image by Non Event

UbuWeb has a feature on our favourite (and only ?) lutenist Jozef van Wissem. a master of subtlety and minimalism. Wissem has been on undomondo a couple of times, both as solo and as a duo with James Blackshaw. He’s a very talented and highly intellectual artist as you can see from the quotes down below. His meditative & profound way of expressing feels anachronic in the pop age, where everything is quick/shallow, so I know this isn’t for everybody. Still, give him a try, he might be your saviour.

Ubu features the complete A Priori album from 2008:

And then I received a new album, A Priori, and I immediately played it and heard its stark and repetitive intensity, its stately and glacial march. There is nothing quite like it that I have heard before – it is timeless, breathing deeply and exhaling showers of snow, endless circles, mirrors, spirals, the sea. David Tibet

Selected Tracks from It Is All That Is Made (2009) :

Commissioned by the London National Gallery to make a sound response to a painting in their collection. Van Wissem choose The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein.

and Ex Patris (2009) :

Van Wissem’s influences span the centuries, from Dowland to Deleuze, Tennyson to Sacher-Masoch. He also waxes lyrical about Lacan’s mirror stage theory. “Lacan describes the formation of the ego as a process of identification with one’s own specular image; the mirror leads to tension between the subject and the image. I wanted to find a musical parallel to that. Hence palindromes.” He began experimenting with lute tablature. “I decided to write it backwards so the pieces would be more open-ended, and end unresolved.