INC003
Tetuzi Akiyama, Jozef van Wissem
– Hymn For A Fallen Angel — CD

sold out

1. It Never Rains But It Pours
2. Silver Angels Across The Way And Golden Demons That None Can Stay
3. The Cry Of The Hawk
4. The Road Of Excess Leads To The Palace Of Wisdom
5. Southern Cross
6. Dark Is The Sun
7. No Murmur At The Door, So Frequent On Its Hinge Bofore

This release highlights the improvisatory aspect of Jozef van Wissem’s activity, but as is always the case with him, the approach is not so easy to categorize. Hymn for a Fallen Angel pairs Van Wissem with another rigorously iconoclastic artist, Japanese guitarist and Off-Site alum, Tetuzi Akiyama. Van Wissem improvised to a recording of Akiyama that he had entered into Garageband, a program which allowed him to “see Akiyama’s notes coming”. The result is something like a duo improvisation in which the participants are separated in time, with one player given the benefit (or burden) of precognition. This is austere, yet open music that unfolds slowly and laterally, with Van Wissem’s lute and Akiyama’s bottleneck guitar tightly echoing one another or sounding together in strange clusters of tones that are allowed to decay slowly into deep chasms of silence. Full of spectral chords, microtonal glissandi, and iron concentration, Hymn draws firmly from the work of both artists in forging a sound world that is as barren as it is deep.