Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy For Lilith

Where did this come from? An ambient album from Nurse with Wound in 1988 was an invigorating shock to the system. Soliloquy for Lilith was a complete turnaround from the kosmiche/noise that Steven Stapleton and crew had been coming up with. Six tracks, each roughly 20 minutes, one track per side of a triple-vinyl box set, each piece subtly different from the others, all with a quiet power to completely dominate the environment of wherever it is played. The mystery of the album lay in its unique sound source -- Stapleton merely looped a collection of effects pedals together and then found that by gesturing in the air around them, as if playing a Theremin, he could manipulate the tone generated by the electricity itself. What a wonderful discovery, and put to complete use here, as the possibilities in the setup are fully exploited over the course of two hours. Slow pulses in the lower register, similar to what Alan Lamb came up with in his high-tension wire recordings, complete with annular buzzes and high-end controlled feedback. It isn't far-fetched to see the roots of this album in the drone experiments of La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, or Tangerine Dream's epic Zeit. Occupying a completely separate corner of the massive Nurse with Wound catalog, Soliloquy stands outside of genre, and in the right frame of mind, outside of time. An absolute classic.

Nurse With Wound / Current 93 - Nylon' Coverin' Body Smotherin'

This split release with Current 93 shows a newer side of Nurse with Wound, the side that involves vocals. Embracing people singing words and not just screaming or howling, head Nurse Steven Stapleton brings Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell into the fold to sing on the title track. Thirlwell, for his part, sounds like a rabid attack dog, spitting his words, sounding a lot like he does on earlier Foetus records. Lyrically, he's just above unintelligible, but as part of one of the most straightforward NWW tracks, with its pulsing organ and various noises punctuating the "groove," Thirlwell's contribution is immensely exciting. Incongruously, the Current 93 track "The Great in the Small" follows, a slow build-up of sparse hammering, chanting, and David Tibet saying and eventually screaming "Antichrist." It's a bit silly. "Chicken in Drag" rounds out the first half, credited as "a token Sylvie and Babs Ditty," a reference to a group of collaborators known as the Murray Fontana Orchestra that Stapleton would head up on The Sylvie and Babs High-Thigh Companion. The track here is based around samples from the theme to television's Dragnet, sped up and slowed down -- not that interesting. The remaining three tracks, all NWW, cover familiar ground in the early NWW catalog, suitably noisy and surreal, but not all that great, making this a somewhat minor footnote in the Nurse canon.

Nurse With Wound - Insect and Individual Silenced

Notorious in the vast Nurse with Wound catalog, Insect & Individual Silenced was so hated by its creator, Steven Stapleton, that the album went out of print and the master tapes were burned. Copies on auction sites went for beau coup dollars. Thankfully his mind was changed and the album finally made its digital debut in 2007 on Raash. Easily the most playful of early Nurse with Wound, Stapleton is joined by merry prankster Jim Thirlwell from Foetus and Trevor Reidy, who would go on to work with Danielle Dax and the Monochrome Set. Reidy plays drums, adding bizarre accents when and where he can, given the musical terrain, while Thirlwell's contribution consists of "playing" his amplifier by manipulating the jack-plugs and leads, generating unearthly buzzes and drones. As expected, Stapleton brings to the table many unidentifiable noisemakers, drones, bits of old records, and a playful sense of the psychedelic. Like many of the early NWW releases, Insect is more of an audio collage than an album of songs, each piece appearing improvised with a disregard for any type of song form. And that's not a criticism, it's what makes Stapleton's early work so unique, and in this case, fun. Reidy's loose and inventive kit-work on "Absent Old Queen Underfoot" consists of merely a snare and brushes, surrounded by a pastiche of kosmiche and John Cage from Stapleton. "Mutiles de Guerre," at a brief seven minutes, is like the early NWW efforts in a nutshell -- completely disorienting pitch-shifted screams mix with bizarre horn squalls, and howling feedback that eventually give way to a banjo and choir version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." More than other albums in the discography, it's hard to predict just what's going to come out of the speakers next, even after repeated listens. Recommended.

Nurse With Wound - Drunk With The Old Man of the Mountains

This release fills in some holes in the vast Nurse with Wound catalog, gathering up five stray tracks from the mid-'80s into a nice package for the collector. Some of the tracks have appeared on compact disc reissues (for example "Mourning Smile" appears on the CD reissue of Spiral Insana, but was not on the original release) that were all out of print at the time this was released. So that makes this a nice piece for the rabid collector, and also a good starting place for the inquisitive. As an album, the tracks work surprisingly well with each other and present a rounded, if difficult, view of what Nurse with Wound was capable of at the time. "Mourning Smile" is a relatively brief (just over five minutes) distillation of Steven Stapleton's unique ability to mix disparate elements (ghostly drone with ragtime piano and pipe organ) into a disorienting collage that keeps a close listener on his toes. "Swamp Rat" is a long exploration of drones working over a Neu! Motorik beat. "Sheela-Na-Gig" recalls some of the Penderecki music that was used as the score to The Shining. Broadly cinematic and avante-garde, Drunk with the Old Man of the Mountains resists easy categorization except as a NWW release. It couldn't have been made by anyone else.

Nurse With Wound - Ostranenie 1913

This release houses two slightly different versions of tracks from previous Nurse with Wound releases, "Ostranenie" from To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl, and "Dada" from Merzbild Schwet. Originally released on vinyl only, this has yet to make it to compact disc, and that's a real oversight, as this record brims with the kitchen-sink excitement of main Nurse Steven Stapleton's earliest, most exciting pieces. Collaborating with Current 93's David Tibet as well as John Fothergill and Jacques Berrocal, "Ostranenie" (the song) leans towards the isolationist ambient music that NWW pioneered in the early and mid-'80s. Eschewing any sense of melody or song structure, this 24-minute version aims for the heart of the void, with spectral whistles, found-sound recordings, context-less spoken word samples, and an impending sense of doom. It is nearly impossible to guess at the instrumentation used to create this kosmiche/psychedelic collage, in a good way. One of NWW's goals in the early days was disorientation, a shattering of preconceived notions, and on "Dada," they have certainly achieved it. Those not familiar with avant-garde or Dadaist music may have trouble even classifying this as music, but repeated deep listening reveals hidden connections between the disparate compositional elements Stapleton and company use to construct this soundworld. Unexpected silences abound among clattering metal, spoken word French from Crass member Eve Libertine, and primitive electronics. While hardly the place for beginners, Ostranenie 1913 is worth tracking down for those curious enough to have explored the NWW catalog and are intrigued by what they hear.

Autumn's Grey Solace - Over the Ocean

The duo of Erin Welton (vocals) and Scott Ferrell (everything else) avoids the "second album syndrome" with Over the Ocean, a sometimes excellent collection of ethereal dream pop that shows the band was right to sign with Projekt. As with most Projekt bands, Autumn's Grey Solace know how to make lush soundscapes that fully engage a listener's attention. Ferrell, with a dexterity rare for so-called shoegaze guitarists, layers his guitar sounds with an ear for detail and not just fuzz. Each track sounds like there are several guitars playing at the same time. And over Ferrell's workmanlike basslines and drums, Welton's airy voice soars and swoops, mingling the techniques of Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser and Cranes' Alison Shaw. The lyrics aren't always understandable, but their sound doesn't necessarily reflect the words, and the emotion comes out anyway. Welton is a very expressive singer, mixed at just the right level above the music, which never overpowers her voice, but complements her vocal strengths at every step. Very well done and recommended for any fan of shoegaze or dream pop.

The Notwist - Nook

The second album from the Notwist shows little evolution from the hard rock sound of their debut album, still sounding little like what they would transform into several years later with Shrink. Mixing songwriting similar to Swervedriver with the guitar angling of Dinosaur Jr., Notwist make an honest effort to stand out, but ultimately fail in light of the records they would start making after this one. Viewed this way, Nook is an enjoyable record, if not a fully successful one. For fans of Neon Golden, this sounds like an entirely different band. No electronics here, strictly drums and wires employed in as muscular a way as possible, as on the Helmet-sounding "Unsaid, Undone." With meatier production than their debut, the Notwist pummel their guitars and drums in search of majestic riffs and are mostly successful. There are a couple of tracks that miss their mark, but its probably around a 70/30 split in terms of success. If nothing else, Nook is as good an example of early-'90s alternative rock as any other, if a fairly generic one. Not recommended for fans of the band's later works, but probably one for the die-hard completist.

The Notwist - The Notwist

First things first -- while this is essentially the same band that made Neon Golden, the Notwist were, at their beginning, a hard rock/metal band. Very little of their later, more popular sound is present on this, their first album. So for fans who are working their way through the back catalog, be forewarned that this bears no resemblance to the band you like. Despite this, The Notwist stands on its own as a thrashy and punky record with flailing drums, fun singalongs, and screaming guitar solos. Opener "Is It Fear?" is the highlight, a throwback to the raw punk scree of the Ruts, with a chunky start-stop riff, barely intelligible singing, and straight-up muscle. "Bored" ups the ante by upping the tempo and adding some scream-along vocals. Overall, it's a fun record, if fairly generic. The bulk of the album passes with a few memorable hooks, but nothing that would make it stand out from other hard rock records that were being made in 1989. Recommended only for the super-hardcore Notwist fans.

Cipher - No Ordinary Man

Cipher are Theo Travis (soprano sax, alto flute, piano) and Dave Sturt (fretless bass, loop programming). No Ordinary Man, their second album, echoes Brian Eno's Ambient 4: On Land with its gentle ambient soundscapes and a slightly melancholic jazz feel. Sampling through various moods that evoke ideas of contemplation or meditation, the duo is joined at various times by Richard Barbieri and Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree. The atmospheres are mostly wordless throughout, with the notable exception of "Desert Song," a noir-ish phantasm featuring the gorgeous vocals of Rabbi Gaddy Zerbib. Travis expertly produces beguiling textures on his wind instruments, and Sturt provides subtle and moving foundations beneath. Best for quiet times, No Ordinary Man is an excellent starting point for this project, especially for people who come to Theo Travis via his Thread album with Robert Fripp.