- Intravenous
- Two Shaves and a Shine (concerto for bouzouki and 3 piece rock group in 93 six second segments)
- The Penis Fruit Loop
- Lunar Cement Sidewalk
- Mummer's Little Weeper
Twenty years after the release of Chance meeting Nurse are still the ever present stalwart of underground experimentalism returns here in a departure from the overt rhythms and skittish beats of the previous few releases, to the long freakish sound works of old. This is 1999 effort 'An awkward pause' and contains all the aspects of NWW that has made them such a cult act. The first track 'intravenous' builds slowly around some trademark Stapleton ambient drones, using reverse effects and some interesting heavily reverbed guitar work the track floats around your speakers, creating a strange otherworldly feeling. Stapleton is very found of creating these layered mechanical sounding atmospherics that are incorporated into many of his tracks. However Track two of this album has no such thing. 'Two Shaves and a shine' features frequent collaborator David Tibet on vocals and is a rather bizarre, pseudo Jazzy krautrock song. Made up of a repeating coda of ninety three, six second segments, the lyrics are totally of the wall and the guitar melody is repeated over and over again, changing along the way, become more complex, heavier, backwards, up down, silent. It’s quite mad and goes on for nearly 10 minutes.
The third track is a long experimental cutup, ambient noise track, using countless samples, effects and drones. At times quite cinematic this 25 minute composition builds and weaves it’s way around your head like a miniature drunken carnival of sound. At about the mid way point a strange processed voice appears saying something about growing a beard to see what it’s like. Madness. 'Lunar cement sidewards' is shorter but follows a similar pattern. This song is darker than the others, with a scary sample of a little girl making several appearances. (The same sample is used in Current 93s, The starres are marching sadly home EP) The final track is in a similar style to the first but uses mostly reverse guitar samples and more surreal and detached ambience.
So all in all another mad work of genius from NWW, more ambient and cinematic than a lot of his mid nineties work and definitely worth picking up.
