- Two Mock Projections
- The Six Buttons of Sex Appeal
- Blank Capsules of Embroidered Cellophane
- Strain, Crack, Break
Chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella, that says it all really. That line is in fact the response Lautreamont gave when asked what is surrealism (although this is disputed by other sources). Nurse with wounds first album was the very definition of unique. They had no peers then, and in over twenty-five years since it’s release none really have emerged. Recorded in one day at a recording studio in soho, the utterly bizarre chance meeting is a masterstroke of indescribable sounds and ideas. This IS surrealist music, just like surrealist art or poetry the music contains recognisable elements organised in odd an unexpected ways. But this way too superficial to describe this music.
It’s a collage of seemingly unmusical elements put together in a musical form, and it’s frankly quite mad. And that’s really the best I can do to describe the style.
The songs themselves are in fact rather good and engaging for a group of non-musicians. The highlight for me being the half hour epic, Blank Capsules of Embroidered Cellophane. Random guitar abuse, eerie piano, a multitude of percussion and effects, a French woman reciting something, some Casio sounds. It’s goes on and on. It’s soundscape like, and at times cinematic.
Two mock projections has more of a foreboding feel to it, with some deep synth chords providing a backdrop. The six buttons of sex appeal, is the oddest of the tracks, being for the most part a load of scraping and tapping with very abstract sounding percussion, over this mass of noise a guy moans and screams in a very hysterical manner. But it fits with the rest of the album and is as with the whole crazy thing, highly engaging.
There isn’t the large spaces of silence and drone that the later albums would use and a general use of atonal noise is very prominent, which isn‘t surprising since none of the three characters involved in creating the album could play an instrument to any sort of standard.
The classic Dada/fetish cover which gained the album attention when it was first released all adds to the mystique of this release. And with the infamous nurse list citing all their obscure, avant-garde (and some made up) influences they had collectors and journalists scratching their heads for years to come.
An off the wall album then that require no little time and thought to truly realise, and to be honest you’ll either get it or you wont.
