BLR.Rec. Nurse With Wound : Images/Zero Mix (Deluxe box Edition) (UK,pub.2008)***°'
with Nurse With Wound : Zero Mix (UK,pub.2008)****'
with Nurse With Wound : Requital for Lady Day (UK,pub.2008)****
with Nurse With Wound : Angry Little Finger -art book- (UK,pub.2008)***'
No doubt the new Nurse With Wound box looks impressive. I remember how it took a very long while before Steven Stapelton was able to print any of his records with full colour designs. It took even longer before some related exhibition, and before a book was printed that really showed his vision as an artist. As I look separately at the included book, the artwork seems to consist of hand painted vinyl which must look more impressive in real (there are a few photographs included from the exhibition which show this). What I like less about the book, is that the vinyl photographs are printed with background black cut-out prints, so that the artwork more look like circular slides-frames with too much contrast within them, confusing the image and material intro a different context. It would have been better showing the records with a real fur background and with the left page in real shiny silver for instance, restoring the association with a vinyl object of some sort. Now it loses somewhat its context.
The Zero Mix album is a cooperation with sound wizard Colin Potter, three long tracks of organic vibrant visualisations with a calming and rising of a futuristic animistic nature, like ambient exorcism, but not before providing a space and platform and concluding with another one, like a magical box that opens up a world, first showing the edges of the box taking new shapes, like in ‘Hellraiser’, then not deliberately while opening a gate for certain entities, while still managing to get all back in.
The first track starts with a rich sound of a droning bass spreading itself into space, while higher toned winding up toys whirls on another layer, plates move, bells-alike sounds occur, breathing sounds of bass and electronic distortion, dark electrified noise, evolutions as a breathing out process. The second track starts from a playful game on bass strings deformed with reverbs and such, changing shape with sound like in the form of a ritual, breathing its bass pulses again until a monster appears consisting of darker entities attracted by this opening of a gate, while a sound like an Arabian flute keeps the entities together in reach of the bottle or pipe from which they arrived. The music flashes and breaths, with tentacles, impressively. The third track brings relief, with bass pulses, flute and sax improvisation, while only some remaining fragmentary life of organic alienated sounds continue to quark and bark quietly, on the level of frogs and insects, total peace manages to return well.
The ambient improvisational bonus CD “Requital for Lady Day” I described in my Radioshow as “This recording consists of moving drones, which move and pass by like huge plates, whirling on cosmic wind in a huge space, while certain bass and a few echoing higher tones remain transcending in varying chords and heights of tones. A beautiful and, for me, imaginable world."
