Nurse With Wound is a band with a variable and extremely changeable line-up. Regardless of members, Nurse With Wound consistently produces a sound that most people would hesitate to describe as music. The phrase 'difficult listening' is bandied about to excess nowadays - magazines chose to describe Radiohead's Kid A as difficult listening, and there's a tendency to slap the label onto anything even vaguely industrial. When it comes to Nurse With Wound, however, 'difficult listening' is most appropriate.¹.

The Music:

Reminiscent of Merzbow at times, at others similar to Coil, Nurse With Wound torture electronics to produce extended, wrenched-up landscapes of noise. Sometimes rhythmic, rarely melodic, and very occasionally harmonious, their sound is minimalist and harsh. Some pieces have little evidence of structure, consisting entirely of machine sounds: violent banging, or the screech of deliberate and out of control feedback. Other pieces feature the sounds of industry churning and whining, the harsh clang of metal on metal.

As you'd expect, opinions and reactions to the sound of Nurse With Wound vary. One reviewer at Amazon summed it up quite plainly: '...how can something like this appeal to a listener? It's clangy, and ugly! Why not go to any noisy industrial plant, like a glass grinding factory, and not bother to buy a CD?' Another describes the same album in glowing terms: 'Beautiful drones and slow progressions, all with various degrees of ring modulation.' Yet another reviewer selects a string of adjectives: 'Strange, atonal, beautiful, hypnotic, mesmerizing, surreal, otherwordly, ugly, scary, oddly stimulating.'

A Brief History...

Nurse With Wound formed in 1978. Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heeman Pathak decided to form a group based on their mutual enjoyment of progressive and avant garde music. The debut LP was finished by December, and the following year this recording, Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella was issued in a limited edition of 500 copies. Sounds! magazine, along with many others, had no idea how to approach the sound of Nurse With Wound, and awarded it five question marks instead of the usual stars.

The three original members later joined forces with Jacques Berrocal to produce the second album: To The Quiet Men From A Tiny Girl, following which Heeman Pathak left the band to pursue his own project, Hastings Of Malawi. Berrocal did not join the band, leaving it a two-member project. Stapleton and Fothergill recorded Merzbild Schwet, an evolution of the original Nurse With Wound sound, which incorporated voices and an excess of studio effects. The two albums were released simultaneously, once again as a limited edition of five hundred copies.

Another line-up change took place in 1981, leaving Steven Stapleton to work on Nurse With Wound as a solo project. At this time John Thirlwell, known to many for his Nine Inch Nails remixes, and Trevor Reidy provided assistance, and a collaboration with Whitehouse also provided inspiration. David Tibet later joined with Stapleton to produce further works for L.A.Y.L.A.H. Records

Further works followed, often in collaboration with other artists, working up to 1989's release of A Sucked Orange. This was the first Nurse With Wound release to be issued on CD, and features twenty-eight snippets of various tracks. Following this, Stapleton ceased to produce work as Nurse With Wound, though in 1994 he returned briefly to the project with a far more techno sound. Rock'n'Roll Station was released, fifteen years after Nurse With Wound was originally formed, and was planned to be followed with a string of re-releases and re-masters. The following years have allowed Nurse With Wound to continue producing a steady stream of material. Never quite attaining mainstream success, and most unlikely to, Nurse With Wound are more than content to work on their peculiar and eclectic sound. Their website is well-maintained and gives a plentiful overview of their current plans and activities.

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¹ I'm not allowed to listen to Nurse With Wound when my partner is in the house. Coil, Philip Glass and Godspeed You Black Emperor! are also banned. I can almost understand why - one has to be in exactly the right mood to cope with the car alarm-and-static strains of Cold. I think the screaming distresses him, too...

With noise band Nurse With Wound's first album, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table, came a cryptic list. Main NWW member Steven Stapleton had compiled it, with the help of John Fothergill (an early member of NWW), out of his obsessive crate digging.

It contained almost 300 albums, artists and songs, all listed in blunt all-caps courier. Even where one ends and another begins can be hard to suss out.

Now expanded twice (the first time as an insert in NWW's second album, the second time as part of The Audion Guide to Nurse With Wound, the list has become a map through psych, free jazz, krautrock and assorted weirdness for 25-years worth of music fans. Many of the albums are still out of print, but collectors make it a goal to complete the full run. It is even sometimes credited with a revival of interest in krautrock as a whole, and certainly helped the careers of many of the artists listed. All of the bands are ones that are purported to have influenced Nurse With Wound's sound, though nearly all of the albums are "easier" to listen to than NWW.

The full original list follows: categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided

ALL-7-70 ALTERNATIVE TV ALVARO AME SON AMM MUSIC AMON DUUL AMON DUUL II ANIMA ANNEXUS QUAM ARBETE
OCH FRITID ARCANE V ARCHAIA ARCHIMEDES BADKAR AREA GILBERT ARTMAN ART BEARS ART ZOYD III ARZACHEL
ROBERT ASHLEY ASH RA TEMPEL ASSOCIATION PC IL BALLETTO DI BRONZO BANTEN FRANCO BATTIATO       HAN
BENNINK JACQUES BERROCAL BIGLIETTO PER LINFERNO BIRGE GORGE SHIROC BLUE SUN RAYMOND BONI          
DON BRADSHAW LEATHER BRAINSTORM BRAINTICKET BRAST BURN BRAVE NEW WORLD ANTON BRUHIN             
BRUHWARM THEATRE FRANZ DE BYL JOHN CAGE CAN CAPSICUM RED CAPTAIN BEEFHEART             CHAMBERPOT
CHECKPOINT CHARLIE CHENE NOIR CHILLUM CHROME COHELMEC ENSEMBLE JEAN COHEN SOLAL                    
COLLEGIUM MUSICUM ROBERTO COLOMBO COMPANYIA ELECTRICA DHARMA COMUS                     CORNUCOPIA
CREATIVE ROCK CRO MAGNON DAVID CUNNINGHAM DADAZUZU WOLFGANG DAUNER                         DEBRIS
DECAYES DEDALUS DHARMA QUINTET DIES IRAE DOODOOETTES                               PHILIPPE DORAY
JEAN DUBUFFET DZYAN EILIFF EMTIDI EROC ETRON FOU LE LOUBLAN                               EXMAGMA
PATRIZIO FARISELLI FAUST LUC FERRARI FILLE QUI MOUSSE FLOH DE COLOGNE                  FOOD BRAIN
WALTER FRANCO FRIENDSOUND FRED FRITH GASH RON GEESIN                         GILA GOD IN DISGUISE
GOMORRHA GONG JOHN GREAVES AND PETER BLEGVAD FERNANDO GRILLO               GROBSCHNITT GROUP 1850
JEAN GUERIN FRIEDRICH GULDA GURU GURU HAIRY CHAPTER                     HAMPTON GREASE BAND HENRY
COW HERATIUS HERO HUGH HOPPER HORDE CATALYTQUE POR LA FIN                        IBLISS LINFONIE
INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER ISKRA ISLAND JAN DUKES DE GREY                         KING CRIMSON BASIL
KIRCHIN KLUSTER FRANK KOLGES KOLLEKTIV ROTE RUBE                     KOMINTERN KRAFTWERK KROKODIL
STEVE LACY LARD FREE LE FORTE FOUR LILY                 LIMBUS 3 AND LIMBUS 4 BERNARD LUBAT ALVIN
LUCIER MAGMA COLETTE MAGNY MAHJUN                             MAHOGANY BRAIN MALFATTI AND WITTWER
MICHAEL MANTLER ALBERT MARCOEUR                                 MASCHINE NO 9 MATE AND VALLANCIEN
COSTIN MIEREANU MIN BUL MODRY EFEKT                                      ANTHONY MOORE MOTHERS OF
INVENTION MOVING GELATINE PLATES                               FRITZ MULLER THIERRY MULLER MUSICA
ELECTRONICA VIVA MUSIC IMPROVISATION COMPANY                           MYTHOS NAPOLI CENTRALE NEU
NICO NIGHT SUN NINE DAYS WONDER                             NOSFERATU NU CREATIVE METHODS OKTOBER
YOKO ONO OPERATION RHINO OPUS AVANTRA                               OUT OF FOCUS OVARY LODGE TONY
OXLEY PARKER AND LYTTON                                    PATAPHONIE PAUVROS AND BIZIEN PERE UBU
PIERROT LUNAIRE PLASTIC ONO BAND                                   PLASTIC PEOPLE OF THE UNIVERSE
POLE POP GROUP MICHEL PORTAL                                RED CRAYOLA RED NOISE REFORM ART UNIT
STEVE REICH ACHIM REICHEL                                   RESIDENTS CATHERINE RIBEIRO AND ALPES
TERRY RILEY ROCKYS FILJ                              RON PATES DEBONAIRS ROTH RUHM AND WIENER RAY
RUSSELL TERJE RYPDAL                      MARTIN SAINT PIERRE SAMLA MAMMAS MANNA GUNTER SCHICKERT
SECOND HAND SECRET OYSTER                     SEESSELBERG SEMOOL SONNY SHARROCK SILBERBART SILOAH
SOFT MACHINE SPERM                     SPHINX TUSH KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN STOOGES DEMETRIO STRATOS
SUPERSISTER TAMIA               TANGERINE DREAM TECHNICAL SPACE COMPOSERS CREW MAMA BEA TEKIELSKI
THIRD EAR BAND               THIRSTY MOON THIS HEAT JACQUES THOLLOT THRICE MICE THROBBING GRISTLE
PAOLO TOFANI           TOMORROWS GIFT TON STEINE SCHERBEN TRANS MUSEQ ULI TREPTE TWENTY SIXTY SIX
AND THEN      UNIVERS ZERO CHRISTIAN VANDER VELVET UNDERGROUND VERTO PATRICK VIAN MICHEL WAISVISZ
       IGOR WAKHEVITCH TREVOR WISHART WOORDEN ROBERT WYATT XHOL CARAVAN XHOL LA MONTE YOUNG FRANK
ZAPPA. ZWEISTEIN ZNR AGITATION FREE PEKKA AIRAKSINEN AIRWAY ALBRECHT D ALCRATAZ ALGARNAS TRADGARD

NWW interviews have encouraged spreading the list, but warn against using it as a talisman, since there's even more good music that didn't make the list.