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Nurse With Wound

Having explored the wonderful world of experimental music, modern composers, krautrock, noise, ambient, *insert any genre here* for quite some time now, it was practically impossible not to encounter the famous "Nurse With Wound list". This infamous list consists of approximately 300 artist names, from the earliest days of musical recordings to today, who have supposedly influenced Steve Stapleton, the man behind Nurse With Wound (and regular member of Current 93 and tons of eclectic collaborations). The list could be found along with NWW's first release Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella and went on to become the ne plus ultra of experimental music encyclopedias. Although only a list, not knowing these numerous artists by heart meant flunking music snob class 101. This fascinated me of course and I began exploring many of the artists which had been name-dropped (although I must say it was only after having explored a few of these names that I eventually fell upon the list - I don't want to pass for a complete ignoramus). However, even though I enjoyed perusing the list, I never actually listened to the artist behind the list, namely: Steve Stapleton as Nurse With Wound. I had always believed that Stapleton only dabbled within the typical industrial music sound. This is a genre which I had grown to despise for it's blandness and it's eventual commercialization with more recent artists like Rammstein, Marilyn Manson and even Nine Inch Nails (those early album covers by NWW, with their ugly black and white drawings didn't do much to prove me wrong either). Having such prejudices, I wasn't exactly persuaded to give Nurse With Wound a try. When I finally began downloading a lot of music from the internet around the turn of the millennium, I finally decided to check out a few tracks. I can't say it was love at first sight, but I didn't totally reject these strange sonic experiences either. One album actually caught my attention: Soliloquy For Lillith. For a while, I would listen to it almost daily on my first generation iPod, but I eventually discovered other bands and artists who made me forget about NWW. We're now eight years later in 2008 and I find two albums used in a record store in Montreal and I decide to give them a try after briefly considering selling them on eBay because of the profit I might make due to their rarity. It didn't take long this time to realize that these albums were keepers and that I would need to explore more of Stapleton's work.

Nurse With Wound hasn't always been a solo project. During the early days, Stapleton would be joined by a few other like-minded artists who also shared his love of the obscure and out-of-the-ordinary. Many of these albums do have that industrial sound, but we're far from the comically gothic imagery and the easy and tame arrangements which would surface later during the rise of the MindusTrialV scene; Nurse with Wound's music (if you can even call it that) was a much darker affair and yet Stapleton wasn't afraid to experiment with different musical genres and themes including jazz, sound poems, drone, folk, you name it! The most surprising thing for me is that, no matter how bleak and fucked up the music might be, one can often find humerous overtones and obvious self-parody on a few albums (you wouldn't see trent Reznor trying this on his albums now would you). Many "new" industrial fans would probably run in panicky fear if you put one of NWW's albums on for them. Not everything is genius, but Stapleton's music is often quite demanding, challenging, difficult and yet always rewarding! The adventurous types will most likely enjoy many of the artist's works and I firmly believe there's actually something for everyone here, you simply have to find the right album for your mind frame. Unfortunately, Nurse With Wound albums, much like The Residents (who are on the list!) before them and Boris after them, are quite hard to come by and many have been released in different versions and limited editions to make things even more confusing. Being quite late in discovering this artist, the budget needed to find some more records is quite discouraging, but with time (and extensive searching), I will try to get more... just be patient!

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