm of frequencies, creating a feedback system that allows the building to speak as though revealing EVP. Most crucially, the sounds captured are impossible to pin down; they could never have been mechanically or digitally produced, instead offering us a glimpse at a fleeting moment in space and time, never to be repeated.

For these hectic, overwhelming days, spending an hour of your un-distracted time locked away with this record is like tonic for the mind; at once soothing, moving and thought provoking - an exceptionally beautiful reminder of the passage of time." [Boomkat]

"I was lucky enough to be in Venice at the 2013 Biennale, so I was able to experience an installation of the Cordiox machine in old San Lorenzo Church.
It was an impressive setup, this enormous machine in a reverberating space, generating a sound that I could immerse myself in for hours.
So three years later it is a nice surprise to find this release on the Vox Archives label – ‘a label released in the intersection of the visual and sound’.

Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio’ had a vision that ‘sound never dies, it emanates and resonates eternally, it floats around us as an etheric entity, waiting to be captured’. He dreamt that with a development of his inventions he would be able to hear it, to hear the voices of the past.

The Cordiox is Ariel Guzik‘s installation machine that seems to capture some of these etheric frequencies and translate them into sound. The installation reacts to its immediate surrounding: the complex contraption is not intended as an instrument, but as a “means for listening (to) what is inaudible in the surroundings, and in turn, give it back in different degrees of harmonic force”.

In its vinyl form, you’ll miss the beauty of the instrument, with its giant strings attached to mysterious anachronistic wooden closets featuring all kinds of knobs and switches.
But what you dó get is a beautiful recording of drone sounds that are clearly different from all other drone recordings. Which is due to the nature of this sound: It is the recording of the air.
“Only the air. What else, since sound is nothing other than the percussion of air?”

In case you wonder: the person on this album cover is neither Ariel Guzik nor Guglielmo Marconi: it’s James Clerk Maxwell, known for his classical theory of electromagnetic radiation." [Ambientblog.net]