Acclaimed avant-garde artist, Jozef Van Wissem and American
auteur Jim Jarmusch are pleased to announce their 2nd LP, The Mystery
Of Heaven, due November 13th on Sacred Bones. The album will feature a
special guest and will build off their previous work, continuing to explore
life after death. A couple select tour dates are in the works and will be
announced later.
Today, Pitchfork premiered a long-form music video
for "The Sun of the Natural World is Pure Fire". The track is off
their 1st collaborative album, Concerning the Entrance Into Eternity. The
video was directed by Diego Barrera - the video is a mediation on the
afterlife. In Barrera's words:
"I've written a story in a way that its development
would be fluid, a structure that would relate with the basic concept of the
videoclip, the movement of water (and union of other elements, fire's radiance
in water when the soul heals). A relationship after death, where the dimension
or posthumous world presents itself with water, which is the environment where
the two main characters have contact, one of them is the personification of a
wound that is reopened which attracts and at the same time scares away, we
pretend to sweeten it or violently try to make it disappear. The solution or
healing that I propose is through balance, or at least what that word means to
me, I connect the relationship between these two (or one character, depends how
you want to perceive it) with Hermaphroditus in Greek mythology, Ovid tells in
his "Metamorphoses" that Aphrodite's and Hermes's son from great
beauty attracted a water nymph's attention, she was called Salmacis. So great
was her obsession for the beautiful lad that once she had him in her arms
(which were water, all her body was liquid) she pleaded to the Gods to never
separate them, and her wish was granted, the equilibrium."
ABOUT JOZEF VAN WISSEM & JIM JARMUSCH
Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem met on the streets of
New York in 2006. They shared a lot of interest and background so a
collaboration and a friendship was born. Jarmusch was looking to have Van
Wissem compose a score for a film he had been trying to make for years, what he
described as a "crypto-vampire film" about two lovers, outsider types
who have been in love for hundreds of years. Van Wissem's work comes from a
tradition of avant-garde minimalism and lends itself well to the
director's stark cinematic works. Jarmusch has played guitar in bands on
and off since the late '70's. Van Wissem's compositional style involves
hypnotic circular musical phrases that allow for a lot of contemplative
space between the notes.
Their first live performance was in Issue Project Room in
Brooklyn in October 2011, where they appeared together for a Van Wissem
curated concert program called "New Music for Early
Instruments". The idea for their first album, Concerning the
Entrance Into Eternity (Important Records) developed from their live
performance. Jarmusch has said that he considers these songs as Van Wissem's
compositions, and sees himself as someone filling in the background to
Jozef's foreground, like the "scenic" on a film shoot, the one
who paints the backdrops. "The sound of the lute is as
bright as the sun, a beautiful red color and my stuff sounds sort of
like the moon, more like blue, like mercury."
TOUR DATES
09/10 - New York, NY - Le Poisson Rouge (solo Jozef Van
Wissem)
09/30 - Louisville, KY - Cropped Out Festival (solo Jozef
Van Wissem)
10/04 - Brooklyn, NY - Issue Project Room (solo Jozef Van
Wissem)
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