Acts of Senseless Beauty
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
“Many of the tracks start out in ambient territory, slow tentative explorations of improvisational scrapes and hums, building slowly or erupting into throbbing avant-rock structures, at which point Aranos’s violin dances and weaves wildly among clattering rhythms and other sounds, eventually to slide back into a droning murky dissonance or dreamy flows. Added to this mix are a few sections of processed vocal and chanting. A bizarre and hallucinatory journey into another musical dimension.”
An Awkward Pause
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
“Bizarre, beautiful, frightening and fascinating all at once…, the majority of the album is instrumental and subdued in nature, with the exception of ‘Two Shades And A Shine’ (which begins with an abrupt … bass guitar riff [and] David Tibet’s exasperated vocals...) and the latter half of ‘The Penis Fruit Loop’…, a long shifting piece [with] quiet, swirling ambient sounds / samples, bizarre processed narrative…, reversed and collaged guitar, R2D2-like beeps, upbeat saxophone-led acid jazz-rock on crack, carnival music, insane electric guitar squealings, and various percussive banging….” Single disc, in digipak with insert. From 1999.
A Sucked Orange
(United Dairies) Used CD $15.00 (Out-of-stock)
“A Sucked Orange is basically a much more fleshed-out version of the earlier cassette-only release, Scrag! (United Dairies, 1987)…. [S]nippets of weird noises, absurd samples, abstract sounds, jarring contrasts, spoken word sections. Two thirds of the tracks run for less than two minutes, with only the four-minute tribal … ‘I’m a Frayed Knot’ coming close to sounding like an actual song…. For every oddity, however, there is a really striking moment: the aforementioned ‘I’m a Frayed Knot’ is a wonderful Eastern-tinged percussive number, while ‘Crack Up’, although short, is one of Stapleton’s finest drone works. The vocal pieces sung by Sinan and Ritva are lovely in their own right. In some ways, A Sucked Orange feels like a Nurse With Wound album cut into its constituent parts.”
Chance Meeting Of A Defective Tape Machine And Migraine
(Anomalous) Used CD $12.00
Accidental remix created during a tape transfer by Matt Waldron of irr.app. (ext.)
Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella
(United Jnana) Used CD $30.00
“The debut Nurse With Wound album lies halfway between the more tuneless explorations of krautrock and the then-new industrialism practiced by Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. Across three lengthy tracks, obtuse guitar freak-outs frame distorted synthesizers and mostly rhythm-less drum machines. Though it frequently defies easy analysis, Chance Meeting is one of the more glowing examples of uncompromising industrial noise of the 1970s.” 1994 reissue in jewelbox
Disconnected
(Dirter - DPROMLP61) 2xLP $50.00
Dude from Brainwashed pretty much nails it: “Considering the massive influence Faust have had on Nurse With Wound (with Stapleton as a young man famously traveling to the group's headquarters at Wumme only to find Faust were off on tour), it is nearly asking for either an anticlimax or a masterpiece yet [Disconnected] is neither…. [T]he hypnotic, motorik rhythms of "Lass Mich" … blend[ing] into smoky ambiences is a stunning start to the album. This was the kind of magic I was hoping for. Yet from here on the album never returns to the sense of urgency and power of the opening song…. There are times when the music is unmistakably Stapleton and Potter -- the time-stretched vocals and ethereal drones … [while] Faust (in this case consisting of Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi Diermaier and Amaury Cambuzat) bring an awful lot to the table, some of the material here sounds like it could have come from the classic recording sessions at Wumme, the band sounding as vibrant now as in their youth…. The symbiosis between the two groups comes naturally, although with all the studio trickery it is hard to tell where one band begins and the other ends…. Disconnected may not be a Faust Tapes or a Soliloquy for Lilith for the 21st century but at the very least it answers a big "what if" question. Its best moments shine brightly and at worst it is not a million miles away from some of Nurse With Wound's more recent output (and really that is not a bad place to be at all).” Includes a second platter available only with the first 1000 copies. One side of Faust, one side of NWW.
Drunk With The Old Man Of The Mountains
(United Jnana) Used CD $9.00
Five stray tracks from the mid-’80s that were all out of print at the time of original release. “Mourning Smile” distills Steven Stapleton’s ability to mix disparate elements (ghostly drone with ragtime piano and pipe organ) into a disorienting collage that keeps listeners on their toes. “Swamp Rat” is a long exploration of drones working over a Neu!-ish motorik beat. “Sheela-Na-Gig” recalls Shining-era Penderecki. Barcode has black scribbles.
Echo Poeme: Sequence No. 2
(United Jnana) Used CD $9.00
Recorded in 2005, inspired by the film Last Year At Marienbad, reminiscent in tone of Soliloquy For Lilith, Echo Poeme No. 2 is one continuous piece based around the female voice. Features a four-page booklet designed by Babs Santini.
Flawed Existence
(Vinyl on Demand - VOD66) 4xLP + 10-inch $200.00
Almost five hours of sheer insanity produced from 1982 to 1985 by the ingenious music-alchemist Steven Stapleton. Two hours of material from official tape releases Scrag (United Dairies 1981), Nylon Coverin' Body Smotherin' (Mi Mort 1983) and Mi-Mort (Mi Mort 1983), over one hour of tape-comp-only tracks, over an hour of their first two live performances in 1984, plus a 37-minute 10-inch with unreleased material from 1983, and one exclusive NWW track on a soundchip greeting card. Flocked outer box. With T-shirt and embossed poster. Does not include five-inch. Numbered edition 331/600
Funeral Music For Perez Prado
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
This CD collects tracks from two deleted EPs, Yagga Blues from 1995 and Soresucker from 1990, with one track from each considerably extended to their full-length versions. Here you’ll find a pulsing ethno-electro beat, Sarah Fuller jazzy non-word vocals, more punch, more electronic effects. The title track is ambient and meditative, with lots of minimal drones, shifting tones, and no rhythms. “Journey Through Cheese,” now extended to beyond twice its original length, consists of a harsh rhythm clanking mechanically over a collage of tweaked-out noises, from breaking glass and insidious laughter to loud pops of static and more drones.
Gyllensköld, Geijerstam And I At Rydberg’s
(United Jnana) Used CD $12.00
Reissue from 2007 containing the record in its original form, with the remixes as additional tracks. “The sound quality … is superb…, highlighting Stapleton’s increasing confidence in the studio. Recorded only a few months after Homotopy to Marie, the clarity in the mix and the general fine details in the arrangement are leaps and bounds ahead of even that album…. On a technical level, Gyllensköld, Geijerstam and I at Rydberg’s is a triumph.”
Homotopy to Marie
(United Jnana) Used CD $18.00
The fifth NWW album is no less unnerving and experimental than its predecessors but is far less chaotic. The four tracks from the original LP and the 12-minute “Astral Dustbin Dirge,” recorded during the same sessions, added to the CD edition) may be more elegantly constructed, but lengthy dada-esque soundscapes constructed of artfully edit tape manipulations, are just difficult to penetrate. Sealed
Insect And Individual Silenced
(United Dairies / Raash) Used CD $15.00
Jim Thirwell playing the hum of his amplifier by stroking and hitting the jack-plugs and leads, Trevor Reidy on a drum-kit reduced to one snare drum and a couple of brushes, and Stephen Stapleton fucking around with an old, beaten-up Woolworth’s guitar and a violin bow, along with a basket of junk, records, tapes and toys. Originally released in 1981, this is a 2007 reissue with silver-printed vellum O-card. Edition of 700. Sealed.
Live At Bar Maldoror
(United Dairies) Used CD $10.00
The emphasis on live and acoustic instrumentation recorded in the mid-1980s, with little in the way of tape edits, positions the music here in stark contrast to Nurse With Wound’s studio albums, yet the overall feeling of relentless exploration, experimentation and humor still evoke the same moods that Stapleton’s project always does. From 1991
Merzbild Schwet
(United Dairies) Used CD $20.00
Considered the first fully realized Nurse With Wound record, originally released in 1980 — more focused, with editing techniques out in front (abrupt transitions, quirky juxtapositions, strange sounds that would become the NWW hallmark). “Futurismo” begins with clanking rhythms, record skip clicks, and horn riffs before veering off into a crazed quilt of women singing, laughing, and talking in French. About halfway through, wild screeches of distortion disrupt the piece, and then more bizarre sounds take over before ending with a collage of over-modulated electronic hum and rambling piano. “Dada X” goes further into weirdness with silences, creepy creaking noises, tones that build up and collapse, and scattered spoken word in French and English from The Crass’s Eve Libertine. 1994 reissue.
Rock ’n Roll Station
(United Dairies) Used CD $18.00
An atypical Nurse with Wound record for any era, an obvious attempt to create something more palatable, even dance-floor friendly. With its handful of single-length tracks and two quarter-hour collages, the album …[sits] on the fence.… The two collages are prime examples of creative, top-quality NWW…, filled with uncanny sonic juxtapositions, disquieting twists and immersive drones. Peat Bog’s spellbinding didgeridoo performance on ‘Two Golden Microphones’ is a highlight.” In jewelbox from 1994 edition.
Salt Marie Celeste
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
One long track where a whisper of sound slowly builds even as it remains quite ambient. Noises are very gradually introduced to the underlying drone and repeated at regular intervals — whizzing; a one-second high-pitched tone that almost sounds like a distant ship’s horn calling for help in the mist; creaking; a low, clattering noise, a bit like thunder and then eventually, other clattering noises. One gets an eerie sense of doom, worthy of a ship slowly sinking. Toward the end, sounds fall away from the original minimalist drone, which ebbs and surges for another five minutes before slowly fading.
Second Pirate Session Rock ’n Roll Special Edition
(United Dairies) Used 2xCD $28.00
Outtakes from Rock’n’Roll Station (originally planned as a double album), never fully completed but which in hindsight benefit from their stripped down atmosphere. “Hypnotic, pulsating, and quite a departure.” Card jacket. Sealed
She And Me Fall Together In Free Death
(Beta Lactam Ring - mt040b) LP $25.00
(Beta Lactam Ring - mt040b) Used CD $15.00
Six tracks from 2003, another super-freaked, avant-gone experience. Includes all the creepy, sex-vibed sounds and psyched-out grooves one would expect, plus a cover of "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair."
Used CD is third edition from 2005 with negative image cover art..
Soliloquy For Lilith
(United Dairies) Used 2xCD $30.00
Originally recorded and released in 1988, Nurse With Wound’s ambient opus was years ahead of its time, a ground-breaking set of atmospheric sound patterns designed for ritual ceremonies. Reissue from 1993
Soresucker
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
Kind of a collaboration with Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus. “I Am The Poison” builds Wakeford’s trippy repeating bass motif; Stapleton provides a backdrop of drones, and mechanical percussion. The industrial sounding “Journey Through Cheese” is constructed around a backbone of pounding machine noise, smashing glass, and clanking metal. First edition from 1990
Spiral Insana
(United Dairies) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
One continuous piece of music, indexed as three, listed as twenty. Guests Robert Haigh, David Jackman, and Chris Wallis mix bowed piano, percussion, radio, loops, and what is credited on the sleeve as “stuff” into an hour-long collage of mashed-up sounds, jarring juxtapositions, buzzsaw distortion, and even a pipe organ. From 1997 with two non-LP tracks.
Steel Dream March Of The Metal Men
(Clawfist - XPIG 12) 7-inch $20.00
"Steel Dream March of the Metal Men" is very very close to being the exact same song as the Miss Ticker remix of "Cold" from the Thunder Perfect Mind CD reissue and "Head Cold" from the Large Ladies With Cake In The Oven CD. Includes one-sided insert advertising the Clawfist singles club. From 1992. Edition of 1400
Sugar Fish Drink (A Layman’s Guide To Cod Surealism)
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
“Could almost be considered Automating, Vol. 3, in that it culls material released on vinyl, mostly from twelve-inch singles from the late ’80s and early ’90s. ‘Cooloorta Moon’ riffs off the weird noise from Wolfgang Dauner’s version of Gershwin’s ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ for a bit of jazz-funk with an upbeat rhythm. The five-part amorphous sound collage ‘Creakiness’ offers a varied mix of everything from calliope to haunted violin music to metallic machine rhythms to found vocals. It seems almost like an insane circus where everything is about to collapse. ‘I Am the Poison’ throws in guitar textures and gloomy vocals from Sol Invictus frontman Tony Wakeford. ‘Swamp Rat’ has a repetitive drum rhythm, lots of background drones, and … contagious laughter. ‘A Piece of the Sky Is Missing’ is mostly a subtle but dark ambient piece, though near the beginning there are pounding rhythms and screeching horns. ‘Nil By Mouth’ gets far stranger, as bursts of electro-noise and pounding percussion contrast starkly with creepy quieter sections of buzzes, chirps, and minor chord drones. The CD ends with a completely revamped version of ‘Brained by Falling Masonry,’ beginning more calm and cosmic, and then crashing with the effects and processing from psychedelic rock to explosions of disruptive noise.”
Surveillance Lounge
(Dirter) Used CD $20.00
“Long, spooky soundscapes from 2009 punctuated by noise, sinister voices, and the occasional rhythm section. Despite the demarcation implied by the presence of four separate tracks, the entire 66-minute album is one piece, except for, perhaps, ‘The Golden Age of Telekinesis,’ with its building percussive rage structured upon tribal, rhythmic drums, and lots of malicious static. All, however, are dark journeys down untraveled paths, and that is exactly what Stapleton (with cohort Andrew Liles and Current 93’s David Tibet among others) does best.”
Thunder Perfect Mind
(United Dairies) Used CD $12.00
This 2002 reissue (with bonus track) of the sister album to the Current 93 album of the same name punctuates soundscape drones with staccato bursts of percussion, origins uncertain, bleeps and bloops thrown in for good measure, and the occasional hoot and/or holler. In digipak
Thunder Perfect Mind
(United Dairies) Used CD $20.00
This 1992 reissue of the sister album to the Current 93 album of the same name punctuates soundscape drones with staccato bursts of percussion, origins uncertain, bleeps and bloops thrown in for good measure, and the occasional hoot and/or holler. In jewelbox
Who Can I Turn To Stereo
(United Dairies) Used CD $9.00
A daunting roller-coaster ride from 1996 through strange and abstract soundscapes with weird processed voices thrown in. Perhaps it’s made a little easier by a narrator with a soft voice and Italian accent, even if the words are as surreal and nonsensical as the music around them. One continuous collage of sound, broken down into conventional song-length tracks, with hypnotic electro-dance rhythms comparable to what crop up on “Yagga Blues,” “Space Funk With Springs,” and “Approaching Darkness Fish,” and lulling nursery rhymes.