★Incunabulum
Apokatastasis
Consisting of one side of solo lute material by Van Wissem and one side of new pieces by the duo. Film maker Jim Jarmusch plays electric and acoustic guitar and does tape on one piece. Van Wissem plays lute and 12 string electric guitar. CD edition.Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem met on the streets of New York in 2006. Finding that they shared many interests, both a friendship and a musical collaboration was soon born. The duo has released two albums of lute and guitar compositions: Conce…
Cold Soup
First release from this duo of Tokyo-based guitarist, Tetuzi Akiyama, and New York's Che Chen. Akiyama is in rare "Don't Forget to Boogie" form here; his heavily distorted, locomotive guitar lines chugging away as Chen's electrified fiddle drones, screeches and scrapes. Sine wave generators and a modified tape delay round out the mix. Sidelong live track on one side, studio jams on the flip. Released on Jozef Van Wissem's Incunabulum Records.
New Music For Old Instruments
Curated by Jozef van Wissem the “New Music For Old Instruments” festival took place all over the world: in Brussels, New York, Paris, Utrecht, Antwerp and other cities. The idea was to rid traditional instruments of their clichés. When one thinks of a lute for example the Robin Hood image comes to mind of the player standing under a balcony serenading a lady and getting a flower pot thrown at him. In order to update the instrument, to make it mature and give it it’s recognition it deserves, one …
A Prayer For Light
Heresy of the Free Spirit is a trio comprised of Dutch lute player, Jozef Van Wissem and Brooklyn based multi-instrumentalists, Che Chen (of True Primes) on violin, bowed rawap, bass recorder, percussion and tape machines, and Robbie Lee (of Howling Hex, Baby Dee) on portative organ, bass recorder, guitar, banjo and electronics. Using early European as well as non-western instruments and electronics, the trio plays arrangements of Van Wissem’s lute compositions as well as free improvisations tha…
Download
The album title Downland is a play both on van Wissem’s Lowlands home, and the Renaissance Lute composer John Dowland, rumored to have been born in Ireland. The seeds of this collaboration were sown in late 2007, when United Bible Studies were part of the bill for van Wissem’s first Irish concert. Van Wissem began recording tracks for United Bible Studies to overdub and a postal collaboration began in earnest in 2009. The Bible Students were given a free hand, and different band members were dra…
Stations Of The Cross
Ltd ed of 500 copies, first edition "New release from baroque conceptualist and improviser, Josef Van Wissem, who, for more than a decade, has been quietly but surely reinventing the vocabulary of that most unlikely of instruments, the lute. With the exception of the odd Renaissance preservationist context, the lute, which was once the most popular portable instrument in the Western world, has all but disappeared from our musical landscape. Despite the arcane associations of his chosen ins…
A Priori
“Once some music dropped through my letter-box; let’s summon their sounds into our world now, and deliver their names as Roses or Stations. The picture they imagined was both clear and cryptic: the certainties of the 17th century holding tight the ugly beauty that we now see scattered around us. I loved these CDs by Jozef van Wissem, A Rose by any other Name and Stations of the Cross. And then I received a new album, A Priori, and I immediately played it and heard its stark and repetitive intens…
Suite The Hen's Teeth
*Exquisite black and silver silk screen printed cover. Limited edition** Oh man, this match-up must be a dream come true for at least a handful of freaks, somewhere, us included! The tenth release on Jozef Van Wissem's Incunabulum imprint sees the label curator jamming with LAFMS legends, Smegma at the Pink House in Portland, 2010, infusing his 13-course swan neck baroque lute into their uncontainable free improvisations in eight parts. They appear to be entirely respectful of each others space,…
Das Platinzeitalter
Bianchi began to produce music in 1979, at the peak of the industrial scene since 1980 using electronic equipment with the avowed goal 'to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on complete realizing of the modern decadence,' but his works harked back to the musique concrete of the 1950s. This CD is a return to his early work. Maurizio Bianchi/M.B.: archaic waves, ancient loops, primitive electronics.
The Early Years
This collection has been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding, by composer Roger Doyle and performer Olwen Fouere, of the music-theatre company Operating Theatre. Operating Theatre has been active in two phases: the first from 1981 to 1988, and the second from 1998 to the present. This double CD celebrates the first phase, during which the company operated as both a theatre company, integrating music as an equal partner in the theatrical environment, and as a band releasing…