Nurse With Wound "Man With the Woman Face" United Dairies UD 0102CD 2002 (37:39)
Beware the African Mosquito (Ring Your Doorbell, Put You to
Sleep) (13:14)
Ag canadh thuas sa spèir (8:37)
White Light from the Stars in Your Mind (A Paramechanical Development) (15:48)
Nurse With Wound, now just Steven Stapleton and longtime engineer Colin Potter, return in a stripped down form for a return to form. Though it's billed as the full length follow-up to 1999's "An Awkward Pause", the very colorfully collaged "Man With the Woman Face" has a running time less than 38 minutes. Regardless, this is Nurse With Wound so it takes some time to fully absorb. "Beware the African Mosquito (Ring Your Doorbell, Put You to Sleep)" begins with a quiet ambient loop and slowly adds layers of surreal sonic pastiche: an almost Warner Bros. cartoon-like percussion fill scurrying about the stereo field, an ascending three note (marimba? kalimba?) melody, a man clearing his throat, swarming mosquitoes, a male voice saying "just a second", uncoiled springs, etc. By the final minutes it has become mind-bendingly busy. "Ag canadh thuas sa spèir" (apparently Gaelic for "Up in the sky, singing") begins with low level groans and high pitched tones that soon become like an alarm clock you never ever want to wake up to. Later things get more intense as the a gypsy carnival-like "band" haphazardly kicks in for a spell with crazy electric guitar and snare drum laced with samples. "White Light from the Stars in Your Mind (A Paramechanical Development)" (quite possibly a nod to Amon Düül, at least in title) breathes, speaks and gathers ... electronics hiss, hum and squirm, a bizarrely manipulated voice recites the title and other things, trinkets tussle, an organ riffs, a stray radio signal struggles to be heard and a quasi-tribal rhythm grows. And just like the previous tracks it's utterly, oddly fascinating. Stapleton and Potter's decades of experience assures evocative journeys, even when they're culled from seemingly random sounds. And despite its more cluttered moments, their music retains a certain sense of calm and order. Up next from Nurse is another (welcome) re-issue, "Automating Volume 2", a collection of early '80s compilation tracks ...
Nurse
With Wound
United
Dairies
Where did I get this CD? - Riouxs Records