TETUZI AKIYAMA & JOZEF VAN WISSEM
 Hymn for a Fallen Angel
 (Incunabulum 003)

The second release highlights the improvisatory aspect of Van Wissem's activity, but as is always the case with him, the approach is not so easy to categorize. Hymn for a Fallen Angel pairs Van Wissem with another rigorously iconoclastic artist, Japanese guitarist and Off-Site alum, Tetuzi Akiyama. Van Wissem improvised to a recording of Akiyama that he had entered into Garageband, a program which allowed him to "see Akiyama's notes coming." The result is something like a duo improvisation in which the participants are separated in time, with one player given the benefit (or burden) of precognition. This is austere, yet open music that unfolds slowly and laterally, with Van Wissem's lute and Akiyama's bottleneck guitar tightly echoing one another or sounding together in strange clusters of tones that are allowed to decay slowly into deep chasms of silence. Full of spectral chords, microtonal glissandi, and iron concentration, Hymn draws firmly from the work of both artists in forging a sound world that is as barren as it is deep. [CC]
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 paterned flow." The Wire, UK

It Never Rains But It Pours
Silver Angels Across The Way
The Cry of the Hawk
Southern Cross
The Road of Excess  Leads To The Palace of Wisdom
Dark is the Sun
No Murmur at the Door So Frequent On It's Hinge Before

Tetuzi Akiyama , Martin HD-28 Guitar, Bottle Neck
Jozef van Wissem , Baroque Lute, Bottle Neck, Edits

 Barcode  689076547949

Jozef van Wissem / Tetuzi Akiyama
 Many guitar-players in the contemporary scene take a restrained, not-in-your-face approach to playing the guitar, an approach that is often highly personal and seemingly anti-virtuoso. They bring the guitar in new directions, in areas that maybe even Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe did not touch upon, drawing us even further into the specific sound of the guitar..  Tetuzi Akiyama initiated the famous Off-Site series of improvised music in Tokyo (together with Toshimaru Nakamura), a series that became one of the birth-places of 'silent' electro-acoustic improvisation. As a guitar player Akiyama has performed solo, and cooperated and recorded with amongst others Taku Sugimoto, Günther Müller and Jason Kahn Sometimes these collaborations lead to very sparse improvisations, with sounds that are on the brink of silence; sometimes they resulted in a layering of sound combining bleeps, clicks, shrieking electronics with relentless, yet not necessarily loud, sounds from Akiyama's guitar. In his playing of both nylon- and steelstring acoustic guitars, and various electric guitars, Akiyama focusses very much on resonance and timbre. This is most apparent on what is without doubt his most appealing release until now: the aptly titled Don't Forget to Boogie (2004). On this LP Akiyama plays the most rudimentary blues-licks often using a distorted guitar sound. restrained and minimal at the same time. Although in his duo with Van Wissem we probably will not hear the 'rock 'n roll'-side of Akiyama (his latest band seems to be called the Satanic Abandoned Rock 'n Roll Society), there is even in Akiyama's playing of the nylon string guitar, some sort of grainy, rudimentary influence of the blues – filtered through 40 years of improvised music.  Jozef van Wissem probably plays the most unlikely instrument in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance lute. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improv of the silent type – especially in his working duo with Tetuzi Akiyama. Although Van Wissem uses subtle electronic sound manipulation, he has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. This turns out to blend particularly well with Akiyama's prepared guitar. Van Wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his radical conceptual approach to Renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance by playing them backwards. He also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor leads to a climax, it rather stays on the same level of intensity. His music is quiet and not so much demands concentrated listening, as it will bring the listener in a state of concentrated listening – an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural ally of the current post-reductionist improvising musicians.