- Beware the African Mosquito (Ring Your Doorbell, Put You to Sleep)
- Ag canadh thuas sa spèir
- White Light from the Stars in Your Mind (A Paramechanical Development)
Man with the woman face is Nurse with wounds 2001 release, it sees Nurse returning to the long experimental Soundscapes of their earlier releases, but of course utilising nearly 25 years of experience and up to date technical know how.
There are only 3 tracks but 2 clock in at around the 15 minute mark, but still this is a relatively short release for Nurse. The first track is “Beware the African mosquito (ring your doorbell put you to sleep)” It builds up slowly from vaguely ambient and mechanical sounds, a bit like being inside a huge old clock,. There is the occasional buzz of sound effects and insect like sounds. The trademark Nurse drones and abstract sounds are all present. Around 6.30 minutes the collage is joined by low moaning and groans, and some strange clicks and taps. This track is rather like the albums art work, a strange bright collage of sounds making a unique and engaging soundtrack. The tracks finishes with the clicks and buzzing giving way to some very well created fly swarming sounds that shoot all around your head.
The second track is Ag canadh thuas sa spèir, this is Gaelic and translates loosely as Up in the sky, singing. I don’t like this as much as the first song, it’s not as interesting but still has some good moments. It’s mostly low drones and strange organic sounds punctuated by the occasional distorted vocal sample and mechanical effect. Suddenly we are enveloped by a crushing cracking sound, like a wooden floor is disintegrating and rather strange krautrockish sounding music drifts in, heavily reverbed and delayed making it sound all over the place, before a tense high pitched drone moves in with more clock type sounds, this again is broken up by a single piano note strike and we’re back at the krautrock zone. More odd drones, clock sounds and synth noise clatter before the final track White Light from the Stars in Your Mind (A Paramechanical Development) begins.
This is similar to the first track in it’s slow subtle build up, with more synth drones combines with bursts of backwards speech and swirly effects. Around 6 minutes a funny child sounding voice joins in singing a little melody. I think it’s about the mechanical world or something. Around this point some tribal sounding drums appear in the background combined with some clanking sounds and a few bells. Other sounds, flute, organ and other background samples come in making this track almost cinematic in it’s scope. A great track to finish on.
As usual this is surreal and abstract with many of the trademark touches that have made nurse with wound such a cult act. Approach with an open mind.
