JOZEF VAN WISSEM & JIM JARMUSCH – An Attempt To Draw Aside The Veil – CD – SBR218CD

You might struggle to conjure a more esoteric scenario for an album than the one that underpins An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil, the fourth record of largely instrumental duets from experimental lutist Jozef van Wissem and textural guitarist and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. On this hazy suite of seven pieces, the pair ruminates on the apocalyptic visions of religious poet and painter William Blake and the divisive ideas of foundational occultist Helena Blavatsky. Named for a particularly wondrous Blake passage, the finale, “When the Sun Rises Do You Not See a Round Disc of Fire,” fades toward silence as a robotic voice reads a paragraph from Godfrey Higgins’ 19th-century tome Anacalypsis. The sun (“in early times… believed to be the creator… the first object of adoration”) is the grand thread running through world religions, the clipped monologue offers, words pushed against one another as if racing to share this forgotten wisdom. This all plays out, mind you, alongside an electric guitar that treats riffs like mere suggestions and a Renaissance instrument manipulated here until it becomes a mirage.

Grayson Haver Currin / Pitchfork