Now, for a limited time, we have this classic NWW recording on cassette!
Merzbild Schwet was the third album to appear from the twisted minds of Nurse With Wound. At that time in 1980, Steven Stapleton was essentially on his own, with John Fothergill and Heman Pathak already departing over disagreements about a previous recording, although Stapleton did give credit to Fothergill on this album. Where the Fothergill / Pathak / Stapleton collab unleashed the infernal, freeform psychedelia of Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table..., Merzbild Schwet shows the first signs of two distinct aesthetics which became amazingly potent themes upon which Stapleton crafted many a variation. "Dada" (sometimes referred to as "Dada X") takes up the feverish, comic surrealism of NWW with a collage of exotica and lounge records played at various speeds, cut up, and fucked up into a orgy of slow-motion brass, hysterical vocalizations, squalid feedback generative noise, and vinyl crackling madness. "Futurismo" is a darkly discordant piece of intermittent events - rumbles, drones, squeaks, and other nightmarishly unknowable sounds - with a spliced narrative from women speaking in monotone. This was a ploy probably extracted from Robert Ashley's "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and later used extensively with the aid of the inimitable Diana Rogerson. It's Nurse With Wound. Of course, it's recommended.
The title pretty much says it all, if you were to pronounce it "odd lot." That should go without saying for any given Nurse With Wound record, and this one certainly qualifies, even though technically Od Lot shouldn't be considered a proper Nurse With Wound record. Rather, this is a four-way split between the four touring members of Nurse -- Steven Stapleton, Colin Potter, Andrew Liles, and Matt Waldron - each offering a set of solo tracks. Colin Potter's pieces are worth the price of admission alone, with the first being a creepy, creepy horrordrone that ranks as some of the finest that we've heard from Colin. Hissing pulses swell into an undergirding rhythm that guides a series of undulating, arching tones. Much closer to a really dark Biosphere or maybe even some of the later digitally sculpted Zoviet France pieces. His second piece plods with a mechanoid plod culminating in a huge guitar crescendo. It's surprisingly straight forward for a Nurse With Wound project; but it's actually pretty damn amazing, more like a brighty rendered Troum or Nadja piece. Mr. Liles offers a series of dada-exotica following his contributions to The Bacteria Magnet with some fucked-up skronk laced around slinky disco cuts with funky wah-wah guitars and freakish whisperings upfront in the mix. The Stapleton track features a vulgar rant by Hazel Two-Twigs against an unknown Texan hipster, who probably had "it" coming to him; and Stapleton's backing noise is a signature, wild collage of splutter, squiggle, low-slung prog basslines clinging to a breakcore rhythm (remember his long-promised hip-hop album?). Waldron's solo track is a splattered semi-improv number for bass, guitar, and drums, more in keeping with what's been found on his Perekluchenie album and some of the proggy live material he's done as irr. app. (ext.) in recent years.
Like May The Fleas Of A Thousand Camels Infest Your Armpits, Od Lot was to be a tour / mail order only release, but aQuarius was lucky enough to get a handful of these. Don't expect either to last long!
Here's a special sampler disc that was intended to sell for only 99 pence in the UK; but even with the horrible exchange rate and shipping costs, Paranoia In Hi-Fi is still a reasonable $4.98 on this side of the pond. BUT! There's a catch. You have to walk in the door of Aquarius and buy this disc in person! The idea that Nurse With Wound, Dirter Promotions, and Cargo Distribution collectively had, was to encourage the multitudes of Nurse With Wound fans and newcomers to get out into the independent shops and maybe purchase something else alongside this nicely priced cd... so no mailorder for this.
Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound has engineered this anthology as a teasing sampler into the wild and weird world of NWW, by collaging the tracks into a seamless mix and then splicing that collage into 79 separate tracks, making it downright foolish to rip this thing into mp3s. Yup, this is a mega-mix meant to be listened to from beginning to end. True to NWW form, it's a rollercoaster of dada cut-ups, splattered noise, horrifying ambience, post-krautrock jams, and psychedelically inclined musique concrete. We do hear bits from The Sylvie & Babs Hi-Fi Companion, Homotopy To Marie, the Stereolab collaboration, Alice The Goon, the hilarious NWW mash-up with James Chance, and the Inflatable Sideshow alter ego which appropriates Black Sabbath of all things. To all of these things, we here at Aquarius once again say "Thank you, Mr. Stapleton!"
Rat Tapes One may be the first in a series of outtakes and unreleased material from the vast back catalogue of Nurse With Wound. If the quality and diversity of material found on the first volume is indicative of what's to come, then we are going to be in for some serious treats for the next many years! Rat Tapes One also marks the return of United Dairies, the label run by NWW's Steven Stapleton, after years of inactivity, as other labels had been releasing Stapleton's records. What ultimately makes this album so fascinating is the range of production strategies and alchemical variations differentiating these recordings from those that actually made it on the various NWW records. Take for example, the opening number, a cover of Patty Water's "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair" originally found on She And Me Fall Together In Free Death where the drone guitar has faded into the distance behind a series of dark funereal bells (probably the same used on the Angry Eeletric Finger sessions) and Stapleton's voice twisted into a helium saturated cartoon of the original. Proving that the 1992 seminal album Thunder Perfect Mind was a true labor of love, Stapleton presents at least four different outtakes of the xylophonic percussion matched with the digital scrubbing sound that became the signature of that album. Even for the die-hard NWW fans here, some of the material is hard to place, especially where the sounds for the fucked-up drum 'n' bass number (seriously!) came from. While Rat Tapes One was originally sold at the 2006 NWW shows here in San Francisco for the fans hungry for more material, Rat Tapes One also makes an exceptional introduction into the surrealist tinged, psych-damaged collages that Stapleton has made as NWW for well over two decades now.
Slowly. Very slowly, the entire Nurse With Wound back catalogue is getting the reissue treatment; and in the absurdist spirit of Nurse With Wound, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the order in which these titles are making an appearance. Originally, Rock 'N' Roll Station appeared back in 1994, as an homage to one of Steven Stapleton's heroes Jac Berrocal, the French avant-jazz musician with a occasional taste for obtuse pop. The title track on this Nurse With Wound album is in fact a cover of Berrocal's most well known song, although by now, more people probably know of the song through Stapleton's remake rather than the other way around. Similar to the way that Stapleton / Thirlwell reconstructed Brainticket's lysergic funk and how Stapleton remade Robert Ashely's Automatic Writing, the NWW version of Rock 'N' Roll station is pretty faithful to the original, even if the original was pretty weird to begin with. There's a steady metronomic pulse (which Beta-Lactam have qualified as 'proto-hip-hop,' c'mon... it's a drum machine replicating the same drum pattern that Berrocal scripted back in the '70s) grounding warbled tones and Stapleton's repeating monologue about the infinite possibilities to be found within a Rock 'N' Roll Station, even if he is still "waiting for Michael." All of the other tracks on Rock 'N' Roll Station are essentially variations on the theme of the title track with a similarly laid-back rhythm acting as a foundation upon which Stapleton splatters the stereo field with distorted squigglings, gurgling vocalizations, looping snippets from Perez Prado's mambos, fingernails on the chalk board scrapes, and ghastly drones extracted from the ether. The pronounced use of rhythm on Rock 'N' Roll Station has rubbed some of the die-hard NWW fans the wrong way, but when has Nurse With Wound ever been easy to digest, even when it just might be one of the grooviest and most ecstatic albums he's ever produced? Oh yeah, there's a 'bonus' track (the "1.35 pm Remix") on this version of Rock 'N' Roll Station which was originally released as part of the Second Pirate Sessions of reworkings of the material from Rock 'N' Roll Station. Recommended!
Before I get into any critique of this, I have to say that Salt Marie Celeste is easily the best Nurse With Wound record in years!
Throughout the 25 years of Nurse With Wound recordings, Steven Stapleton has actively pursued audio manifestations of Surrealism, often hypothesizing on what Surrealists like Andre Breton or Tristan Tzara might do if they had access to contemporary recording technology but still maintaining their bastardizations of Victorian aesthetics. Recently on recordings like Man with the Woman Face or Alice the Goon, NWW embraced obtuse free associations to build dense sound puzzles of dead-end jokes, absurd parataxis, and general confusion. However, Salt Marie Celeste is far simpler an application of Surrealism, as Stapleton renders NWW a vehicle for psychological horror. For this album, Stapleton and studio wizard Colin Potter (who has been the only other collaborator with NWW for the past couple of releases) have drawn from Gavin Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic" for inspiration; however, NWW never dwells in the lulling pathos which characterizes Bryars' composition. Instead, Salt Marie Celeste is a relentless album which imagines the tidal currents around the Titanic's demise as an inhumanly cold force steadily bringing the doomed ship to the bottom of the ocean. Through a series of looping mechanisms, Stapleton and Potter build a massive orchestration of fluctuations which swell and dissipate with an unnerving regularity. The central element to the compostition is an ominous wave of electronic sound which constantly tumbles forward. Fans of NWW will recognize this from the super limited edition Music from the Horse Hospital 2cd, yet done much more effectively here. Wooden creaks and moans emerge from this gravity well of sound, before breaking up and disappearing amidst the tidal wave of intensity. For the references to the Titanic (or at least in Bryars' composition), Salt Marie Celeste conjures suffocating and bleak images of ghost ships mysteriously appearing on the horizon.
Regardless, this is clearly one of Nurse With Wound's best and should not be missed!
There was an old Nurse With Wound LP which Steve Stapleton (the madman behind NWW) sold to the old Rough Trade distribution in the UK for $99.99 simply because he knew of glitch in the accounting system that would cause the whole system to crash when anyone bought his record. Not quite as maddening a prospect here, but still he has released all of the unused tracks from the Rock 'n' Roll Station sessions across a double cd and a single piece of vinyl... Yes, there are different tracks on the vinyl and the cd (the 2nd disc is the complete Rock 'n' Roll Station album), making the consumer decisions of which to buy (if not both) somewhat problematic. Musically, it is 'rock' as NWW probably will ever get, with a solid recognizable pulse that punctuates the dadaist noises that is oddly similar to a Joe Meek with a drum machine. Easily one of the best releases from NWW in a very long time... and if it matters... of the AQ staff, Byram and Marc took home the CDs and Jim got the vinyl.
"She And Me Fall Together In Free Death" is the first Nurse With Wound album in quite some time not to be released on the United Dairies label. Portland's Beta-lactam Ring had the good fortune of acquiring the record, which certainly fits in with their impressive catalog (Legendary Pink Dots, Troum, Coil, Reynols, and much other avant-garde madness). Yet the change of labels for Nurse With Wound doesn't alter their conceptual pursuits. There's plenty of Surrealist juxtaposition, arcane musical references, and just a general celebration of high weirdness. As on the past couple of NWW records, here the group is paired down to just Steven Stapleton and his trusted engineer Colin Potter; but what is certainly unique about "She And Me..." is that it opens with a cover of ESP jazz vocalist Patty Waters' "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair," which finds Stapleton singing for the first time on any of his recordings. The darkly blurred, droned 'n' drugged folk rendition of that song recalls Stapleton's previous collaboration with Sol Invictus' Tony Wakeford on the "Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish" album. The rest of that side of the record devolves into a variety of musique concrete squiggles and free-floating particles of decontextualized sound. Side two revs up the motorik Krautrock propulsion with a considerable march that mirrors Faust's complex psycho-trances. This is vinyl only, and there are no plans at this moment for a cd release. It's unclear how long this will stay in print... so don't delay!
The last performance of Nurse With Wound was back in the early '80s. Due to the fact that NWW mastermind Steven Stapleton considered the performance a failure, he has turned down all subsequent invitations for live performances that have come his way. As of December 2005, rumors had been floating around that Stapleton may change his tune, given his recent appearances at record release parties arranged by the Beta-Lactam label up in Portland. While it remains to be seen if Stapleton will ever make that long-awaited return to the stage, he did accept a artist-in-residency invitation from the Lofoten International Art Festival curated by Rob Young and Anne Hilde-Neste of The Wire. So in the summer of 2004, Stapleton and his trusted engineer / collaborator Colin Potter made the trek up to the Norwegian fishing village of Svolvaer, with limited recording equipment and no musical instruments to produce a series of recording based on the environmental sounds of that tiny fishing village. Upon completing these recordings, the two then broadcast them upon the maritime radio channels at unannounced intervals, probably to the dismay of the Norwegian fisherman. Nurse With Wound made twenty-four of such transmissions during their Norwegian sabbatical. And perhaps this marks the first in a series drawn from those very fertile recording sessions. Shipwreck Radio Volume One features a precursor to what may be the infamous forthcoming Nurse With Wound hip-hop album with some crunchy breakbeats crafted from the clanging of fishing trawlers; but the bulk of the album follows with the ominous hypno-drone that Stapleton put forth on Salt Marie Celeste and Soliloquy For Lilith. Sonar blips and vocal utterances (some comical, but most mutated beyond decipherability) dot the lunar drones, noxious tea-kettle whistlings, and lumbering swells of sound that sway with motion sickness. The midnight sun never sounded so good.
In 2004, Steven Stapleton (aka Nurse With Wound) accepted an artist-in-residency invitation from the Lofoten International Art Festival curated by Rob Young and Anne Hilde-Neset of The Wire. So in the summer of 2004, Stapleton and his trusted engineer / collaborator Colin Potter made the trek up to the Norwegian fishing village of Svolvaer, with limited recording equipment and no musical instruments to produce a series of recording based on the environmental sounds of that tiny fishing village. Upon completing these recordings, the two then broadcast them upon the maritime radio channels at unannounced intervals, probably to the dismay of the Norwegian fisherman. Nurse With Wound made twenty-four such transmissions during their Norwegian sabbatical.
This double disc set marks the second set of recordings from those very fertile sessions. Stapleton admitted that there very little to gather in the Arctic expansiveness during the relative quiet of Norwegian summers; not surprisingly, emptiness is what Stapleton builds upon as the foundation for many of these recordings. Birds, surf, and a repeating radio ping appear to really be the only things that Stapleton and Potter appear to be able to work with; but they exhibit a masterful ability when transforming these sounds into ominous hypnotic drones and swirling atmospheres reflective of the more contemplative parts of Thunder Perfect Mind or the subtle minimalism of Soliloquy For Lilith. As on the first session, Shipwreck Radio Volume Two also features a curious metallic breakbeat number, reflecting Stapleton's ongoing obsession with hip hop, albeit filtered through his inimitable Surrealist gaze. Highly recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
When Steven Stapleton set out to make his seminal album Thunder Perfect Mind, he was intent on actualizing his idea of industrial music. Not what industrial music had become in 1992 with the likes of Nine Inch Nails and the Wax Trax! contingent of angry synthesists, but more of what Luigi Russolo had in mind with his Futurist noise-making objects Intonarumori. That same spirit of harnessing the mechanical orchestrations of industrial production holds true to the final chapter of Shipwreck Radio, a three volume series of radio broadcasts commissioned for the Lofoten International Art Festival and transmitted to the Norwegian fishing village of Svolvaer. While Thunder Perfect Mind focused on machinists hammering through a brilliant idiosyncrasy of instrumentation, the haunted sounds from the Shipwreck Radio series engage the monolithic architecture of the industrial workplace: huge cavernous reverberation, thunderous drones, metallic bellowings, and gasping exhalations of steam, acetylene, and oxygen. The first of the two extended tracks on the final chapter of the Shipwreck Radio sessions returns to this same material; and even though there's plenty of variations in the sounds found in the first two chapters, this piece finds Stapleton and collaborator Colin Potter in magnificent form. The second track is a bit of head-scratcher, though as it's little more than a DSP time-stretched applique of some vocal samples. The first track more than makes up for what the second lacks and is a noble finale to what is already a great body of work.
"The record is fucking amazing," or so says Nurse With Wound protagonist Steven Stapleton. So fucking amazing in fact that he's issued "Soliloquy For Lilith" in a handful of different editions. Originally released as a triple vinyl set in 1988 (though references have been made to a mysterious additional 12" released in 1989), "Soliloquy For Lilith" got the CD reissue back in 1993, standing as one of the pinnacles within the Nurse With Wound pantheon of surreal records. Now 10 years after the first CD pressing (which was a double CD), Stapleton has issued this masterpiece as a triple disc to mirror of the triple vinyl edition, and he's produced two extra tracks of contemporary material that perfectly complement the original tracks.
The iconography of Lilith is a rich and often divergent set of references, beginning with an ancient story (possibly of ancient Babylonian origin, but merged into Jewish mysticism) of Lilith being the first woman (predating Eve's birth from Adam's rib) who chose not to live in the Garden of Eden. While contemporary feminists have taken Lilith as a role model of independence from masculine authorship (i.e. Lilith Fair), Lilith has often been associated with supernatural tendencies with Qabalist scholars qualifying her as a demoness instead of human, manifesting herself as the 'hidden' second moon that circles the Earth. For his "Soliloquy For Lilith," Stapleton opts for the archaic readings of Lilith, or perhaps a far more personal one as Lilith is the name of his daughter. This is Nurse With Wound's mellowest album as a brooding contemplation of Lilith as an archetypal source for unknown magicks. Here, extended mantras flutter through an ambience created by the closed loop of various effects pedals and flangers, cycling through the built-in harmonics from those electronic elements as tidal rhythms and hums. The resulting album rivals any of the ambient records of Brian Eno and Klaus Schultz, adding a decidedly menacing feel to the ambient blueprint.
Yes, we certainly agree that this record is fucking amazing.
In May 2005, Steven Stapleton arranged for three performances in Vienna for his grimly aquatic Nurse With Wound composition Salt Marie Celeste, but he was quick to announce that those performances were not to be billed as Nurse With Wound gigs, as a long-awaited NWW return to the stage would not occur til a year later here in San Francisco. One has to wonder if those shows should now be qualified as NWW performances as recordings of those very performances found here on Soundpooling are now credited to Nurse With Wound. Details, details, details.
At the time, Stapleton had been working on the Echo Poeme series, as an intimately creepy affair for disembodied voices, a soundworld of appearing and disappearing vocals, female wraiths of breath, half-melodies, and fragmented proclamations. Inevitably, some of those same sounds churn within the relentless, creaking swells, easily identified as coming from Salt Marie Celeste. Of course, Stapleton would never allow himself to simply offer a perfunctory recreation of any of his previous recordings for a live setting and employed a gaggle of audio misfits to inject their own seasick madness into the oceanic themes of Salt Marie Celeste. Colin Potter, as always, was present alongside Matt Waldron (aka irr. app. (ext.)), Andrew Liles, and Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd). The quintet offered a panoply of lunar vibrations, mechanically squawking birds, tightly wound clatter, eerily plucked strings, and damp atmospheres to complement and augment the original recordings of Salt Marie Celeste for an equally haunted result. With numerous bootlegs of these performances floating around the internet, Stapleton and co. wisely offered the official version of Soundpooling with an unreleased studio track called "In Swollen Silence" which extracted bloodcurdling exhortations from Frieda Abtan's ominously growling voice as a surreal bout of violence to counterpoint the sublime unease of the live sessions. Very nice indeed.
So here's a question that may not need to be answered: did Pink Floyd come up with the idea of hosting lazer shows in planetariums for Dark Side of the Moon or was it a groundswell of psychedelically minded astronomers who took up the cause independently of the band? Obviously, a planetarium would make for a fantastic venue for a psychedelically bent excursion for light and sound. Just drop a tab or pull a hit, sit back in a comfortable space surrounded by kaleidoscopic lazer effects with decent surround sound, and go for a cosmic trip. So, why not have something other than what has become a yawning standard of the planetarium soundtrack? Why not something really lysergic like Nurse With Wound?
In Melbourne, Australia, somebody's willing to explore the cosmos with something far more alien and far more challenging; thus the commission for Nurse With Wound to score a piece for the Melbourne Planetarium's Science In The Dark Series. On the whole, this is a quiet subliminal piece of music with eerie charges of electricity and echoing pools of sustained pure tones, all of which set against low hovering rumbles and deep-gasping drones. Yup, Stapleton (here working with Colin Potter and Andrew Liles) has successfully sutured together the strategies for tonal beauty from his immaculate Soliloquy To Lilith with the very special nothing music of A Missing Sense. While 95 percent of Space Music is cosmic solitude and deep-space floating for Nurse With Wound, the other 5 percent is filled with huge ruptures of exploding noise burst forth during an early interlude of the album, followed by mangled bits of alien speech. Pretty awe-inspiring as with most every Nurse With Wound record. It probably would sound pretty fucking great in a Planetarium, too!
"A collection of musical debris from the original Who Can I Turn To Stereo session" is all that Beta-Lactam provides in terms of information about this album. Along with Rock 'N' Roll Station released a few years earlier, the 1996 album Who Can I Turn To Stereo could be seen as one of the few gateway albums into the hermetic sonic realm of Nurse With Wound. While NWW's Steven Stapleton has made no bones about the albums that have influenced his project (and in many ways, the Nurse With Wound LIST of influences which was included in the first album has become a collector's checklist of terminally out-there kosmiche rock and psychedelic electronics), the combination of those influences have defined one of the most singularly unique voices in all of music history. So when it comes to a NWW album with 'crossover appeal,' don't expect Stapleton to make it easy on the ears. Who Can I Turn To Stereo found Stapleton deeply mired in his infatuation with bizarre exotica records and the mambo sounds of Perez Prado; and the three lengthy cuts of "debris" from those sessions are thoroughly abstracted variations that occasionally ground themselves upon a bongo loop which had developed into a signature for NWW throughout the '90s. The tracks weave with eerie smoke and dopplereffected shadow. Jittery rhythms co-habitate alongside the bongo loops and march on one occasion with a jagged guitar whose spindly sounds harken all the way back to the NWW album A Chance Meeting Between An Umbrella And a Sewing Machine. Sadly, the original version of Who Can I Turn To Stereo is no longer in print; and it has to be said that the original mixes probably work better than what you'll find here, although Nurse With Wound outtakes still sound pretty damn great no matter how you slice it.
A frightening record. Even by the standards set by the darkened mind of Steven Stapleton, the Surveillance Lounge is a terrifying album in fact. This set of recordings began through a 2007 commission by the F.W. Murnau Foundation to provide a live soundtrack for the 1922 Murnau film Der Brennende Acker ("The Burning Soil"). A silent film that was thought to be lost until 1978, it tells a tale of a man who grew up in the rural life but cut himself from that existence through greed, lust, and ambition, rife with moral and psychological dilemmas. Nurse With Wound is no stranger to the art of the homage, having constructed the ultra-minimalist masterpiece A Missing Sense under the influence of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing and the two Echoe Poem discs drew inspiration from the French New Wave film Last Year At Marienbad. The sessions, which gave us The Surveillance Lounge, came out of the initial material used for that soundtrack and were completed during the ensuing years. The bulk of those sessions actually had been encapsulated in a super limited edition box-set called The Memory Surface, which may be out of print by now, if not impossible to track down. That said, the Surveillance Lounge represents the best of this material, which was produced by Stapleton and Andrew Liles with vocal support from David Tibet, Freek Kinkelaar, and a host of others.
Moaning vocals and creepy whisperings set a darkened hue for the Surveillance Lounge, which also adopts a chilling set of piano notes that seem to allude to another soundtrack, Coil's rejected score to Hellraiser. Soon afterwards, a textured smearing of sand, earth, and rock conjoin to a deep wooden creaking that ominously lurch forward in a similar manner to the epochal NWW album Salt Marie Celeste. The use of vocal snippets - in French, in German, from David Tibet, of children wailing - are signature moves from Stapleton, and are used in some of the best collage material that Stapleton has generated since Homotopy To Marie. Vocal and textural elements always seem to collapse into darkened shadows, only to find Stapleton and Liles forcing another scream of noise, voice, and electronics to the foreground with jarring effect. For the central track "The Golden Age Of Telekinesis," NWW slowly build a shuffling rhythm out of the shards of broken glass that intensifies through the development of a screeching noise buttressed by the rapid-fire glossolalia of what sounds like an auctioneer. Expect to find a dynamic chasm between the relative quiet of the early moments of this track to the ear-splitting crescendo of a tape machine whirling out of control. As the album draws near to a close, NWW explode land mines of noise, scorched earth, and Tibet's screams in barren soundscapes of disembodied voices and shadowy drones. By contrast the album ends on a note of soft-hued easy listening muzak with its politely swaggering guitar, which is creepy given the context of its cancerous segue. Like we said, frightening! This might be a good entree to NWW for those of you who normally only by black metal or ultradoom albums...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"A Collection of Obsolete Primitive Variations" reads the subtitle to this lp from Nurse With Wound. Beta-Lactam had issued this in 2003 as a cd-r in an edition of 300 copies to coincide with Stapleton's DJ appearance in Portland, Oregon at around the same time. Of course, those cd-r's disappeared rather quickly; and this vinyl edition of 500 won't last long either. Given Steven Stapleton's history with recycled sounds, it's hard to say if this is a collection of outtakes like the recent Rat Tapes Volume 1 or if this is one variation on a theme extended over the course of the album. In any case, Stapleton's mastery of audio techniques through metallic clank, musique concrete razor cuts, and grim psychedelic smoke & mirror is on full display here with plenty of fizzed noise and electrical drone cast in sidereal shivers and electrical delirium.
Nurse With Wound's catalogue is a daunting venture. And if you aren't sure where to start, this double cd of collaborations offers an exceptional sampling of the wide variety of sonic adventures that Steven Stapleton could take you. The Nurse With Wound aesthetic is primarily a dadaist assault of musique concrete techniques within a weird, often dark, often psychedelic context of mutant pop.
The star studded collaborators including Stereolab (whose contributions here are "Animal or Vegetable" off 'Crumb Duck' and one of the "Simple Headphone Mind" tracks), Chrystal Belle Scrodd (Stapleton's wife Diana Rogerson performing an excellent kraut-groove), Coil (a remix by Stapleton of their ritualistic "How To Destroy Angels"), Foetus (as Jim Thirwell and Stapleton cover the lysergic funk of Brainticket), Tiny Tim (yes, Tiny Tim!!!), Legendary Pink Dots, William Bennett (of Whitehouse on a very early track before the two parted on bad terms in the early '80s), Current 93 / David Tibet (both Stapleton and Tibet have worked extensively together for the past two decades), Aranos, Tony Wakeford (of Sol Invictus), Chris Wallis, and Peat Bog. Windy gives this a solid recommendation for all (like her) who haven't known where to start.
Any Nurse With Wound release on vinyl is most highly coveted. Always with gorgeous artwork to match the sonic artistry within. So this release is a welcome -- albeit mysterious -- vinyl re-issue by Streamline via Drag City of Nurse With Wound's 1992 companion album to Current 93's of the same name. Beautiful, darkly shimmering soundscapes as assembled by Steven Stapleton and co. [among
Now, for a limited time, we have this classic NWW recording on cassette!
To The Quiet Men From A Tiny Girl was the second NWW album, originally released in 1980 and was credited to Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill, and Heman Pathak - the original trio which created the debut Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine and An Umbrella. Garnering a dedication to the transgressive Viennese aktionist Rudolf Schwartzkogler, the album makes an erroneous claim that Schwartzkogler "killed himself in the name of art through successive acts of self mutilation." Schwartzkogler's performances amplified the experiences of pain and mutilation, often counterpointed with aesthetics of clinical purity and precision. A number of myths and urban legends came out of Schwartzkogler's very controversial work, including one that he killed himself after cutting off his own penis during a performance. His death was much more of a mystery as he tumbled out of a 4th floor window in 1969. Perhaps an accident? Perhaps not? Perhaps a leap bettering that of Yves Klein? The reasons for his death are a mystery; and this album's dedication probably exacerbated the myths around Schwartzkogler, given the cultural cache of Nurse With Wound. The two tracks are strange sets of action based residues and Fluxus constructions from found object manipulation. The resultant scrapes, squeals, knocks, and blurts pass through all manner of effects in various states of psychic clarity, hedging toward a setting that could be roughly labelled "fried on acid." Stapleton had roped in the French free-jazz iconoclast Jacques Berrocal to add his own trumpet skronk to the slender cacophony of the first track. Very much an extension of the ideas found on Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine and An Umbrella.
"Two Shaves And A Shine" is one of those rare 'songs' penned by the lysergically inclinded Steven Stapleton, originally found on the Nurse With Wound album An Awkward Pause. The track's got a rolling bassline that would have made King Crimson very happy back in the day, a frantic backbeat supplying a spry rhythm, sparkplug guitar stutter, David Tibet screaching in rapidfire fashion, and all of those fucked-up Nurse With Wound idiosyncracies that make the track a distinctly Nurse With Wound track.
A few years ago, Stapleton discovered that somebody had created a mash-up of this track with James Chance's "Contort Yourself" (or was it the James Black redux?), and out of this discovery came the idea for a NWW remix competition, with the best tracks to be released on a CD on Stapleton's United Dairies imprint. Well here's the result. We can't say that any of these bands are well known projects, with the Bay Area entries from Xambuca and Forms Of Things Unknown being the only ones we even recognize. Not surprisingly, it's a pretty diverse compendium of deliberate weirdness, Beefheart theatricality, and cranky audio collages, all of which are connected by the insistent bassline of the original tune. The highlights are the blurred shoegazing drone of Pepe Wismeer, Xambuca's human beat box grooves which brings Tones On Tail's "Slender Fungus" to mind, and the scattered fun-house collage of Coil-esque electronica and squiggled noise from Lithopedion. Other contributers include The Stomach Aches, James Hill, BB, Anemone in Toto, Balog, dell.tree, the Vivian Girls, Horst Jankowski's 21st Century Swingers, Crab Fisher, and Nelson Ford Templeton.
There was a time when all of the Nurse With Wound records were available all at the same time, although this feat was the work of the much scorned World Serpent label, who screwed over pretty much every artist on their roster and pressed up a bunch of cds that were susceptible to bit rot. So, even if those records were in fact around, they were in many cases unlistenable. Who Can I Turn To Stereo was spared the bit rot, but didn't fair well otherwise. This came out in 1996, marking one of the first collaborations that NWW maestro Steven Stapleton conducted with Colin Potter. Along with Rock 'N' Roll Station released a few years earlier, the 1996 album Who Can I Turn To Stereo could be seen as one of the few gateway albums into the hermetic sonic realm of Nurse With Wound. While Stapleton has made no bones about the albums that have influenced his project (and in many ways, the Nurse With Wound LIST of influences which was included in the first album has become a collector's checklist of terminally out-there kosmiche rock and psychedelic electronics), the combination of those influences have defined one of the most singularly unique voices in all of music history. So when it comes to a NWW album with 'crossover appeal,' don't expect Stapleton to make it easy on the ears. Who Can I Turn To Stereo found Stapleton deeply mired in his infatuation with bizarre exotica records and the mambo sounds of Perez Prado, resulting in a long-form collage of hypnotic rhythms interlaced within a rollercoaster of seasick electrical squiggling, haunted ballroom motifs (some 10 years before Kirby was doing it), and spectral vocalizations.
This 2011 reissue is coupled with Stereo Wastelands - "a collection of musical debris from the original Who Can I Turn To Stereo session." The three lengthy cuts of "debris" from those sessions are thoroughly abstracted variations that occasionally ground themselves upon a bongo loop which had developed into a signature for NWW throughout the '90s. The tracks weave with eerie smoke and dopplereffected shadow. Jittery rhythms co-habitate alongside those bongo loops and march on one occasion with a jagged guitar whose spindly sounds harken all the way back to the NWW album A Chance Meeting Between An Umbrella And a Sewing Machine. Oh, there's a bonus track, "Eternity", not found on the original!
Very nice to see this material back in stock once again, and as mentioned, this would make for a very good place to jump into the wild and wonderful world of Nurse With Wound.
Now, on vinyl, for Record Store Day we were told, though they only just showed up...
Graham Bowers is a name that you may have heard floating around in the mid '90s, perhaps by way of some choice reviews in The Wire. While the nature of those recordings escapes us, he claims an eclectic heritage of avant-garde practices that might gravitate towards the Chris Cutler side of progressive composition. In the smattering of interviews we've read, he comes off like a perpetual outsider with no interest in participating in any particular 'scene' of experimental music. Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) met Bowers while both participated in a 2011 sound-art festival in Wales; the two then embarked on an ambitious collaborative project resulting in this unnerving, post-classical album attempting to articulate the inner workings of a human brain that had suffered a stroke and that has only a little over hour before death.
The dominant 'voice' within Rupture is a cacophonous collage built upon orchestral samples, fixated mostly on bombastic horns and kettledrum crashes. While the origins of the sampling is unclear, Bowers and Stapleton make little attempt to obfuscate the sampled technology, with the symphonic samples played through the keyboard, discordant and portentous. Amidst these orchestral blurts, quintessential slashes and enigmatic drones indicate Stapleton's signature sound design, with warbling ballroom vocals from Victrola recordings, amplified heartbeats, and unanswered telephones ringing. The album's entire mood is one of panic that steadily fades to black, and hardly qualifies as easy listening.
Now, a limited time, we have this classic recording on cassette! It is a little unfortunate that we've never reviewed this album, although it has graced the aQuarius shelves from time to time. 150 Murderous Passions sometimes designates the name of the 'band' and sometimes, it's the name of the album penned by Steven Stapleton (aka Nurse With Wound) and William Bennett (aka Whitehouse) in 1981. Regardless of how anybody wants to qualify the album, there are two distinct variations on these recordings, with both producers offering up their own take on the original source material. Bennett scoffed that the version Stapleton produced lacks the in-the-red intensity he envisioned for the album; and to be blunt, Bennett is totally fucking wrong. Stapleton (who published his through his own United Dairies, with Bennett's getting a Come Productions make-over) definitely offers the superior version, with Bennett -- despite all of his infamy in the late 70s and early '80s -- really not coming into his own until some five or six years afterwards. Yes, power electronics do require some finesse. But that's not to say this is a walk in the park for a Nurse With Wound album; there's plenty of atonal metal screeches, echolocation rhythmic patterns of klanging noise, stabs of feedback, and unholy screams which get collaged into a very claustrophobic, demented composition. Anyway, all of the other versions of these recordings are totally out of print, with their future reissue probability being a big question mark. So, if you don't have this awesome album already, get the tape. Now.
Early in 2004, Steven Stapleton offered a taste of the Angry Eelectric Finger project in the form of a CD released through World Serpent on his United Dairies imprint. The intent was to offer a precursor to a massive 3LP / 3CD set in which Stapleton had commissioned reworkings of unpublished Nurse With Wound material from irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke. As World Serpent went out of business some six months after releasing this teaser to the Angry Eelectric Finger project (without paying Stapleton a dime for two years worth of royalties!!!), the 3LP / 3CD set fell into limbo.
Fortunately, Beta-Lactam has picked up the slack where World Serpent failed miserably, and released the Angry Eelectric Finger project in its entirety.
The Nurse With Wound source material for all of the Angry Eelectric Finger project includes interlocking varispeed warbles, prepared piano recordings, ominously seasick rhythms, and a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals. Stapleton also gave the remixing artists recordings made with members of Krautrock icons Xhol Caravan as well as with David Tibet on "apocalyptic guitar." For the most part, this template of sounds is similar to the spacious, bleakness of his early Surrealist masterpiece Homotopy For Marie, although each of the remixing artists takes the material in a unique way reflecting both their own artistry as well as Stapleton's genius.
Cyclobe's alchemy upon the source material is clearly the most extreme of the three reworkings, as very little of the Stapleton and Xhol source material emerges intact on this album. Comprised of former Coil member Stephen Thrower along with Ossian Brown, Cyclobe (not Cylob) has often paralleled the golden, decadent timbre's of Coil sidereal dronescaping. With sparse and eerie ambience ghosting throughout the stereofield, Cyclobe's contribution to the Angry Eelectric Finger is probably the best we've heard from them.
Early in 2004, Steven Stapleton offered a taste of the Angry Eelectric Finger project in the form of a CD published through World Serpent on his United Dairies imprint. The intent was to offer a precursor to a massive 3LP / 3CD set in which Stapleton had commissioned reworkings of unpublished Nurse With Wound material from irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke. As World Serpent went out of business some six months after releasing this teaser to the Angry Eelectric Finger project (without paying Stapleton a dime for two years worth of royalties!!!), the 3LP / 3CD set fell into limbo.
Fortunately, Beta-Lactam has picked up the slack where World Serpent failed miserably, and released the Angry Eelectric Finger project in its entirety.
The Nurse With Wound source material for all of the Angry Eelectric Finger project includes interlocking varispeed warbles, prepared piano recordings, ominously seasick rhythms, and a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals. Stapleton also gave the remixing artists recordings made with members of Krautrock icons Xhol Caravan as well as with David Tibet on "apocalyptic guitar." For the most part, this template of sounds is similar to the spacious, bleakness of his early Surrealist masterpiece Homotopy For Marie, although each of the remixing artists takes the material in a unique way reflecting both their own artistry as well as Stapleton's genius.
For my money, the irr. app. (ext.) is the best of the three. Much like the stunning NWW album Salt Marie Celeste, Waldron's album rumbles as a sustained droning mantra; this time, it's from a muffled funereal bell while broken springs, distant mechanical engines, and washboard scrapes bounce throughout the stereofield as an aggregate of sonic detritus suspended against a black hole of sound.
Early in 2004, Steven Stapleton offered a taste of the Angry Eelectric Finger project in the form of a CD published through World Serpent on his United Dairies imprint. The intent was to offer a precursor to a massive 3LP / 3CD set in which Stapleton had commissioned reworkings of unpublished Nurse With Wound material from irr. app. (ext.), Cyclobe, and Jim O'Rourke. As World Serpent went out of business some six months after releasing this teaser to the Angry Eelectric Finger project (without paying Stapleton a dime for two years worth of royalties!!!), the 3LP / 3CD set fell into limbo.
Fortunately, Beta-Lactam has picked up the slack where World Serpent failed miserably, and released the Angry Eelectric Finger project in its entirety.
The Nurse With Wound source material for all of the Angry Eelectric Finger project includes interlocking varispeed warbles, prepared piano recordings, ominously seasick rhythms, and a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals. Stapleton also gave the remixing artists recordings made with members of Krautrock icons Xhol Caravan as well as with David Tibet on "apocalyptic guitar." For the most part, this template of sounds is similar to the spacious, bleakness of his early Surrealist masterpiece Homotopy For Marie, although each of the remixing artists takes the material in a unique way reflecting both their own artistry as well as Stapleton's genius.
Jim O'Rourke offers a soft kaleidoscope of DSP-impacted organ drones which mutate into clanking industrial loops. The second track features much more of the aforementioned Xhol Caravan sessions of free-improv sax and flute solos. Kinda 'jazzy'.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's possible that "Santoor Lena Bicycle" will remain a super limited package, with a run of only 500 copies and the handmade artwork; but it's also possible that United Dairies will release this is a few years as a regular jewel case edition. Of course, we won't know until then... So for now, it's big bucks for the new Stapleton project. There is a fairly interesting story behind the artwork, as the deluxe hard board cases had been built out of large scale paintings done by Stapleton and Aranos which the two originally exhibited for one day in Town Hall Studio Galway Ireland and accompanied by the music found on this disc. After the exhibition, Stapleton and Aranos chopped down the paintings into 6" squares for the artwork of the album. The whole package comes with a large size foldout with images of all of the intact paintings, so you can try to figure out where that piece from the puzzle belongs. As larger pieces, the paintings seemed pretty cool somewhat amorphous like a really colorful Terry Winters; as small entities, merely appear as splattered afterthoughts outside the edges of a Jackson Pollock painting.
Aranos and Stapleton have collaborated on a number of occasions, and I've never known why it is qualified Nurse With Wound and Aranos... and not just Nurse With Wound. All of the other collaborators with Stapleton don't seem to mind fitting under the NWW moniker, why should he? Aranos' gypsy folk violin *does* take center stage throughout the album of Dadaist drones and baffling improvisations, pushing Nurse With Wound occasionally into the clunky instrumentation of the Sun City Girls or even Tom Waits. Yet unexpectedly, a Disco Not Disco groove straight outta 1981 and a drunken vocal offering (sounding way too much like those stupid rants from SCG's Charles Gocher) spoil what charm the two had created. I've always been a bit of an apologist for Stapleton, but this one isn't all that good. Shame as it will be fetching $100 on eBay in a couple of months from now.
Now, for a limited time, we have this classic United Dairies recording on cassette!!
Mi-Mort was originally released as a split cassette by Nurse With Wound and Current 93 in 1983; and by some accounts, this marked the very first release by David Tibet as C93. These were the days of Crowleyian tape loops in the background with Tibet ranting his apocalyptic proclamations about the death of Maldoror. While the time period of Current 93's bleak, pyre-ritual abstractions was considerably short (1983-1987), it located Current 93 firmly within the context of industrial culture before Tibet shifted his course radically to a Comus / Wicker Man inspired British folk sensibility. This 18 minute exegesis growls with the drug-induced and Thelemic demons in Tibet's head and still makes for a very terrifying listen. A couple of the tracks from Nurse With Wound's side had made the rounds on various compilations including "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree," on which a little German girl pleads for her father accompanied by an ever intensifying psychoacoustically challenging high frequency drone (muffled somewhat by the tape compression of this cassette release), and "I Was No Longer His Dominant" is an unsettling meditation of undulating metallic low-end feedback backing a muffled conversations which mysteriously expresses a psychological crack in the narrator. The other two tracks, on the other hand, are exclusive to Mi-Mort, both scraping on pieces of metal in see-saw grinds with suitably intense electronic sirens blaring about. Yup, it's a winner.
Another archival recording from the United Dairies catalogue, Nylon Coverin' Body Smotherin' is an unequal split release, with 5 of the six tracks authored by Nurse With Wound and just one from Current 93. Originally released in 1984, the opening NWW track is an early cover version of Brainticket's jawdroppingly lysgeric psych-funk-motorik centerpiece from Cottonwoodhill. Stapleton has brought along Roman Jugg of The Damned to play organs and roped in J.G. Thirlwell and Diana Rogerson to freak out on the vocals. Admittedly, this is probably not as good as the original; but that original set a very high bar. The Current 93 track hails from the Crowleyian loop / pre-menstrual music stage of Tibet's cracked apocalyptic vision. "The Great In The Small" features Tibet growling about the antichrist around those Crowleyian chants and arrhythmic / anti-schooled percussion sounding like it could come from the Crass commune. The finale "Well What D'Ya Know Henry" is one of the best tracks from Stapleton's early body of work, with these Bernard Hermann-esque slashes of orchestral wash, churning amidst Diana Rogerson's demented ululations and the deadpan sample of a minor chararcter in Eraserhead declaring "I've locked myself out of my apartment." Creepy as fuck is what it is.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Given the subtitle Spitch' Cock One, this first release in the Angry Eelectric Finger series of reworked Nurse With Wound material may or may not have anything in common with a forthcoming release also entitled Angry Eelectric Finger, which might be a triple disc set. Regardless of the ambigous status of any future releases, for this one Nurse With Wound's mad scientist Steven Stapleton solicited Cyclobe, irr. app. (ext), and Jim O'Rourke to rework what we've been told was "an entire album of material." Presumably these are not remixes of older NWW tracks, but something of a parlour game with new material.
Stapleton himself produces the first track, interlocking varispeed warbles of some prepared piano recordings. Eventually, these settle into something of a seasick rhythm that is accompanied by a variety of metallic crashes and slashing cymbals, most of which are being played backwards. In the end, it sounds somewhat like a revisitation of the ideas found on Homotopie for Marie.
Cyclobe, a World Serpent staple comprised of two former Coil members, offer a bunch of ominous synth tones that do better than the recent batch of Coil recordings but don't extend much beyond that.
irr. app. (ext.) is AQ's beloved Matt Waldron, who contributes the best track on the album with an incredibly bleak take on the NWW vision of surrealism. Much like the stunning NWW album Salt Marie Celeste, Waldron's track rumbles with a sustained droning mantra; this time, it's from a muffled funereal bell while broken springs, distant mechanical engines, and washboard scrapes bounce throughout the stereofield as an aggregate of sonic detritus suspended against a black hole of sound.
Jim O'Rourke offers a soft kaleidoscope of DSP-impacted organ drones upon which he sprinkles tiny bells and some of the same mechanical springiness that Waldron also used. Obviously this is a teaser for that supposed upcoming triple disc set which is rumored to also feature Xhol Caravan; but considering the possibility that some of this material may not be there, it's advisable that you consider picking it up. Either way, this is fantastic.
Originally released as a split LP, then later reissued on separate anthologies of each project, this is the cassette version of the classic Nurse With Wound / Organum split from 1986.
The Nurse With Wound side is "A Missing Sense" which is a brilliant homage to the ultra-quiet /proto-lowercase composition "Automating Writing" by Robert Ashley, which is a very subtle composition of cut-up vocals and gasps with distant rumblings all of which flutter just at the event horizon at the edge of perceptibility. Stapleton's construction was originally designed as a private tape to which he could drop acid to, as everything in his huge record collection was far too shattering for his lysergic states. "A Missing Sense" like Automatic Writing is very quiet, with small vocalizations and sexualized gasps punctuating the muffled incidental sounds of what could very well be somebody vacuuming their carpet upstairs. Very subtle for sure, but there's plenty of room to take in the absolute strangeness of Stapleton's visionary work.
Here's what we had to say about Organum's "Rasa" which was featured on the now out of print Volume One collection released through Robot Records: The timeless, acoustic drones that make up the music of Organum could have been made for the beginning of the world or for its final breath; yet Jackman has always avoided assigning any specific metaphors to his work. Instead, this is music that attempts to exist purely within its own context, unconcerned with anything beyond its self-defined borders. Grinding motorcycle engines, steel strung instruments, bowed metal, and Japanese flutes are the instruments that continuously reappear throughout Organum. However grim, Industrial, grating, dissonant, or punishing Organum could be with such instrumentations, Jackman always manages to arrange his work to emphasize the dynamic and often beautiful tonalities of those sounds.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The late great singer Nusrat (and collaborator Brook) get their work remixed by the leaders of the new "Asian-electronica" scene: Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation, Fun^Da^Mental, and others. Warning: the remixers appearing here have all put out much better material.
Not a new release, but newly discovered, let's call it a warehouse find, dug up a little stash of this record, a killer cd collection of all the out of print vinyl releases from these Santa Cruz backpack emo / screamo noise rock, post punks. You can tell from that many-genre'd attempt at categorization, that these guys definitely defy description a bit, but if you like your punk rock, noisy, and catchy, rife with angular guitars, wild chaotic drumming, sinewy baselines, yelped vox, brooding post rockisms, and hooks galore, these guys will do it for you big time.
Not ever hugely popular, and infamous for erratic band behavior, these guys were one of the great unsung bands of the nineties, their live shows were intense, sweaty and energetic, the band letting loose as much as the crowd, the music the perfect soundtrack for that sort of wild, unabashed, heart on sleeve musical energy, but unlike many of the more screamo bands of the time, these guys were a lot more nuanced, letting some tracks stretch way out, experimenting with tone and texture, tension and release, their sound sometimes slipping into Fugazi territory, and at other times falling more in line with the Gravity Records Bands of the time, and at others sounding like some lost midwest emo band, that somehow wandered to the west coast. Even now, this stuff oozes emotion, and for folks who grew up in the nineties, or at least spent their formative musical years during that decade, every track here is pitch perfect, easy to imagine rocking out to any of these songs in a sweaty crowd in some living room or basement, or blasting these jams on your Walkman, or including them on a mixtape for that boy/girl you've been crushing out on. It's a kind of music they really don't make anymore, and by extension, it's a mood/energy/vibe, that music doesn't seem to have anymore either.
Nuzzles don't at all sound dated, as much as they sound of their time. And for younger folks who may have missed out on all this stuff, this is the sort of band, and sort of record, that just might open up a whole new (old) world of music, and listening to this stuff again now, we sort of forgot how goddamn great these guys are. In the age of band reunions, we'd kind of kill for one more chance to see these guys. Until then, this will likely be back in heavy rotation. Again.
We're not sure who NVH are, but what have they done with Ben Chasney?! A while back we had a super limited cassette release from Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny and the mysterious NVH, with the same title oddly enough. Needless to say, we sold out of those tapes and left loads of people wanting, and while this lp only release has the same title, it is NOT the same music. One song from the tape is duplicated here, but other than that this is all new music.
So what's this whole Chasny / NVH thing about anyway, well, you won't find any dreamy folky prettiness here. This lp is all about the noise. The noise a guitar and god knows what else can conjure up. This is some serious noiserock. Heck, there's no rock to speak of, this is just good ol' noise. But not really -just- noise, there's a whole lot going on. It's just all wrapped in some of the most corrosive seriously damaged skree we've heard in ages. Guitars careen everywhere, huge walls of crumbling distortion tumble onto blown out riffs, FX drenched squiggles are everywhere, angular melodies are twisted and tangled into psychedelic squalls, riffs are pulled apart into squealing keening roaring parts and hurled separately into the mix bouncing wildly off each other. Here and there the blown out rumbles coalesce into thick buzzing drones, and pretty melodies drift in and out, but are quickly overpowered. Imagine locking Keiji Haino and Kawabata Makoto in a a tiny room, armed with nothing but guitars, distortion pedals and a wall of amps each, dueling to the death, the results recorded and played back through a bank of busted effects. Wild and weird. And pretty fucking awesome. But definitely another one for the iron eared...
Packaged in a super elaborate fold out sleeve, all black, with black printing, black inner sleeve, and the outer jacket unfolds into a massive (upside down?) crucifix!!
Super limited too, so don't snooze on this one....
Super limited cassette tape of Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny and NVH! Please note: tht's N V H not N M H (i.e, Neutral Milk Hotel) as some customers have mistakenly thought! Released by AQ pal Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Big Techno Werewolves, Nam, Sounds Of The Barbary Coast, The Ropers, Dial Records) as part of his ongoing cassette tape series. Only about 200 of these are being made, so needless to say, don't snoooooze! Pssst... we also have a small number of some other Folding cassette releases, all with hand made covers -- a couple of short ones from Death Sentence: Panda and Donovan's own current band Sic Alps, plus one by Dark Yellow Swans (aka Yellow Swans) and a compilation he compiled with artist Chris Johanson called SSSSSOSS2. Dust off yer cassette deck!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In the late 19th century the Burmese (now Myanmarese) were introduced to the piano and were immediately impressed with the exotic instrument. They set about learning to play the entire repertoire of Burmese harp (the most refined music of Burma) and other court musics on it. In the process they developed a new genre of Burmese music (disregrading European methods completely) known today as "Sandaya." Master pianist U Yee Nwe plays traditional and contemporary pieces both solo and accomanied by traditional instruments. A beautiful combination of the strangely familiar and plainly foreign.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Holy shit! Yes we know that's a pretty over the top and perhaps cliche way to start off a review but there is really no other way to jump into talking about how rad this record is without screaming those words loud and proud. We first heard about Nymph from our pal Tomo (Tussle, Coconut) and he's not one to say something is awesome when it isn't, so we knew we had to check them out. And luckily Social Registry has stepped up to help get the sound of Nymph into more and more ears, as only a few of us actually got to hear the cd-r they released themselves. With this proper release finally available, we hope and think lots of folks will be getting way into Nymph, and their awesomely psychedelic witched out sounds overflow with sparkles of golden dust and magical dissidence. Imagine a much more stoned OOIOO dipping their toes into some free jazz creek while filtering it through their own unique take on no wave, but twisting it all up into something much more expansive. Like Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band interpreted by Gang Gang Dance and Death: Sentence Panda, or a pack of stoners breaking into Deerhoof's practice space and blasting out long jams that you can't help but play as loud as possible. For sure one of the coolest new bands we've heard in a long while!
Now this is high concept. Or low concept. Not sure which. This record is composed -entirely- of the sounds of Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares) and his lady friend Rachael Kozak (Hecate) having sex while on their most recent tour! Not sure if they are a proper couple or if they just came up with this project as a way to fend off boredom on the road, but either way, you can now hold the results in your hot and sweaty little hands! Outside of the occasional moan, or bit of heavy breathing, this doesn't sound all that different that what you would expect from a Venetian Snares and Hecate...um...coupling. Chaotic, splattery break beats, hyper complex drill and bass, buzzing and clattering, pounding and skittering. Pretty amazing actually, that all this violent, noisy electronic pummel was born from the gentle act of lovemaking. Or was it? Gentle, that is.
Sweet soul is right. This music on this disc was originally released on vinyl in the 1950s by Smithsonian Folkways, and now Latitude (the new, 'world music' sub-label of the prolific and generally amazing Locust label) has done us a treat by reissuing it. Melodious East African traditional music, with gentle male-female vocal harmonies sung in the Kikamba tongue, accompanied by guitar chiming like a thumb-piano. An enchanting disc... however we feel that despite doing the good work of reissuing this music, Latitude/Locust is deserving of some constructively-intended criticism regarding the packaging. First off, the cd 'booklet' isn't, it's a single square of paper (fairly stiff, but still qualifying as a violation of my personal cd packaging pet peeve number 493), and more importantly, there's no liner notes. Nothin'. Doesn't even say what year this was recorded, or who, besides David Nzomo presumably, was in the Trio! We are directed to the Smithsonian Folkways website, where apparently the record's original liner notes can be purchased. Huh? C'mon, if you're gonna license the music to reissue on cd, can't you license the liner notes too? Or write your own at least. I just don't understand. What with all the downloading worries so many labels have, you'd think one good idea would be to make the physical cd package as desireable and complete as possible. If I've gotta download the liner notes, that's not too far removed from just downloading the audio tracks too...
