Photo credit: Kris Dewitte
"A very contemporary music, one that forcefully bends ancient traditions to the wavelengths of the anthropocene." - The Quietus
“Shadows and shade are embraced with ethereal results… Beguiling throughout.” - Prog Magazine
“His most direct, spellbinding work.” - Uncut
Today, ahead of European live dates and alongside newly announced US dates, Dutch lute player and composer Jozef Van Wissem releases his new album ‘The Night Dwells in the Day’ on Incunabulum Records.
“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”.
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 re-contextualised 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.”
Listen to 'The Night Dwells in the Day' in full: https://jozefvanwissem.bandcamp.com/album/the-night-dwells-in-the-day
Jozef Van Wissem European dates:
20/01/2024 PT Leiria Teatro Miguel Franco
21/01/2024 PT Porto Novo Ático AGEAS
24/01/2024 PT Lisboa Teatro Ibérico
25/01/2024 PT Guarda Teatro Municipal da Guarda
26/01/2024 PT Portalegre Centro de Artes e Espectáculo
27/01/2024 PT Beja Teatro Pax Júlia
19/02/2024 LI Vilnius St. Catherine’s Church ^
20/02/2024 LI Riga Vagonu Hall
21/02/2024 EE Tallinn Kino Soprus
06/03/2024 FR Marseille Le Molotov
07/03/2024 CH Basel Sudhaus *
08/03/2024 FR Paris Supersonic Store
09/03/2024 NL Rotterdam Kino Rotterdam *
21/03/2024 IT Roma INIT 22/03/2024 IT Torino Spazio211
23/03/2024 IT Rosignano Solvay Lunababana
30/03/2024 BL Sofia Dom Na Kinoto *
31/03/2024 GR Thessaloniki Mylos Club
02/04/2024 GR Athens Anglican Church
13/04/2024 PL Warsaw Timeless Film Festival Warsaw - Polin Museum °
* livescoring Nosferatu by Murnau
^ livescoring Destiny by Fritz Lang
° world premiere The Fall of the House of Usher
Jozef Van Wissem US dates:
26/04/2024 - Los Angeles, CA - Philosophical Research Society
27/04/2024 - San Francisco, CA - Kilowatt Bar
02/05/2024 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
05/05/2024 - Brooklyn, NY - Saint Vitus Bar |
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