“A judgment of perception is imperfectly verified by repetition”, wrote American ethnologist John Wesley Powell in his 1898 treatise Truth and Error. On Verdad y Error, Mexican violinist Gibrana Cervantes puts repetition to rather different ends, processing, distorting and multiplying her instrument until, in her own words, it begins to feel “more like memory than melody”. What remains of the original sound is never entirely lost, but neither can it be recovered intact.
The artwork by Mauro Ventura depicts a weathered sheet of metal with the artist’s name seared into its surface, the lettering emerging like a scar from the heat-discoloured material. As the opening “Blur of Memories” begins with hazy ambient textures and plucked violin strings, a disconnect seems to be at play. Wistful violin lines eventually emerge over a faint drone rumble, while the textures gradually acquire a grittier edge, bringing the music closer to the scorched surface of the cover.
On the twelve-minute “Voces Que No Vuelven” (Voices That Do Not Return), Cervantes explores the protean qualities of the violin, stretching its acoustic timbre into foreign territory. Through guitar pedals, the instrument enters the metal field, building a strident, coruscating wall of noise. Inspired by reports of missing persons in Mexico, the piece confronts the violence of erasure, not as a passive fading from memory but as a strenuous, deliberate act. Silencing voices that continue to echo requires effort, a sustained application of force, and Cervantes makes that exertion palpable in the accumulating distortion, repeated gestures and abrasive collisions that deflect the music from its course. Yet the very persistence of those sounds suggests the difficulty of extinguishing what refuses to disappear.
“Playas” opens onto a windswept, scorched sonic landscape, while “This / Keep” returns to the intimate physicality of plucked strings. Built around a simple pizzicato figure that Cervantes developed while holding her violin like a guitar, the latter allows melody to emerge through successive transformations, its recognisable contours surviving within an expanding constellation of violin voices. Throughout, her classical training remains an anchoring presence, even when the instrument appears to have relinquished its familiar timbre.
The closing “What Are You Crying About” brings vulnerability and melodic intent to the fore before giving way to a brief coda of field recordings: women’s chatter and laughter, an unguarded fragment of everyday life that suddenly introduces human presence into the album’s densely mediated soundworld. There is no silence, no definitive resolution, only voices continuing beyond the music. For Cervantes, error is not necessarily the opposite of truth but a space of uncertainty, where accidents, incomplete knowledge and altered recollections coexist. Where Powell sought to distinguish truth from error through the verification of judgments, Verdad y Error leaves the distinction unresolved, its sounds bearing the marks of everything that has happened to them, including what others might wish to erase.
photo by Camille Blake
To help me sift through truth and error, I got in touch directly with Gibrana Cervantes for a Q&A conducted by email.
Verdad y Error began while you were looking for a degree of internal calm against relentless external noise, but the record never simply assigns calm to melody and disturbance to noise. Sometimes distortion seems protective or enveloping, while an exposed violin line can feel far more vulnerable. Did making the album change your understanding of where calm and violence reside in sound?
I think making this album made me realize that calmness and violence aren’t necessarily opposites when it comes to sound. Sometimes, distortion can be very comforting to me. When I layer the violin or build a massive wall of sound, I feel like I can somehow disappear inside it. There is something protective about that sound.
On the other hand, a single violin line can make me feel much more exposed. There is nowhere to hide. You can hear the bow, the pressure, the instability—the body actually producing the sound.
When I started working on Verdad y rror, I thought a lot about finding a certain inner calm amidst all the external noise. But I also discovered that this calm emerged simply through the act of playing. Often, I would start by repeating a small motif, without being entirely sure where it would lead. Through that repetition, ideas would begin to unravel, and little by little, I would find the path for each song.
I think the album took shape that way—driven more by exploration than by a fully defined concept. It wasn’t necessarily about eliminating noise to find calm, but rather letting the process of playing itself help me find it.
You have said that you process, repeat, distort and multiply the violin until it begins to feel “more like memory than melody”. Listening to the record, however, fragments of your classical background continually survive inside that transformation—sustained lines, intervals and moments when several parts briefly form a recognisable harmony. When you distort or multiply a violin phrase, what determines which part of its original identity you want to preserve and which part you are prepared to lose?
Preserving the violin’s original sound is very important to me. One of the things I enjoy most about studio recording is playing with the instrument’s acoustic body and discovering how it reacts to different forms of amplification and processing. Amplifiers allow me to find new textures, while pedals introduce fresh possibilities. It’s interesting because many of the pedals I use are designed for guitar, yet they can react in completely different ways when used with a violin. I’m interested not only in processing the sound but also in discovering how the instrument itself responds to the setup I’m using.
Each song on the album involved a different process. “Blur of Memories” began with an idea I had already explored in live performances, but during the recording, I decided to slow the tempo, and the piece took a different direction. In contrast, “This/Keep” grew out of a melody that had been in my head for a long time; I kept transforming it until it found its final form on the album. The starting point was very simple: I was holding the violin in a guitar-like position and started playing around with some pizzicato notes. It’s a way of playing that brings me a great sense of calm—almost an intuitive gesture. From there, I developed the melody and built various violin voices around it.
I’m fascinated by how a musical idea can evolve over time while still retaining something of its origins. I think that’s where I find a connection to memory: things change, yet something remains.
My classical training remains fundamental to my relationship with the violin, and I have no desire to leave it behind. I love its melodic character and its vast expressive potential. My goal is to draw on what I’ve learned to expand my playing style and explore new possibilities for the instrument.
Memory on Verdad y Error doesn’t seem to operate simply as recollection. In “Blur Of Memories” sounds become obscured, in “Voces Que No Vuelven” they disappear, while in “This / Keep” a small figure is retained and repeatedly transformed. You have spoken about being interested in the point at which what happened becomes confused with what time has made of it. Do you think the “error” in the title is a failure of memory, or can those distortions themselves become another kind of truth?
I believe that error doesn’t always mean something is false. Sometimes, it has more to do with uncertainty—with all those questions that remain unanswered.
“Voces que no vuelven” was a rather cathartic piece for me. I connected it to a news story about missing persons in Mexico that deeply affected me. When stories like that surface, a multitude of questions arise, along with different versions of events—and often, no clear answer. It made me reflect on what we can consider “truth” when there is so much we don’t know, or when a story is never fully clarified.
I think that’s where my engagement with the concept of truth and error began. Later, I discovered other connections within the album, particularly regarding memory and the way our recollections transform. There are things that stay with us, even if the way we remember them changes over time.
I don’t think the album attempts to find an answer or establish an absolute truth. I am more interested in that space of uncertainty where what we know, what we remember, and everything we never quite fully grasp all coexist.
Your work with Florentina Holzinger places music alongside bodies undergoing considerable physical exertion, while your own performances have been described in terms of endurance and physical commitment. There is something comparable in Verdad y Error: repeated gestures accumulate, bow pressure becomes audible and the violin sometimes seems pushed towards exhaustion. How much of the album was composed through thinking about the body performing these sounds? Is there a point at which physical fatigue, strain or loss of control becomes part of the composition rather than something to overcome?
The physical relationship with the violin has always been a fundamental part of my practice. It is a very small instrument—one I hold so close to my body that I sometimes feel it is an extension of my arms. There is a very direct connection between movement and the sound it produces. Bow pressure, the repetition of a gesture, or even instability can completely transform a musical idea.
I believe Verdad y Error truly took shape after many live performance experiences. For quite some time, I had been exploring certain motifs in various ways, and it is in my concerts that I most frequently encounter error. You never quite know how the electronics will respond—whether unexpected noise will emerge from the amplifier, a pedal will stop working, or a string will go out of tune.
In the past, such situations would have made me very nervous, but over time I learned to react to them and incorporate them into what I was playing. Often, those accidents led me to discover new sonic possibilities. I believe that experience was crucial to finishing the album, as it taught me to leave room for the unexpected.
Working with Florentina Holzinger has allowed me to explore the relationship between body, image, and sound from a different dimension. Her productions feature moments where the music directly accompanies an action, as well as others where it becomes a sonic extension of the visual actions. This work has helped me develop a greater sensitivity to understanding when the music needs to occupy more space and when something very simple can lend power to an image. It has also led me to reflect more on silence and on what happens when the music makes way for the action on stage.
(Gianmarco Del Re)
