NURSE WITH WOUND

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NURSE WITH WOUND has perhaps become more famous for its lists of dozens of strange outsider avant-garde artists that served as an influence than for its own music that has yielded dozens of albums that have haunted the experimental underground for the last several decades. The brainchild of London born Steven Stapleton who has basically used this project as a rotating collective over the course of 90 plus albums, NURSE WITH WOUND was one of the early industrial noise acts that followed in the footsteps of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. With its origins as bizarre and improvisational as the music itself, the world of NURSE WITH WOUND began as a mere discussion in a London recording studio in 1978 resulting in a spontaneous formation that has miraculously continued to the present day.

It all began one fateful day when Stapleton, a visual artist who was randomly painting signs at a London recording studio, got into a discussion with sound engineer Nicky Rogers about avant-garde and experimental music. The conversation resulted in Rogers asking if Stapleton knew of any such artists because of his interest to record crazy eccentric artists. While Stapleton had zero musical training himself, he had worked as a roadie for Guru Guru and Kraan in his earlier years and had a deep passion for the world of Krautrock and other musical freakery. Like a bolt of lightning Stapleton decided to fabricate a story on the spot that he himself has his own experimental group and that he would love to have his music recorded. Having no such band or even a collection of instruments to follow through, Stapleton haphazardly assembled a team and appropriate noise making devices at record speed.

After finding an arsenal of cheap guitars, synthesizers and other found objects to offer the proper avant-garde touches, Stapleton recruited John Fothergill and Heman Pathak and thus NURSE WITH WOUND was born. Along with Nicky Rogers on guitar, the foursome entered the studio and recorded the highly experimental industrial jam sessions that resulted in the debut album CHANCE MEETING ON A DISSECTING TABLE OF A SEWING MACHINE AND AN UMBRELLA. With a provocative album cover inspired by a porn magazine only set to a style of art popular during World War II designed by Stapleton himself and an improvisational musical accompaniment to match, NURSE WITH WOUND offered one of the most bizarre recordings to emerge at the tale end of the 1970s, a time when such freeform expressions were not en vogue as the world of new wave, disco and pop music had usurped the marketplace.

With the ostensible intent of delivering the most alienating soundscapes possible, CHANCE MEETING ON A DISSECTING TABLE OF A SEWING MACHINE AND AN UMBRELLA was dedicated to Luigi Russolo, the early 20th century futurist painter who also fancied building his own experimental musical instruments and is regarded as one of the first experimental noise-based musicians with avant-garde freeform expressions of noise emerging as early as 1913 in his native Italy. His avant-garde methodologies proved to be the most impactful influence of all with Stapleton's desire to craft some of the most non-commercial soundscapes he could muster up as NURSE WITHOUT WOUND and pretty much succeeds in every possible way in that regard. This debut featured three tracks that offered abrasive industrial tones and textures, oscillating rhythms that came and went and guitar work that was somewhat reminiscent of the Fripp & Eno experiments of the early 70s only forbidden from assembling into any sort of melodic coherency except for scant fleeting moments.

"Two Mock Projections" takes its cue from the most kosmische moments the Krautrock universe had to offer and layered them with dreary drones, abstract synthesized textures and grating clusters of guitar noises with only a haunting horror synth moment of continuity however a few bluesy guitar licks do manage to find their way into the mix as the atonal angularities build intensity into a cluster [%*!#] of sound excess. These prove to be a mere teaser as the track progresses into a nebulous glob of noise which turns up the alienation dial to 11.The following "Six Buttons Of Sex Appeal" goes for the avant-garde jugular with erratic processed percussive sounds accompanied by a terrifying display of pure guitar abuse that seems to have found the perfect way to emulate random static on rock's most iconic instrument. A surrealist's Dada frenzy that would give Salvador Dalí an erection, this track offers a relentless ear grating 13 minute journey into a desultory stream of consciousness.

The 28-minute plus "Blank Capsules of Embroidered Cellophane" originally swallowed up the entire B-side of the first vinyl edition and takes you even further down the avant-garde rabbit hole. More akin to musique concrète, this track offers a collage effect of sound effects, piano tinkles, random sampled vocals, clamorous percussion haphazardly and spastically punctuating the erratic flow of nebulous synthesized atmospheres along with freaky sounds that remain a mystery to what actually made them. Reminding a bit of Henry Cow's most out there moments this is another wild ride though a surreal amalgamation of sound on the entire album. Defiantly inaccessible in every possible way, melodies that threaten to emerge are burned at the stake like a medieval witch hunt however freaky monotonous droning regularities are fair game. Atonal, abstract and sounding like the musical score of a 28-minute interpretation of nails on a chalkboard, this track pummels the senses with disarray and dystopian despair.

The album has without a doubt become more famous than it would've otherwise for the NURSE WITH WOUND LIST which featured musicians and bands who delivered some of the most wild and inventive sounds that the 1960s and 1970s had to offer. It was compiled by all four members and was extended on the following album "To The Quiet Men From A Tiny Girl" which together featured 291 options to let your freak flag fly. This shopping list has served as a go to source of for those who can't get enough weirdo music in their lives. In many ways NURSE WITH WOUND exceeded the weirdness factor manyfold on CHANCE MEETING as this music is really the most antagonistically brutal and hostile to established musical paradigms as anyone could imagine however influential in the myriad acts that followed suit and an institution in bringing the art of random noise and formless improvisation to the forefront. If the three tracks on here haven't frightened you enough, the reissues feature a 15-minute bonus track. Stapleton found his true calling and has since released well over 90 albums as NURSE WITHOUT WOUND.