Jozef Van Wissem is a Dutch lute player and composer, who is so attached to his chosen instrument that he says “it’s like a part of my body,” adding:“The complexity of it is what keeps me going because you can always find something new.”
Van Wissem will teach us all about the possibility of the lute on his new album The Night Dwells In The Day, which arrives on January 19 through Incunabulum Records. As a precursor, he has shared the 10-minute lead single “The Call of the Deathbird”, featuring Hilary Woods.
“The Call of the Deathbird” unwinds with sharp and rippling lute playing – despite the minimal instrumentation, there is an evocative atmosphere, with the instrument rapidly stretching out ahead under an immense grey sky. When Van Wissem and Woods’ voices arrive, they sing in a silvery tandem about the “distant cries of the elders dying” and other foreboding figments. Van Wissem’s voice is gruff and tethered to the cold ground, but Woods’ is light and angelic, and when it breaks free from the harmony it circles above like the titular Deathbird, waiting for the impending end. Contrastingly, Van Wissem’s gruff voice comes clear and direct, describing fantastical images and wondrous dreams that have lured him on this trip – and will keep you gripped to the very end.
The stark black and white video for “The Call of the Deathbird” was shot by Van Wissem at Warsaw’s Soviet Mausoleum where the ashes of 20,000 Soviet soldiers lie.
“That song became something completely different after we made a video for it,” he says. “Every time I leave Warsaw, there is this beautiful open space that I see and I wanted to make a video there. 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.”
Watch “The Call of the Deathbird” below or find it on streamers.
Jozef Van Wissem’s new album The Night Dwells In The Day arrives on January 19 through Incunabulum Records (pre-order).
You can follow him on Bandcamp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
