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...
