10/16/2023

JOZEF VAN WISSEM announces new album & shares "The Call of the Deathbird (feat. Hilary Woods)"

JOZEF VAN WISSEM

- Announces new album ‘The Night Dwells in the Day’
- Out January 19th on Incunabulum Records
- Hear The Call of the Deathbird (feat. Hilary Woods)” now
- European tour this winter
Photo credit: Kris Dewitte

Today Dutch lute player and composer Jozef Van Wissem announces details of his forthcoming album ‘The Night Dwells in the Day’, set for release on January 19th on Incunabulum Records, and shares a first single and video. He has also announced extensive European live dates for later this year.
 
“It's like a part of my body,” says Jozef Van Wissem of the relationship he has to his chosen instrument, the lute. “The complexity of it is what keeps me going because you can always find something new.”
 
The ability to constantly extract something different and explore fresh terrain is evident throughout Van Wissem’s sprawling back catalogue and up to his latest album, ‘The Night Dwells in the Day’. Over the years he’s released countless solo albums stretching into double figures, there’s been collaborations with Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton, award-winning computer game soundtracks, along with award-winning film soundtracks, from Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive to Pierre Creton’s 2023 film A Prince.
 
Since studying the lute in New York with Patrick O'Brien in the 1990s, Van Wissem has gone on to create works equally as rooted in classical Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music, as contemporary sounds spanning drones, electronics and field recordings. Throw in some of his formative influences from the no wave and industrial scenes, alongside a dedicated approach to minimalism and this has resulted in Van Wissem producing distinct and singular work whose sound is often a marriage of opposites; meditative and intense, forward thinking but with a sense of the arcane. The Quietus has called him “probably the most famous lutenist in the world”.
 
The genesis for his latest album began during lockdown in Warsaw, where Van Wissem splits his time between Rotterdam. The Call of the Deathbird was the first song he wrote from the album and is the first to be shared, along with an accompanying video today. Over a hypnotic yet beautifully fluid and plucked melody - captures scenes of deserted streets, death and the intense isolation that gripped us all. One of the relatively rare tracks that Van Wissem sings on - along with some stirring and enveloping guest vocals from Hilary Woods (who will tour with Van Wissem later this year – details below) - his towering voice circles above the music much like the swooping deathbird he sings of.
 
Normally Van Wissem writes all the music for one album within a confined period but this one song from a few years ago stuck around and took on a new lease of life and so joined a bunch of freshly written songs for the album. “That song became something completely different after we made a video for it,” says Van Wissem, who shot a beautiful 10 minute short in Warsaw’s Soviet Mausoleum where the ashes of 20,000 Soviet soldiers lie. “Every time I leave Warsaw, there is this beautiful open space that I see and I wanted to make a video there,” he says. “It has this aesthetic that is symmetric, eerie and militant. But it had nothing to do with the war, this was before Ukraine. In our film the silence of the lute replaces the violent rifle.”
 
“The Call of the Deathbird (feat. Hilary Woods)” videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sV_28EXoxI
 
While one song written during, and about, the pandemic came to be the album’s centrepiece, the rest of the album grapples with the world as it moved on and all the dualism and dichotomies that followed. “It has to do with darkness and light,” Van Wissem says of the album. “The title can mean different things to people but sometimes people say that if I play a happy piece of music that it still sounds sad. So this is why I came up with that title.”
 
What Van Wissem manages to do so interestingly and eloquently on this album, and with much of his work, is merge rich musical traditions and history with a contemporary sense of exploration and experimentation. The Renaissance and Baroque lute music he studies and plays is so old it’s written on tablature notation of the time that few musicians understand and know how to play. While he also plucks images, song titles and lyrics from dusty old books to give them a recontextualised lease of life by being integrated into the present-day. “I like to go to markets and find old lyrics that nobody uses and that are not online,” he says. “It's like this forgotten world somewhere and that really interests me.”
 
‘The Night Dwells in the Day’ will be released on January 19th through Incunabulum records – pre-order here.
 
Jozef Van Wissem live dates: 
Oct 10th: KINO MURANOW, WARSAW
Oct 14th: LEHNGERICHT, AUGUSTUSBURG
Nov 7th: JUNKYARD, DORTMUND
Nov 8th: CINEMA PLAZA, DUFFEL
Nov 10th: EGLISE NOTRE DAME DE LA NATIVITE, MORET- SUR- LOING
Nov 11th: CAFE POMPIER, BORDEAUX
Nov 12th: CINEMATOGRAPHE, NANTES
Nov 24th: A4 ZERO SPACE, BRATISLAVA
Nov 25th: CHURCH OF ST AGNES OF BOHEMIA, PRAGUE
Dec 2nd: THE BLACK LAB, LILLE
Dec 5th: SETMANA SANTA FESTIVAL, TOULOUSE
Dec 6th: CAVE 12, GENEVA*
Dec 7th: BRONSON, RAVENNA*
Dec 8th: TIPOTECA ITALIANA, CORNUDA*
Dec 9th: CIRCOLO DEV, BOLOGNA*
Dec 12th: ROTE SONNE, MUNICH*
Dec 13th: ARKAODA, BERLIN*
Dec 14th: TRAFO, JENA*
Dec 15th: HD, DRESDEN*
Dec 16th: JASSMINE, WARSAW*
Dec 17th: ST CATHARINE CHURCH, VILNIUS*
Dec 18th: VAGONU HALL, RIGA*
Dec 19th: KINO SOPRUS, TALINN*
* with support from Hilary Woods
 
‘The Night Dwells in the Day’ track list:
1. The Devil is a Fair Angel and the Serpent a Subtle Beast
2. The Call of the Deathbird - official video
3. With Our Hands Our Hearts To Raise
4. In Exile Here We Wander
5. Slowly The Rays of Daylight Fade
6. May The Bright Gate Welcome You
7. The Day of the Lord
 
‘The Night Dwells in the Day’ artwork:

 
Links:
https://www.jozefvanwissem.com/
https://jozefvanwissem.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jozefvanwissem/
https://www.youtube.com/user/jozefboys  
http://www.incunabulumrecords.com/
 

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