Browse by Label: INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)

Artist:	AKIYAMA/JOZEF VAN WISSEM, TETUZI
Title:	Hymn For A Fallen Angel
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	INC 003CD

"Minimal classical contemporary folk blues played by Japanese rising improv star guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama and Dutch/American lute player/composer Jozef van Wissem, Their second CD as a duo. 'The music is gradual and contemplative, unfolding like an unhurried chess game, edging forward in a shared yet adaptable and accommodating language. Courtly arpeggios, blues slurs and other pointers beyond the frame don't disrupt the Feldmanesque autonomy of their continually mutating, freely patterned flow.' --The Wire, UK." Tetuzi Akiyama (Martin HD-28 guitar, bottle neck), Jozef van Wissem (baroque lute, bottle neck, edits.)

Artist:	VAN WISSEM, JOZEF
Title:	Stations Of The Cross
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	INC 004CD

"New release from baroque conceptualist and improviser, Jozef Van Wissem, who, for more than a decade, has been quietly but surely reinventing the vocabulary of that most unlikely of instruments, the lute. With the exception of the odd Renaissance preservationist context, the lute, which was once the most popular portable instrument in the Western world, has all but disappeared from our musical landscape. Despite the arcane associations of his chosen instrument, Van Wissem is no revivalist; his compositions often marry a deep and self-conscious knowledge of the instrument's weighty history with a rigorous post-modern sensibility that has encompassed everything from appropriation to minimalist free improvisation, electronic manipulation, and the mirrored or palindrome musical structures for which he is perhaps best known. These palindrome compositions, a group of which are collected on Stations Of The Cross, are compositions that, like the words 'radar' or 'wow,' or the phrase, 'Madam, I'm Adam,' read the same forwards or backwards. Each composition progresses through a series of notes to the midpoint of the piece, where the sequence then reverses and the pitches are played in retrograde order back to the composition's starting point. The effect is strange and subtle, and oddly psychological -- there is a sense that time expands and contracts back to the point of origin, while the exact moment of reversal is difficult to detect. Compositional expectations are similarly, subtly undercut and, being that the beginning is always also the end, these pieces tend to come to a close without resolution, which gives them a quietly unsettling, question-like quality. To make things even more interesting, these mirrored structures are often superimposed onto field recordings of airport terminal interiors which are digitally manipulated into mirrored structures of their own. These recordings lend an eerie, impersonal atmosphere, the specificity and contemporary nature of which stands in stark contrast to the timeless, esoteric quality of Van Wissem's gut stringed lutes. Stations is a record of quiet, stately beauty and concept."

Artist:	OPERATING THEATRE
Title:	The Early Years
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$22.00
Catalog #:	INC 006CD

Operating Theatre is an Irish music theater company founded by composer Roger Doyle and performer Olwen Fouéré. This collection was released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their founding, originally by the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival label in 2006. Featuring Bono of U2. Operating Theatre has been active in two phases: the first from 1981 to 1988, and the second from 1998 to the present. This double CD celebrates the first phase, during which the company operated as both a theater company, integrating music as an equal partner in the theatrical environment, and as a band releasing records. Roles were flexible within the company in that Fouéré also sang and Doyle also acted. In phase two there has been no band, and the texts (if any) have been "found," devised and/or drawn together from various strands, instead of being commissioned from writers as in phase one. Performances have taken place in both conventional and non-theatrical environments (e.g. an abandoned warehouse, a glass room in a hotel), and music has become more integrated. The first appearance by Operating Theatre (the band) was in the summer of 1981 with the release on CBS Records (Ireland) of the single "Austrian," with "Positive Disintegration" on the B-side. A second single "Blue Light And Alpha Waves" followed a year later, with "Rampwalk" as the B-side. "Fingerdance Waltz/Hymn" contains two developed extracts from the music for "Ignotum Per Ignotius," a 50-minute piece of music-theater performed by Doyle and Fouéré, written and directed by visual artist James Coleman, which Operating Theatre went on a tour of Holland with in 1982. "No Come," "Syllable," "Dragon Path," "The Confectioners" and "Miss Mauger" were included on the LP Miss Mauger by Operating Theatre released in 1983 on the Kabuki label in London. 'Sir Geoffrey," "Satanasa" and "Clubmusic/Amene-Moi" are from the Operating Theatre production of The Diamond Body written by Aidan Mathews, a 75-minute solo performance by Fouéré, which opened at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin in 1984 and toured in London, Glasgow, New Jersey, Avignon and Caracas up until 1988. Also in 1984, the company mounted a production of the Lorca play The Love Of Don Perlimplin And Belisa In The Garden, turning it into an "electronic chamber opera of sorts." This time, Fouéré directed and Doyle and Elena Lopez played the title roles. A 56-minute suite of Doyle's music from this production, developed as a music-only experience, was released in 2000 as part of a double CD called Fairlight Memories. Three tracks are included here. In October 1983 Olwen and Roger were asked to perform new material for an Irish TV arts show and to demonstrate the latest in music technology -- the Fairlight Computer Music Instrument. "Part Of My Make-up" is the song they wrote for that occasion. "The Tractor" comes from 1984, from days of intense Operating Theatre activity, but was never used for anything in the end. It gets its first outing here. "Queen Of No Heart" and "Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In The Mouth" were the result of an initial collaboration between singer/lyricist Elena Lopez and Roger Doyle and were released by Mother Records, the label set up by U2, as a single by Operating Theatre in 1986, with Lopez on main vocals and drummer Sean Devitt joining the band for this recording. Fouéré was asked to play the title role in the Gate Theatre's production of Oscar Wilde's Salome, directed by Steven Berkoff in 1988, and Doyle was asked to compose the music -- a two hour on-stage live piano score. "Before She Was Asked To Dance" is an early version of what was to become "Salome's Dance." The first phase of the company's activity had come to an end. "Johnny's Body At 002" is a work made in preparation for the first Operating Theatre production in phase two, Angel/Babel (1999).

Artist:	VAN WISSEM, JOZEF
Title:	A Priori
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	INC 009CD

2008 release. Liner notes by David Tibet:
"Once some music dropped through my letter-box; let's summon their sounds into our world now, and deliver their names as Roses or Stations. The picture they imagined was both clear and cryptic: the certainties of the 17th century holding tight the ugly beauty that we now see scattered around us. I loved these CDs by Jozef van Wissem, A Rose By Any Other Name and Stations Of The Cross. 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. When Jozef plays the lute, he pours out endless space. What can I say but let the rain come, close your eyes and watch the stars fall and rise and fall again."
"Something has been slowly happening to the perception of lutes, over the past five years or so the instrument has received a kind of popular culture pardon. Jozef van Wissem has been more of a sniper in this battle rather than a braying officer, his releases finding their mark and word spreading of his undoubted skill. A Priori is the most complete example yet of this Renaissance-tagged instrument embracing timelessness. His minimalist playing may be a taint to those who prefer whippersnappers offering rippling runs of notes, to those accustomed to listen till they became surfeited, but van Wissem plays with a tender surety. There is a Satie-like feel to the melody on 'Aerumna,' the sharp strings announcing the notes like sundial chimes. His use of musical palindromes, instead of tying the pieces to form, makes his music seem instead like long, gentle arcs of endless recurring melody. (8/10) --Scott McKeating, Foxy Digitalis

Artist:	SMEGMA & JOZEF VAN WISSEM
Title:	Suite The Hen's Teeth
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	LP
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	INC 010LP

Incunabulum label-curator Jozef Van Wissem and Smegma's Ju Suk Reet Meate collaborate at the Pink House in Portland, Oregon, 2010. Recorded by Ju Suk Reet Meate on the coldest day in Meate's bathroom. The pieces are named after classical solo baroque lute pieces and this deconstructed classical baroque lute suite form will definitely piss off the purists. Jozef van Wissem plays a 13-course swan neck baroque lute built by Michael Schreiner. Screenprinted black and silver cover.

Artist:	HERESY OF THE FREE SPIRIT
Title:	A Prayer For Light
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	LP
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	INC 011LP

Heresy Of The Free Spirit is a trio comprised of Dutch lute player, Jozef van Wissem and Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalists, Che Chen (of True Primes) on violin, bowed rawap, bass recorder, percussion and tape machines, and Robbie Lee (of Howling Hex, Baby Dee, Brightblack Morning Light) on portative organ, bass recorder, guitar, banjo and electronics. Using early European as well as non-Western instruments and electronics, the trio plays arrangements of van Wissem's lute compositions as well as free improvisations that draw on early music, folk traditions, minimalism and noise. Fully utilizing the extended techniques, unique textures and tuning possibilities of their unusual instruments, the trio use both repetition and silence as ways of entering trance-like states. Their record, A Prayer For Light is a radical re-imagining of early European and American primitive music in which the sources are stretched and re-purposed to accommodate free improvisation, extended, repetitive song forms, and tape manipulations. Screenprinted black and silver cover. Art by Che Chen.

Artist:	UNITED BIBLE STUDIES & JOZEF VAN WISSEM
Title:	Downland
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	LP
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	INC 012LP

Dutch lutenist Jozef van Wissem is renowned for his experimental approach to Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music. By cutting-and-pasting classical pieces, constructing palindromic melodies, or adding electronics and processed field recordings, he manages to seamlessly bridge the musical languages of the 17th and 21st centuries. If this approach seems coldly academic on paper, the results are anything but: his music is uncluttered and direct, with a viscerally hypnotic and emotional impact, and delivered with an ascetic intensity reflected both in his Biblical titles and his No Wave influences. He has collaborated with James Blackshaw, Smegma, Keiji Haino and Jim Jarmusch, amongst others. Mostly based in Ireland, the ever-shifting line-ups of United Bible Studies have spent the last decade roaming far and wide from their folk roots, exploring ecstatic group improvisation, song-craft, and studio-based prog epics. The album title Downland is a play both on van Wissem's Lowlands home, and the Renaissance lute composer John Dowland, rumored to have been born in Ireland. The seeds of this collaboration were sown in late 2007, when United Bible Studies were part of the bill for van Wissem's first Irish concert. He was particularly taken with Paul Condon's bass playing and eventually wrote a piece with this in mind, which became the ecstatic "Come Holy Ghost." Van Wissem began recording tracks for United Bible Studies to overdub and a postal collaboration began in earnest in 2009. The Bible Students were given a free hand, and different band members were drawn to different pieces. Áine O'Dwyers' harp playing goes hand in glove with the lute parts, both players favoring hypnotic figures accruing impact over time. The album is bookended by two different versions of the same composition, "Downland" and "The Seas Have Lifted Up Their Voice." Propulsive and metronomic, with Beach Boys-inspired harmonies, it led UBS to a new way of working. Van Wissem's pieces were either stark and minimal, or had multi-layered harmonies which led UBS into less-than-familiar territory. The sparser pieces lent themselves to being shaped into songs, and the addition of extemporaneous textures. Van Wissem wrote the lyrics for "Altars Of Brick (The Day Is Coming)" for Alison O'Donnell to sing. Its ominous tone inspired Gavin Prior to write the tangentially-related "Í Rith na h-Óiche" in Gaelic. O'Donnell did historical research for her courtly romance "Seven Tears," named after Dowland's famous song cycle. The Bible Students have woven murk and mystery around the lucid austerity of van Wissem's compositions, together creating an album which is unlike anything in either of their substantial back catalogs and more than the mere sum of its parts. United Bible Studies are: Paul Condon, Diarmuid MacDiarmada, Alison O'Donnell, Áine O'Dwyer, Ivan Pawle and Gavin Prior.

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Artist:	BIANCHI, MAURIZIO
Title:	Das Platinzeitalter
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	INC 002CD

Artist:	NUGENT, CIAN
Title:	Childhood, Christian Lies & Slaughter
Label:	INCUNABULUM (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	INC 008CD