Método Cardiofónico (2014)
12 tracks, 46 minutes
Spotify • iTunes
There are many theories that relate human beings’ love for music to its resemblance to their own cardiorhythms. Galician musician Germán Díaz took this idea and ran with it. Díaz’ Método Cardiofónico is certainly high-concept, and it’s not the first of its name. In 1933, Dr Miguel Iriarte recorded many examples of both healthy and afflicted heartbeats onto slate discs. The recordings were then translated onto shellac and published as Método Cardifónico, for the use and training of medical students. Díaz the elder was a doctor, and passed a copy of these shellac discs onto his son; as a master of the zanfona (Galician hurdy-gurdy), Díaz the younger knew he had to find a musical use for the recordings.
Each piece on the resulting album is based around a different rhythm from Dr Iriarte’s collection. From those most organic of musical bases, Díaz looked in the opposite direction, bringing in mechanical music in a big way. Across this album are probably many kilometres of hand-punched card, on which Díaz intricately programmed the parts for the mechanical instruments: there’s a music box, a barrel organ and a ‘chromatic rollmonica,’ an interesting little device that is a little like a harmonica version of a player piano. Here’s a great little film on YouTube explaining all the various processes that went into the making of the album:
Over and above this antique musical cyborg, Díaz and his friends create wonderfully sophisticated yet cheerful chamber jazz. Between them, they add the live sounds of zanfona, trumpet, tuba, clarinets standard and bass, oboe and cor anglais – the latter two of which I usually have a healthy hatred of, but here they sound absolutely lovely. The unusual timbres at play give the music a slightly wonky feel (helped by the occasionally limping heartbeats), and the typewriteresque click-clackery of the zanfona and mechanical gadgets make it feel like it was recorded in the workshop of some hair-brained engineer. Some tracks, such as ‘Cirro’ and ‘Lettre Pour Béatrice’, sound so whimsical they could have come straight out of a Studio Ghibli film soundtrack.
A lot of effort went into this album, from composing and arranging the pieces around the cardiophonics, to the painstaking programming of the mechanical instruments’ parts and even their fine-tuning to work with an ensemble, to the perfect balancing of the instruments and the techniques to incorporate in to solos to create and curate a very unique atmosphere. I’m not sure I can name another album that even tries to approach what this one achieves. Well done Germán Díaz. I ❤️ Método Cardiofónico.
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