Nurse With Wound
Thunder Perfect Mind

Steven Stapleton is not only the most loyal collaborator of David Tibet and a constant presence in the works of Current 93, but he is also, and above all, the mind behind the experimental music project Nurse with Wound.

Active since the late seventies among the first movers of the British industrial scene, Stapleton has managed over time to carve out a respectable niche in the history of ear-splitting music alongside people like Throbbing Gristle, Foetus, Boyd Rice, Jim O'Rourke, and Merzbow, with whom he has often collaborated. Among all these sound terrorists, perhaps Stapleton is the one who has developed his path in a more reflective and personal way, bordering on absolute autism in the determination and intransigence with which he pursued and captured his artistic visions. Inspired by the philosophy of the Dadaists and Futurists of the early twentieth century and the surreal art of various Dali and Lautréamont, Stapleton's music is a cerebral industrial that emerges from the cross-action of improvisation, manipulation, and assembly. A modus operandi reminiscent of the collage and electronic manipulation experiments of artists such as Stockhausen and Karlheinz, and the drone-ambient explorations of LaMonte Young. A maniacal operation of sound research and vivisection where sounds are produced, cut up, decomposed, manipulated, mixed, and assembled into kaleidoscopic compositions where everything seems to happen by pure chance, when in reality everything is a function of a precise design. It could be said that never has chaos appeared equally organized and rationally conceived and constructed.

"Chance Meeting Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella On A Dissecting Table", "Homotopy To Marie", "Soliloquy For Lilith", "Salt Marie Celeste", "Acts Of Senseless Beauty", "Man with the Woman Face", without any claim to completeness, are among the most representative episodes of a vast discography, which, among official albums, EPs, singles, remixes, splits, and various collaborations truly counts an enormous amount of releases and publications. "Thunder Perfect Mind", the album I am about to review, is a good window from which to take a first look at the hallucinated world of this artist. But not only that, "Thunder Perfect Mind" is also the "sister album" of the much more well-known eponymous album by Current 93 (both released in 1992), and for this reason, it may be of extreme interest to fans of this band. And the contribution of David Tibet, John Balance, the ever-present Rose McDowall, and many other more or less known figures from the British dark-industrial scene only makes everything more enticing. Let's dispel any doubts immediately: musically speaking, Nurse with Wound's work has absolutely nothing to do with Tibet's bucolic folk, and the only analogies with Current 93's masterpiece can be found exclusively on a conceptual level.

Composed of two long compositions, Stapleton's "Thunder Perfect Mind" merely reaffirms the aesthetic vision of its mad mastermind. The 24 minutes of "Cold" are based on a frenetic pulsation on which a whole repertoire of disordered yet perfectly orchestrated sounds progressively graft themselves, simulating an organism on the brink of collapse: creaks, bells, alarms, whistles, xylophones, pots, drills, compressors, telegraphs gone mad, radio frequencies, distorted voices, barking dogs, all sorts of percussion, everything contributes to creating a heart-pounding system of instability, where various elements overlap, chase each other, and skillfully take turns in witty interweavings, until the final catharsis, described by icy synths and the ungrammatical beat of a typewriter. A state of perpetual tension that could serve as the ideal soundtrack for an otherworldly Tom & Jerry adventure. A collage never an end in itself that is appreciated for the ironic and sarcastic cut of certain passages (highlighting Stapleton's complex and peculiar personality, light years away from the standards of seriousness assumed by other exponents of the scene), but above all for the variety and dynamism of its evolutions, which keep the listener's attention well alive for the entire duration of the track.

Quite another thing is the catacombal ambient of the 33 minutes of "Colder Still", which takes us back to the esoteric experiments of the early albums of Current 93. The catastrophic symphonic opening is only the beginning: for the next quarter hour, the track settles into an ascetic ambient where the minimal phrasings of the synths alternate with trombone calls, Tibet's grunts, and McDowall's distant and almost imperceptible singing. To animate the whole, around the 17th of the reprise, we find a mad and terrifying remix of "Rosy Star Tears from Heaven" (from "Thunder Perfect Mind" by Current, the only apparent link between the two albums) that strips it of its folk dress and focuses exclusively on Tibet's spirit-possessed vocals and Balance's oblique ones. Archived this parenthesis, the track will continue in the name of the ceremonial rite celebrated by McDowall's sensual narration to the syncopated rhythm of a percussion carpet with a Middle Eastern flavor, reminiscent of Popol Vuh's "In Der Garten Pharaos". It is certainly not easy-listening music, this must be understood (as, moreover, it must be understood that a fair dose of masochism is necessary to undertake such experiences), but it is not easily conceived music either, and this is what makes Stapleton a unique and absolutely elusive artist. It is not music that involves or captivates; perhaps it is not even music; it is something closer to a mathematical equation than a work of art, and for this reason, a distance is inevitably created between the object and the subject, who can at most contemplate from the outside the architectures of this cathedral of sounds, but not penetrate it or come into contact with the creator's intimate sphere.

This is food for the brain, nothing more, nothing less. Passionate people and melody lovers should stay away.