Nurse with Wound

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Nurse with Wound
Steve Stapleton.jpg
Steven Stapleton live with Nurse with Wound at Avantgarde Festival 2008, Schiphorst
Background information
Origin London, United Kingdom
Genres
Years active1978–present
Labels
Members
Past membersHerman Pathak
John Fothergill
Colin Potter
Website nursewithwound.co.uk rotorelief.com/nurse-with-wound/

Nurse with Wound (abbreviated NWW) is the main recording name for British musician Steven Stapleton. Nurse with Wound was originally a band, formed in 1978 by Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak. [1] [2] The band's work has explored genres such as industrial, noise, dark ambient, and drone.

Contents

Musical output

Their early recordings, all made quickly, were heavily influenced by free improvisation and krautrock and were generally considered industrial music, despite the objections of the group. [3]

By 1981, only Stapleton was left from the original trio and he now regards 1982's Homotopy to Marie as being the first proper Nurse with Wound release. [4] There are now over 40 full length NWW titles. Stapleton's fondness for dada, surrealism and absurdist humor are demonstrated in much of NWW's output, which, though it draws directly on a wide assortment of genres (including cabaret music, nursery rhymes, John Cage, The Beach Boys, krautrock, [5] ambient music, [6] and easy listening [7] ), retains a distinctive and recognizable aura. Musique concrète may be the most prominent touchstone due to Stapleton's frequent, and often humorous, use of creative tape loops and editing.[ citation needed ] This aesthetic is fully represented in the artwork on the album covers, virtually all of which are created by Stapleton, mostly under the pseudonym "Babs Santini". [8]

Members

Although Stapleton has sole curatorship of NWW, the group has a long list of collaborators including Diana Rogerson, James Thirlwell of Foetus, Tony Wakeford, David Jackman of Organum, Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio, Stereolab, Jim O'Rourke, Christoph Heemann, William Bennett of Whitehouse, Robert Haigh, Rose McDowall of Strawberry Switchblade, Annie Anxiety, John Balance of Coil, Matt Waldron of Irr. App (Ext), and most regularly David Tibet of Current 93. For some time, NWW was a core duo of Stapleton and Colin Potter, the latter having first worked with NWW on 1992's "Thunder Perfect Mind" when it was recorded at Potter's ICR studio. Potter has appeared on almost every NWW release since 1992. In 2009, a CD titled "Ød Lot" was released (credited to Nurse With Wound) which contained solo recordings by Stapleton, Potter, Waldron and Andrew Liles.

Current work (2005–present)

In 2005, the band returned to live performance after a 21-year absence. Stapleton, Potter, Waldron, Rogerson and Andrew Liles played three concerts at the Narrenturm in Vienna, where they performed improvisations on the album Salt Marie Celeste. These concerts were not billed as NWW appearances. The first official NWW appearances since 1984 were at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in June 2006. In December of the same year, the group played at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival organized by Thurston Moore. During 2007, Stapleton gigged and DJed with much greater regularity, including a set at experimental music night Stress!! in Galway City, Ireland and full live NWW sets is in Austria, Belgium, France, Barcelona, London, Moscow, Berlin and Venice.

A collaborative work with krautrock band Faust was released on CD in 2007 as Disconnected with a vinyl edition carrying additional mixes following in 2008. Nurse recently joined Faust for the encores during the concert at St. John in Hackney. A NWW album entitled Huffin' Rag Blues, primarily a collaboration with British sound artist Andrew Liles, was issued in 2008 with a companion mini-LP entitled The Bacteria Magnet. A remix of Sunn O)))'s ØØ Void entitled The Iron Soul of Nothing was given a limited release with an expanded reissue of the out-of-print studio album The Man with the Woman Face following. An album of new material entitled The Surveillance Lounge was then released as a CD with a limited triple CD called The Memory Surface. A CD of new material entitled Space Music will be released on 17 November 2009.

A recent collaboration was a result of the chance meeting of Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton and Graham Bowers, both artists were appearing at Bangor Sound City's first art/sound event 'Wet Sounds' curated by Joel Cahen located at the Bangor Swimming Pool, North Wales, in January 2011. Both were admirers of each other's past works and felt that a collaboration on a new piece of work could be an interesting and exciting prospect; consequently Rupture was the first full-length work, and was released as a double vinyl album/LP, a CD and download. The vinyl album and CD have been released through Dirter.

They followed up to Rupture with Parade, which was released on the interdisciplinary arts group/record label Red Wharf and distributed by Cargo. The third collaboration, ExcitoToxicity, was released July 2014, and the fourth, Mutation released in March 2015 all through Red Wharf and distributed by Cargo.

Discography

(selected; a full discography can be obtained from the official website—see links below)

All records released on United Dairies, except where indicated.

Albums

Collaborative albums

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Stapleton</span> British musician (born 1957)

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<i>Thunder Perfect Mind</i> (Nurse with Wound album) 1992 studio album by Nurse with Wound

For the companion album by Current 93, see Thunder Perfect Mind.

<i>Simple Headphone Mind</i> 1997 EP by Stereolab & Nurse With Wound

Simple Headphone Mind is the second collaboration between Stereolab and Nurse With Wound. As with their first release, Crumb Duck, Stereolab recorded the basic track and then handed it over to Steven Stapleton to do with as he pleased. Unlike with Crumb Duck, listeners can hear the original Stereolab recording, as it was issued under the title The Long Hair Of Death on a split single with Yo La Tengo; this version was also featured on Stereolab's Aluminum Tunes compilation album.

<i>Crumb Duck</i> 1993 EP by Stereolab & Nurse With Wound

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<i>Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella</i> 1979 studio album by Nurse With Wound

Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella is the debut album by British industrial music group Nurse With Wound, released on their own United Dairies label in 1979. An unusual record which blends noise and jamming, it is described by AllMusic as "one of the more glowing examples of late-70s industrial noise" and defunct UK music magazine Sounds summed up their response by abandoning their usual star rating system to award the album a full 5 question marks. FACT magazine ranked the album at #51 on their list of "The 100 best albums of the 1970s". The album's artwork includes the Nurse with Wound list, an insert which lists several dozen avant-garde, rock, krautrock and other "weird" recording artists who influenced the group. Further, the album's back cover bears the dedication: "This album is dedicated to LUIGI RUSSOLO." Russolo was himself a pioneering noise music artist of the early 20th century.

<i>To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl</i> 1980 studio album by Nurse With Wound

To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl is the second album by Nurse With Wound and the last to be made by the founding trio of Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill, and Heman Pathak. The album also features contributions from French avant-garde musician Jacques Berrocal. It was recorded by The Bombay Ducks, an alias for Nicky Rogers and Vic Ball, the former of whom had facilitated the recording of the group's first album, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella. The album's title comes from Tolerance's album Anonymlink

<i>Merzbild Schwet</i> 1980 studio album by Nurse With Wound

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<i>Insect and Individual Silenced</i> 1981 studio album by Nurse With Wound

Insect and Individual Silenced was the fourth album by Nurse With Wound.

<i>Shipwreck Radio</i> 2004 studio album by Nurse With Wound

Shipwreck Radio is a series of albums by Nurse With Wound documenting their residency in Lofoten, Norway during June and July 2004. Invited to stay in the unofficial capital, fishing village Svolvær, Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter were commissioned to produce 3 radio broadcasts per week for local station Lofotradioen of music constructed from whatever they heard or could find around the island. The project was instigated by Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young of The Wire and by Kunst I Nordland, an organisation committed to bringing contemporary art to the county of Nordland.

<i>Homotopy to Marie</i> 1982 studio album by Nurse with Wound

Homotopy to Marie is the fifth album by Nurse with Wound, released in 1982.

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<i>Soliloquy for Lilith</i> 1988 studio album by Nurse with Wound

Soliloquy for Lilith is an album by English experimental project Nurse with Wound, originally released in 1988 by the label Idle Hole that had been created for the album's release by project leader Steven Stapleton, and later reissued several times by varying record labels. It is considered one of the project's greatest albums, as well as a long-standing industrial drone record best known for its chance method of composition. FACT ranked it the 54th best album of the 80s with Aaron Turner of Isis calling it "one of the most listenable and enduring albums from the vast NWW catalog".

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<i>A Sucked Orange</i> 1989 studio album by Nurse With Wound

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<i>Spiral Insana</i> 1986 studio album by Nurse With Wound

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References

  1. "Nurse with Wound". Discogs . Retrieved 14 December 2010.
  2. "Nurse with Wound". AllMusic . Retrieved 14 December 2010.
  3. "Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella". brainwashed.com. March 2009.
  4. Keenan, David (2003). England's Hidden Reverse. SAF Publishing. ISBN   0-946719-40-3.
  5. Dean, Jonathan (29 June 2003). "Brainwashed − Nurse With Wound, "She and Me Fall Together in Free Death"". Brainwashed.com . Retrieved 11 December 2008.
  6. Dean, Jonathan (19 October 2003). "Brainwashed − Nurse With Wound, "Soliloquy for Lilith"". Brainwashed.com. Retrieved 11 December 2008.
  7. Dean, Jonathan (29 June 2008). "Brainwashed − Nurse With Wound, "Huffin' Rag Blues"". Brainwashed.com. Retrieved 11 December 2008.
  8. "Bitstream". The Wire (283): 8. September 2007. Retrieved 10 January 2023.