A new year, another chance to get preponderous about whatever it is that makes us like a thing. Jozef van Wissem‘s Stations of the Cross is about seven years old now, a record I got and thoroughly enjoyed and always intended to follow up but entirely failed to. That was quite a shock at the time — just about minimal enough to sit somewhere near to Morton Feldman but just that bit more static and cold that made it quite a bizarre thing. That he was playing a lute but seemed to lack much of the stylings of baroque or early music (at least, that which I’ve heard from those eras) made for a strange and cold environment. Being named after the stations made for a compelling narrative of good Christian sentiment — pain and death and suffering. And this record? It’s been swimming about for a few months and I’m still not entirely sure what I make of it.
And perhaps that’s the problem — there’s these moments of aching stasis which make for isolated pockets of “ahh”, but in between there’s stuff that’s not really hitting home. The addition of Domingo Garcia-Huidobro‘s glitch-crackle on a couple of tracks doesn’t quite ignite or ember away, and it sits neither incongruously nor additively. I wouldn’t say it’s ill-considered, it just isn’t quite hitting me. And, while it always feels unfair of me to criticise someone’s voice, Wissem’s singing on a handful of tracks isn’t quite sonorous enough to carry the melodies — so “Love Destroys All Evil” is a lovely melody that doesn’t quite get executed in a way that sticks; the lute’s got such lush, wide harmonics and overtones but the vocals leave it in that category of great song, unfortunate delivery.
-Kev Nickells-
