Jozef Van Wissem – It Is All That Is Made (Important Records) Keith Boyd 4.17.09
Back in the olden days it used to be that you could tell a lot about a record from its cover. The artwork on an album would lay out signifiers of what to expect, the artist’s intent or give further ambience to the proceedings. While this is probably still true to a certain extent, the trend in recent years is to go for either extreme glamour shots or to be obscure unto the realm of pointlessness. There are exceptions of course. Bands such as SunnO))) and Acid Mother’s Temple are still making wonderful covers full of great art, bizarre in-jokes and atmosphere aplenty. Indie and homemade labels are by far the best champions of good cover art and it is from that milieu that we get Jozef Van Wissem’s excellent new disc, “It Is All That Is Made”.

Released on independent powerhouse Important Records, this disc sports an amazing cover that serves to highlight the music inside and give us a clue as to the artist’s intent. The cover is a creamy off white paper with a church window portrait in the center of Mr. Van Wissem with his instrument of choice the Lute. The photo is done in a grainy gray/sepia and features the artist wielding his lute like some manic Heavy Metal guitarist laying down a riff. To round out this pose there is a very prominent leather and stud bracelet on Van Wissem’s left wrist. This is Baroque gone Iron Maiden and it works both visually and thematically.

Jozef Van Wissem is a Dutch musician whose lute playing and composition skills have earned high critical praise and allowed him to occupy the unique role of being a bridge between Renaissance/Early music and the most contemporary and avant-garde of sounds. Much of his work is based on the use of musical mirror images and palindromes. In his studies of music (under the tutelage of master musician Patrick O’Brien) Van Wissem discovered that from the Middle Ages on one of the versions of the “Cantus Firmus” (the given melody) is the backwards performance of the melody. Since this discovery he has explored the concept on solo discs and as a part of James Blackshaw’s group “Brethren of the Free Spirit”. In addition to the cyclical, hypnotic qualities of this style of playing he has augmented his sound with layers of electronic effects and amplification.

“It Is All That Is Made” takes as its’ theme the first chapter of Genesis. This is reflected in the titles as well as the atmosphere of the stark and dramatic playing. The seven pieces are first played forward then reversed in an attempt to create the feeling that the music has no beginning or end. At first we are presented with short fragments of a theme which when reversed and played back and forth create a lovely, trance-inducing seesaw of plucked notes. The ominous yet transcendent quality of these tracks swells with beauty and foreboding. Whole storylines (however ambiguous or personal) arise and swirl around your head in dizzying and delightful waves. Given the somewhat rarified nature of the lute one might expect this music to find its only appeal amongst classical fans. This however is not so. The dark beauty, epic tonality and restraint/release of these songs will surely find kindred listeners amongst enlightened Doom/Drone and Metal Heads everywhere. With this wonderful disc Jozef Van Wissem and his leather and studs wrist-band are truly getting “Medieval on your ass”!