NewObject23
Posts: 8
(4/8/04 12:49 am)
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Nurse With Wound Essentials
It's pretty challenging to come up with easy categories or divisions to describe the work of Nurse With Wound, as Steven Stapleton seems to go out of his way to defy genre, confound expectations, and change musical gears. However, unlike any of the other "England's Hidden Reverse" artists, Stapleton retains an essential, indescribable spark of personality in ALL of his works, old and new. It's totally recognizable, and it's that Nurse With Wound thing. That "je ne sai quoi" of dark, thick, rattling whimsy that flies around and perverts sound and reality with a radical disregard for creating something comfortable for the average passive listener to hang on to. Nurse With Wound is by far the most enigmatic, and thus the most eternally rewarding, of the EHR artists. Not as sexy as Coil, not as romantic as Death in June, not as literate as Current 93, Stapleton's art is the ultimate experiment in creating delirious psychedelia that retains very little connection to any other music heard before.
This is not to say that NWW doesn't have influences. The famous "Influence List" that appears in the liner notes of the first album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table... details a long list of krautrock, free jazz, noise, avant prog, outsider, psychedelic, experimental, exotica, avant-garde just plain un-loophole-able sound artists from the 50's, 60's and 70's. But these influences always get filtered in a peculiarly Stapletonian way, where even a minimalist electronic drone sculpture like Soliloquy for Lilith maintains a vestigial atmosphere of warped humour and dislocation. I guess you can tell that I really like Nurse With Wound. Here are my favorite releases:
Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella (1979)
(Great first album of avant-improvised noise played by non-musicians trying to make an ungodly weird racket. Works wonderfully years later, although it does not share the same incredible ear for sonic detail that characterizes later NWW. CD reissue in 2000 adds an extraneous but cool bonus track of David Tibet reading out the "influence list" against a Stapleton industrial noise backdrop. Steer clear of irr.(app.)ext "Migraine" and Charlottenburg remixes. Pointless retreads not worth tracking down.)
Insect and Individual Silenced (1981)
(Stapleton has disowned this album and vowed never to release it on CD. It is one of the stranger NWW works, incorporating bizarre atonal melodies and rhythmic passages. It's really quite good. Only those who trade bootlegs, download music, or pay $800 for the LP can hear it, though.)
Homotopy to Marie (1982)
(I skipped Merzbild Schwet, To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl, 150 Murderous Passions, not because they are worthless, but because in retrospect they seem a bit weak, especially in comparison with this album, which was a breakthrough for Stapleton. The first chillingly effective use of silence and queasy electronics on a NWW album. Haunting and effective with inputs by David Tibet, who was involved with almost every NWW album from here on out.)
Spiral Insana (1986)
(My second favorite Nurse album of all time. Beautiful, picaresque audio sculpture that spins a heartbreakingly inaccessable sound drama so effectively it's almost unbelievable. Bears repeated listens.)
Automating Volume 1 (1986)
Automating Volume 2 (1989)
(Collections of rare tracks that appeared on limited-run vinyl and compilations. Lots of great stuff here, in the twisted industrial vein, lots of dark weirdness like "Fashioned to a Device Behind a Tree" that has some of that S&M/kiddie porn-style imagery that Stapleton seems to delight in scaring us with.)
The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion (198
(Wacky cut-ups and audio plunders from old easy-listening records, spliced together with contributions from Tibet and others. Wacky and humorous, surreal and clever. Funny. CD reissue has poorly mastered sound, but the LP is next to impossible to find for a reasonable price.)
Soliloquy For Lilith (198
(Probably enjoys the best critical reputation of any of Stapleton's works. Ambient, longform sound sculptures based on swooping electronic hums and warm, dusty drones. Really quite good, but will not appeal to people bothered by minimalism. Go for the recent CD box re-issue: good price, beautiful packaging and worthwhile bonus CD.)
A Sucked Orange (1989)
(An "odds and sods" collection of discarded tracks and sketches. This is worth the price of admission solely for the two-part "Rockette Morton" which is one of my favorite NWW one-offs. Stapleton takes a little audio snippet from Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica album and loops it over and over again ad nauseum, continually adding tons of echo, delay and reverb until it sounds as if you are immersed in a peat bog filled with ranting extraterrestrial bullfrogs. Beautiful and funny. Play this at a party to clear the room.)
Sugar Fish Drink (1992)
(The first time that Nurse With Wound fully engaged the idea of audio surrealism. Tex Avery cartoon noises, sinister whimsy vocals, bits of deranged jazz and lots of indescribably weirdness. One of the best of the "silly" albums.)
Thunder Perfect Mind (1992)
(Best Nurse With Wound album ever, in my opinion. Conceived as a sister album to Current93's album of the same name. It bears no resemblance to that album at all, other than a brief sample that is evident on track two. Two side-long tracks of cold, clinical industrial rhythms. Absolutely stunning use of complex rhythms; incredibly hypnotic. Like finding transcendence and nirvana in a plasticated world of atomic age horrors. Wow. Recent digipack CD re-release adds an extra track that's pretty cool, but far from essential.)
Rock N' Roll Station (1994)
(Avant-rock jams and @#%$-up groove - Beefheart, Zappa and Xhol Caravan projected thru the Stapleton lens. The title track alone is worth the price - a cover of Jacques Berrocal's avant-beatnik bicycle spoke song off his Paralleles album. Best to pick up Second Pirate Session, which contains the entire Rock n' Roll Station album plus an extra CD of studio sessions that yield some very interesting castoffs every bit as good as the album itself, if a little less focused.)
Who Can I Turn to Stereo (1996)
(A little slight, perhaps, but still contains some great unhinged surrealism, and Stapleton's first use of bossa nova and mambo rhythms borrowed from Perez Prado and other Latin/Exotica 50's artists. Good stuff, goes hand-in-hand with the Funeral Music for Perez Prado CDEP.)
An Akward Pause (1999)
(Another mixed bag: a great song with Tibet doing some very Dada-esque lyrics, a long weird, goopy prog dirge with a Baltimorean talking about growing facial hair. Weird and lovely. I listen to this one a lot still.)
The Swinging Reflective (1999)
(2CD comp featuring collaborations with Stereolab, Foetus, Coil, Tiny Tim, etc. etc. etc. This is a great deal because it has the best moments off of the Stereolab collabs and the Tony Wakeford Selfish Shellfish collabs. Great deal with lots of amazing songs. My favorite is the Stapleton-produced Legendary Pink Dots song "Window on the World" off LPD's amazing Malachia: Shadow Weaver album. One of LPD's most inspired moments and one of Stapleton's best producer jobs.)
Man With the Woman Face (2002)
(Back to the soundworld and techniques of An Akward Pause, weird longform sound sculptures that cycle through queasy electronics, mutated voices, @#%$-up avant krautrock and head-scratching musical oddities.)
Salt Marie Celeste (2003)
(Minimalist, repetitive creaking sound loop evoking a rusty schooner slowly sinking into the ocean. Good stuff, but not one that I find myself wanting to return to very often. More conceptually interesting than engaging listening.)
She and Me Fall Together in Free Death (2003)
(Beta-Lactam LP, soon to be reissued on CD with bonus tracks. A really good new album. Side one is a hypnotic Tony Conrad/Faust-type jam, side two has Stapleton in his singing debut doing Nina Simone/Patty Waters jazz standard "Black is the Colour" done in VU style, chickens squawking and woman describing how she masturbates with wrenching, erotic electronic backing. Dynamic and odd.)
I will build another post about the more minor, average and worthless releases. These are just my favorites. The essentials if you wanted to build a good library, in my opinion.
I will be happy to report on the first volume of Angry Eelectric Finger as soon as I get the CD in the mail. Comments are welcome.
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