NURSE WITH WOUND
ANNOTATED SELECT DISCOGRAPHY
As an appendix to last week's The Exhaustion of Influence, on the Nurse With Wound list, here is an annotated select NWW discography.
Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella (1979)
Dedicated to Luigi Russolo, included in the first Nurse List
Title a reference to Lautreamont poem
To The Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl (1980)
Liner notes:
* dedicated to RUDOLF SCHWARZKOGLER who killed himself in the name of art through successive acts of self mutilation
Included a second, updated list version of the List. Stapleton was increasingly interested in performance art and Viennese Actionism.
Merzbild Schwet (1980)
Third album—after a fairly unsucessful second record. Beginnings of the NWW sounds and Stapleton’s sole curatorship. Reference to Kurt Schwitters.
The 150 Murderous Passions… (1981)
Nurse With Wound / Whitehouse
Split release, inspired by de Sade.
Full title: The 150 murderous passions or those belonging to the fourth class, composing the 28 days of February spent in hearing the narrations of Madame Desgranges, interspersed amongst which are the scandalous doings at the Château during that month.
From William Bennet on Anthology 1 Come Organisation Archives 1979-1981:
This was, strictly speaking neither a Whitehouse nor a Nurse With Wound album but a special project intended as a Come Organisation/United Dairies joint release - hence the attached UD09 catalogue number. Steve Stapleton produced the 'long' track (part two) and I produced the 'short' track (part one) with assistance from each other and Peter McKay on the other's tracks.
Homotopy to Marie (1982)
Inspired by, and dedicated to, Franz Kamin—composer author and pianist whose works were modeled on topology, general systems theory, meditational processes, and chance operations.
Considered the first ‘real’ NWW record, as Stapleton rented studio time every Friday night for one year to learn to use the mixing board as an instrument, and it was in this time he developed his mature craft, including signature use of humor, surreal juxtapositions, clever tape loops, feedback, and unusual sounds from non-musical objects.
Ostranenie 1913 (1983)
Etched into the vinyl were the following:
A side: “ANTI BASTEDO. LOVE BABS...”
B side: “IN FOND MEMORY OF ALEXANDRA BASTEDO....”
Bastedo was a sex symbol of the ‘60s and ‘70s known for her role in the spy series The Champions, as well as her activism around animal rights issues and her vegetarianism. Her thoughts on Islam are unknown.
Ostranenie (остранение) is the Russian term for the artistic technique of defamiliarization, in which common things are presented to audiences in a strange or unfamiliar way so as to enhance perception.
Live at Bar Maldoror: Gyllensköld, Geijerstam & Friends (1985)
Culled from live recordings by a large group of collaborators.
Bar Malador was wherever the live group happened to be, a sign they hung up behind them. Maldorar is another reference to Lautreamont, this time the prose-poem Les Chants de Maldoror, an important influence on surrealism.
The Sylvie and Babs Hi-Fi Companion (1985)
Issued on CD.
From the liner notes:
* featuring the last ever performance of Murray Fontana, a harbinger by nature, who killed himself in the name of music by successive acts of self indulgence.
'The Rhinos of Wrath are Whiter than the Horses of Destruction'
40 guest musicians credited as The Murray Fontana Orchestra, conducted by Murray Fontana [who is not a real person].
The line above about the Rhinos is spoken by a preacher in a sermon against the evils of alcohol, in Riotous Assembly, the debut novel by British comic writer Tom Sharpe, originally published in 1971. The novel is set in South Africa, lampooning apartheid and the policemen who enforce it.
In Menstrual Night (1985)
Current 93 (with Steven Stapleton)
Mixed by Stapleton to sound like a drugged up patient in a hospital
In Menstrual Night was and is dedicated to Steven Stapleton.
"For what shall it proof a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
St. Mark, VIII:36
KillyKillKill (A Fire Sermon) represented the Current 93 side of the Nightmare Culture mini-album, shared with Coil under the name of Sickness Of Snakes, and released on Laylah (LAY14) in 1985.
KillyKillKill was and is dedicated to James Low. (Dzogchen teacher)
Spiral Insana (1986)
First synth influenced album, harkening back to early 70s kosmische music, though musicians are credited with acoustic instruments.
Soliloquy For Lilith (1988)
Stapleton’s favorite release [and one of mine as well], 6 x ~18 minute long versions of an effect pedal feedback loop. A kind of process art. Named after his first child, born that year.
A Sucked Orange (1990)
In 1989 Stapleton and his wife, Diana Rogerson (Fistfuck, Chrystal Belle Scrodd), left London for a farm in Ireland, and since Stapleton couldn’t bring his masters with him, he destroyed them, but first collected these 29 mostly short ‘bits and bobs’ from 1979-1988 to create this album, which was released on CD so as to encourage listening on shuffle, in effect producing different experiences each time.
Thunder Perfect Mind (1992)
Companion album to a Current 93 record of the same name
Crumb Duck (1993)
Stereolab / Nurse With Wound
First of two collaborations with French-Anglo post-rock group Stereolab
Rock ’n Roll Station (1994)
The titular track is a cover version of a song by Jacques Berrocal from the early ‘70s, released on the album Parallèles (1973), in which Berrocal and two collaborators performed live in a large room in a house designed by Le Corbusier. An upright bass plays a repetitive rhythm that keeps time, a man recites the lyrics while a trumpet plays in the distance and a bicycle is manipulated as an impromptu instrument. Berrocal has contributed to several NWW albums since 1980, however the NWW cover version was considered very unusual by fans for its relative accessibility and steady rhythms. Stapleton purchased Jac Berrocal’s Parallèles in a record store on the Champs-Élysées based on its cover art sometime in the mid ‘70s, and began a correspondence with the artist. He would stay with Jac Berrocal while in Paris, and invited Jac to come visit him in London, where he would play on some of the early Nurse records. Covering this song in 1994 is something of a circular means of negating influence.
Simple Headphone Mind
Stereolab / Nurse With Wound
Second of two collaborations with French-Anglo post-rock group Stereolab
The original material Stereolab sent to Stapleton was later released as “The Long Hair of Death” on a split with Yo La Tengo, originally recorded in 1994.
Vinyl Etchings:
Side A: IN LOVING MEMORY PRESTON 1983 - 195.
Side B: ITS A BOY - LETS CALL HIM PRESTON
A Little Menstrual Night Music (2003)
Current Ninety Three
Consists of two ~20 minute remixes/reworks by Steven Stapleton of material from the 1985 Current 93 album Menstrual Night Music, created just before Stapleton’s return to live performance after a 20 year hiatus. Sonically may as well be considered a NWW release.
Rupture (2011)
Nurse With Wound / Graham Bowers
This work is an attempt to create a musical illustration of the 'goings-on' in the brain during the last hour and three minutes of life after suffering a major stroke. The piece is multi-layered and is primarily concerned with the internal chaos caused by the loss of control of thought processes, responses and consequential actions, with all types of incoherent disjointed memories and present real time events - as well as moments of lucidity, panic and fear - clashing, merging and evolving.
Complete discography: http://www.brainwashed.com/nww/music.php