2024-09-02

NURSE WITH WOUND - CHANCE MEETING ON A DISSECTING TABLE OF A SEWING MACHINE AND UMBRELLA @ 45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary this month is the debut album from Nurse With Wound, Chance Meeting On a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and Umbrella, which was recorded in September of 1979. In addition to introducing the world to one of the UK's most unusual post-punk experimental concoctions, it provided collectors of strange music with one of the most useful laundry lists of artists ever assembled.

Prior to forming Nurse With Wound, Steven Stapleton was an avid record collector with a refined penchant for the strangest and most unusual music he was able to track down. As a graphic artist, commercially employed as a sign painter, he'd developed a passion for surrealism and sought out music that reflected that aesthetic. The founding of Nurse With Wound (NWW) then came about as a bit of rather serendipitous fortune, due to one of Stapleton's sign painting jobs for an independent recording studio. While on the job, Steven got to chatting with one of the engineers, Nick Rogers, who began lamenting his boredom with recording commercials and voice-over work, musing how he would love to be able to work on something more adventurous and creative. That twigged Stapleton, who immediately offered Rogers the opportunity to record his "band", an entity that didn't actually exist at the time. It was a moment of seizing an opportunity, with the practical aspects being left to work themselves out, after the fact. Stapleton immediately contacted two of his close music collector buddies, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak, instructing them to get hold of instruments for a recording session, thus establishing NWW's first official lineup.

The trio booked a six hour session for one day in the studio and showed up with their gear and no idea of what they were going to do, as they'd spent no time rehearsing or planning anything. For the recordings, the "group" was Stapleton on percussion, Fothergill on guitar (with built-in ring modulator) and Pathak on organ. Engineer Rogers also contributed what was credited as "commercial guitar". The studio's piano and synthesizer were also used. The session consisted entirely of on-the-spot improvisations that shook out into three different movements that were subsequently edited slightly and given a few minor overdubs before they were able to walk away with a finished mix of their debut album at the end of the session.

The trio then decided to release the recordings via their own newly minted label imprint, United Dairies, utilizing a vinyl pressing plant that normally specialized in classical recordings, to ensure the quality of the pressing was best able to capture the recording's dynamic range. 500 copies were pressed for its first run. The group's name came from a scene in the film Battleship Potemkin, and the album's title is a quote from the surreal poetic novel, Les Chants de Maldoror, by Uruguayan-born French author Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, written under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont. Stapleton designed the cover utilizing images pilfered from pornographic magazines, which resulted in some outlets insisting on the album being concealed in a brown paper bag, though some of the more adventurous outlets, like Virgin and Rough Trade, were happy to let it be seen in all its kinky glory. Here, I've cleverly plastered a NWW logo over the offending portion to thwart Facebook filters!

The original hand-numbered 500 copy pressing was sold within weeks. Among those who bought the album were Tim Gane, later of Stereolab, and William Bennett of Whitehouse, both of whom would later work with Stapleton. Critical response to the album was also surprisingly positive, if not a bit confused. Sounds summed up their response by abandoning their usual star rating system to award the album a full 5 question marks! In later reviews, the album has been lauded as "one of the more glowing examples of late-70s industrial noise" (All Music), and FACT magazine ranked the album at #51 on their list of "The 100 best albums of the 1970s".

One of the most influential aspects of the record's packaging was the inclusion of an A4 printout of the now infamous "Nurse With Wound List", a veritable "who's who" of experimental musical performers from the era prior to the record's release, all of whom were considered influential by the band. Dozens of artists were cited in the list, which has become an invaluable resource for collectors of strange and unusual music from that era. Having been mentioned on the "List" has become something of a guarantee that avid collectors will likely be hunting for your records, and has undoubtedly resulted in numerous reissues of rare releases in the ensuing years since its first publication.

Chance Meeting... has subsequently seen a number of represses and reissues, some of which have expanded its contents, like the 2001 CD special edition that added the fourth track, "Strain, Crack, Break", which consists of a heavily cut-up recording of David Tibet reading the "List". Though certainly a notable example of experimental improvisation, the album is not particularly indicative of what NWW would soon become. The lineup for the band would quickly diverge, leaving Stapleton as the sole proprietor of the venture by the third album. His techniques and approaches would rapidly develop over the course of those early releases as well, with the album, Homotopy to Marie (1982) being the release where the true NWW sound and aesthetic, in all its sophistication and complexity, would first come into its full flower. Since then, NWW has involved innumerable collaborators and a vast range of approaches and styles, with its output continuing to rank as some of the most collectible artifacts of the underground music scene. 

The "List" included with the album is documented here...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_with_Wound_list

The album can be streamed and purchased from Bandcamp.
https://nursewithwound1.bandcamp.com/.../chance-meeting...

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