Experimental Dutch musician Jozef van Wissem will release his nineteenth solo album, ‘Ex Mortis,’ on February 7th with Consouling Sounds. The award winning lute player, whose past collaborations have included artists such as Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton among others,
Today, the record’s first new track, “Cold Corpse,” which features guest vocals by Nikolaj Komiagin (Shortparis), is streaming and a pre-order for the album can be found at the links below.
PRE-ORDER “EX MORTIS”:
https://consouling.be/release/ex-mortis
Consouling is honored to welcome Jozef Van Wissem back for the release of his new album ‘Ex Mortis’. The idea of Ex Mortis, or ‘From Death’, was key to this album. It is inscribed on the lute used to record this album, and refers to the renaissance of lute music as carried out by Van Wissem. The new compositions are inspired by ‘The Book of Gostlye Grace’, which was written by nuns in the convent of Helfta in the 1290’s. It depicts an intense religious and even erotic desire to get closer to God. Playing around the dichotomy of eros and thanatos, Van Wissem paints a vivid and engrossing picture. He got the help from Jarboe, Nikolaj Komiagin and Thor to get his take on Ex Mortis come to full fruition. Jozef Van Wissem will extensively tour 2020 to promote Ex Mortis.
To get into Jozef Van Wissem’s world is to surrender to the inevitability – and timelessness – of a strange music created at its own pace, in a manner wholly of its creator’s making. He sets the listener into a private world, looking out through a glass darkly, such is the intense quality of the music. Brevity, simplicity, directness is the key. (Quietus) Van Wissem is ‘both an avant-garde composer and a baroque lutenist, and thus no stranger to dichotomy,’ (New York Times). He has been ‘pushing the lute’s agenda out of the academy and into more accessible circles’ (Pitchfork). He’s performed over 1200 solo lute concerts in churches and at concert venues around the world, including prestigious rock festivals like ATP and Primavera Sound, playing his all black, one-of-a-kind baroque lute custom build for him. The titles of his works often have a Christian-mystical appeal. Van Wissem moved to New York in 1993 and studied lute with Pat O’Brien. In 2013 he won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for best score at the Cannes Film Festival for “Only Lovers Left Alive”. Van Wissem has released four records with the film director Jim Jarmusch. He was commissioned to compose a sound piece for Hans Holbein’s painting “The Ambassadors” (1533) by the National Gallery. In December 2017 he was invited to perform the madrigal depicted in Caravaggio’s painting ‘the Lute Player ‘(1596) at the Hermitage museum. His latest record, features this Renaissance work, entitled “ You Know That I Love You”. The record’s title ” We Adore You, You Have No Name” comes ” from the Secret of Secrets book, a description of worship of the nameless all-inclusive God.””