Jim Jarmusch's films often give life's bit-part players a central role. There's Eddie from Stranger Than Paradise, played by former Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson, whose weatherworn existence revolved around placing bets at the dog track. Ghost Dog deposited an ice cream salesman played by Isaach De Bankolé as the best friend of the titular character. The musical choices for Jarmusch's films, so often pivotal to the action, reflect his decision to cast Hollywood stars alongside relative unknowns. The Broken Flowers soundtrack featured contributions from Mulatu Astatke, Marvin Gaye, and Sleep. His forthcoming vampire feature, Only Lovers Left Alive, will pull another musician out of the shadows, with Dutch lutist Jozef Van Wissem providing music for the film. The Mystery of Heaven is the pair's third musical collaboration this year, following Concerning the Entrance Into Eternity (on Important) and Apokatastasis (on Van Wissem's own Incunabulum label).
The story of how this duo met, in a chance meeting on a New York City street, where Van Wissem pushed a CD into Jarmusch's hand, feels like it was pulled directly from one of the director's movies. The music they make together retains certain tenets of those films, too. There's a strong sense of magic and mystery, all delivered with a beautiful simplicity. If you strip away the stylistic heft of Jarmusch's films, there are often deceptively basic human emotions underpinning the narrative, albeit ones revealed through the eyes of emotionally damaged individuals. The tracks on The Mystery of Heaven reach down to the same spot, as told through Van Wissem's forlorn lute playing and Jarmusch's feedback-addled guitar parts. Their only diversion is to employ actress (and Only Lovers star) Tilda Swinton to provide a stern spoken word passage over "The More She Burns the More Beautifully She Glows".
Much of this record is a gentle advance on the ideas of Concerning the Entrance Into Eternity, with Jarmusch again taking a back seat to Van Wissem's lead. It's a meditative piece, and one that passes naturally from bristly, repetitive motifs ("Flowing Light of the Godhead") to more subdued material ("The Mystery of Heaven"). Even when they reach peak noise, about two thirds of the way through "Flowing Light", it's more hypnotic than aggressive. This is material with a firmly contemplative edge to it, casting a spell only broken with the occasional fluffed note or lapse into accidental dissonance. There's a definite sense that this was recorded live and with little practice beforehand. The title track feels sloppy and aimless at times, perhaps deliberately so. But this is music that benefits from a certain amount of discipline, such as the feral splendor of "The More She Burns", where the pair sync up perfectly following Swinton's wonderfully haughty vocal.
The fact that Jarmusch worked on this album with an actress and musician involved in his next movie makes this feel like an important step toward that project. There's even a filmic feel to some of the work here, particularly in the two versions of "Etimasia", which echo with a lonely, lovelorn ambiance. It makes sense that Jarmusch would want to break away from music that could superficially resemble "soundtrack" work, and he mostly has achieved that on his various collaborations with Van Wissem. But the versions of "Etimasia" on The Mystery of Heaven shift closer to a place in which he's become more comfortable since his nascent musical efforts in the no wave scene. It's one of stark, pensive thought, populated by characters who don't make connections easily, whose attempts to make sense of the world are largely a solitary pursuit. At its best, this music feeds into a similar sentiment, pushing close to the kind of deep introspection at the heart of Jarmusch's films.
