Though there is no definitive information on their actual release dates, I'm commemorating the release of both the 2nd and 3rd Nurse With Wound albums today as an arbitrary approximation for their 40th anniversary. Recorded in January and June of 1980, respectively, To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl and Merzbild Schwet represent critical stages in the initial development of this project.
Initiated the year before with the release of Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella, Nurse With Wound was founded by the trio of Heman Pathak, John Fothergill and Steven Stapleton. They would remain in this configuration for the 2nd LP, but creative differences would leave the project in the sole proprietorship of Stapleton by the recording of the 3rd. Going forward, NWW would evolve into an ever shifting conglomerate of collaborations with a huge variety of artists. Though some would become somewhat regular contributors, Stapleton would always remain its central instigator.
Whereas the first LP was essentially little more than a bit of a studio lark for the trio, being recorded with little forethought and little time (I believe it was a one day affair), they started to take things a bit more seriously with the 2nd LP and, by the time the third was manifest, the basic essence of the central concepts were well in place. The references to Dada and Surrealism were firmly fixed and the production values started to reflect a desire to offer some kind of high fidelity while simultaneously sabotaging it with the use of inexplicable distortions and glitches. United Dairies, the self-run label releasing the albums, even relied on a pressing plant specializing in classical recordings for their releases as the technicians there were more adept at dealing with extremes in audio dynamics inherent in the genre as opposed to other plants who were more used to the heavily compressed recordings common within the rock & roll arena. The results were records of uncommon clarity and precision within the scope of the material being presented.
The compositions themselves offered up a more interesting progression than the improvised cacophony of the depute from the previous year. Certainly, there was still a lot of clutter in the sound at times, but there was a much greater expansion in the appreciation of strategic silences. The principals of "cut-ups" were starting to manifest in the use of found voice elements, though the editing sophistication was still lacking and would not manifest into its full flower until the following year with the release of the pivotal Homotopy to Marie LP. However, the course and the evolution are clearly audible on these two albums and the progression is unmistakable.
Personally, I didn't managed to track these down until the early 2000s on CD, once online ordering became practical for me. I'd picked up an LP in 1989, The Sisters Of Pataphysics, which offered extracts from the first three LPs, but the presence of the Chance Meeting components put me off the album due to their rudimentary nature. Once I got a chance to hear these two albums in their entirety, I was much better able to appreciate the evolution which had occurred and the development of Stapleton's ability to surprise and misdirect. Merzbild Schwet, in particular, stands out as one of the few recordings I've ever heard which caused me to think my stereo system was broken. The opening few minutes had me rushing to my equipment, in a panic, thinking it was about to implode. I give kudos for that any time someone manages to pull it off.
Though they are albums which represent a "work in progress", I still find them very listenable, overall, at least as far as Nurse With Wound is considered. There's a certain ambience to them that sinks into the environment and allows you to absorb it all without too many instances of things jarring you out of your comfort zone. Of course, that's assuming your comfort zone is a bed of nails.
