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Reviews of artist releases: cd's, books, magazines, &c.
Jozef Van Wissem
Objects in Mirror are closer than they appear: Solo Lute Palindromes, Airfield Recordings and Electronics
(Bvhaast)
review by Patrick McCarthy
2006-01-26
On this his fifth album, Dutch composer and lutenist Jozef Van Wissem further explores his conceptual and compositional obsession with musical palindromes and mirror images. With all of his recordings, Wissem's process has been to appropriate 17th century lute music by transcribing it with the end as the beginning, then isolating sections and adding new accents, rhythms and themes. This is all played backwards and forwards to create the musical palindromes.
Though this is an intriguing concept, it takes some concentrated listening before these palindromes and mirror images reveal themselves. At first listen, many of the pieces sound like melodic and harmonic extensions of the source material but with a pedal tone or drone center. Something that is very striking about this music is Wissem's lute playing, as he fully explores the delicate subtleties and rawness of the instrument. To this, Wissem adds texture by mixing in sampled and processed lute as well as airport field recordings. All of this coalesces to create a richly textured music that moves at the pace of the 17th century while embracing the sonic culture of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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