FAUST & NURSE WITH WOUND: DISCONNECTED

Three years after Derbe Respect, Alder, Faust would expand a bit more on their industrial portfolio by doing another collaboration album. This time, instead of reaching towards the Americas with hip hop, they decided to reach out towards Ireland in pursuit of a very experimental direction, one that, while not as bold as their previous, certainly bode a uniqueness among their past outputs.

This time they collabed with Nurse With Wound (or NWW). Nurse With Wound is a group I haven't heard much of, admittedly only one record being A Sucked Orange, and also this as well. Formed in 1978, they have developed the industrial and noise scenes ever since, being next to greats like the disturbing oldies of Throbbing Gristle, the foreboding Einstürzende Neubauten, the chaotic Foetus, and the oddly sensual Coil. They even helped out on releases for my all time favorite neofolk group of Current 93. They have quite the repertoire of releases, about 91 in total according to RYM, so they clearly are the ideal group if you want help with any bizarro noise works, which Faust seemed to desire within the year of 2007.

This would be their last record in their more industrial time period as they would go for a more straight edged krautrock sound on their next, but this is certainly a good one to cap off an intriguing and noisy era from this wonderful band. We get 4 songs, each over 10 minutes in length. Each song on here has quite a lot of lovely textures and noises to go around, a speciality with NWW. I think this record has probably some of the best it has to offer when it comes to the sound production, as I can really feel each weird drone that the songs occupy. From the disoriented pulses of the title track, to the bassy grinds of It Will Take Time, I can really feel the music on here, and I really dig that. There are some records that I love that have elements such as this, namely those within post rock, so to hear a more quiet, droning album that has this much weight and girth really brings me some delight.

I do also wanna point out my love for the drum work here, namely on Lass Mich and Tu M'Entends, both having these sharp and grooving drum lines, with Tu M'Entends building up to the anxiety and horrific tension that the track has within most of its near 15 minute run. Werner Diermeier certainly proved to be quite the master drummer, no matter the context. Makes sense since he has been with the band since their debut, so he had a lot of time perfecting his craft.

Despite all this, though, this album suffers the same problem as Derbe Respect, Alder...but in the reverse now. This time it feels like Faust is in the back, with Nurse With Wound being on center stage. In fact, I'd say the band themselves get less time to shine than dälek, weirdly enough. Sure they show up from time to time, especially Werner, but after their time in a shared spotlight with Lass Mich, they give NWW a chokehold on the songs after the fact, creating less of a balance than what their previous album even did, and it is basically worse for it in my opinion. I mentioned this before, but the best collaboration is within a shared spotlight, not with one artist in the sun while the other is in their shadow. This does not feel like Faust WITH Nurse With Wound, or Nurse With Wound WITH Faust. This feels more like Nurse With Wound having Faust in their back pocket if they need them. Because of this, really only Lass Mich I can say is the best track on here since it does have both of these talented groups share the center stage. Afterwards though, you might as well count it more as a Nurse With Wound album.

This record is good, but certainly not great, and it was probably a message to Faust that they aren't quite shaped up for the world of collaborations. They would still work on occasion with some notable artists later down the line, such as with Keiji Haino on 2022's 这条路是正确的 This Is the Right Path, but the artists are more for features than collabs. This is certainly an interesting album, especially for the end of Faust's industrial zone, so I'd say it is a good listen if you can manage to find it, but I cannot quite rank it on the same tier as Ravvivando or The Last LP.

Best track: Lass Mich

Worst tracks: Disconnected, Tu M'Entends, It Will Take Time