Label: Beta-lactam Ring Format: LP
Opening with a gurgling faux-didj sheen which soon develops into a four-floored drumkit rhythm of the not-quite title track, She And Me Fall Together In Free Death finds Steven Stapleton expanding the consciousness of his Nurse With Wound project in further psychedelic directions.
As the beat keeps pounding on with single-minded determination, it takes a good ten minutes to get going. While the underlying rhythm alters slowly, kosmische shards of kranky guitar chords emerge fitfully as muttered, menacingly obscure vocalisations circle in the lower depths, nodding to the psychotropic Rock groove with the shamanic intensity of a fully smoked-up session which winds into a frizzled electrical fire.
More surprising is the twinkling bell introduction which prefaces a slow dirge cover of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair”, in which Stapleton sings Patty Waters‘ paean with a full-bodied, wistful voice which is accompanied by a suitably cavernous wall of sound shot through with ethereal pre-echoing words. A quiet triumph of melancholia which reveals that Nurse With Wound are not just about funny noises – though the deliciously deranged “Chicken Concrete (for Mr. James)” proceeds to blip, grunt and scratch into Dada oblivion with carefully-placed environmental farmyard sounds deliquescing in a clockwork whirl of microsound for maniacs, dream soundscapes of a cheesed-up dreamer dozing too close to the barn doors of perception with the airwaves tuned to Radio Tesla.
The final eerie descent into lasciviousness on “Gusset Typing” is where matters become quintessentially disturbing as only Nurse With Wound can make them, as a pornographic story is read in hyper-effected voice to a suitably orgasmic orchestration of throbbing electronics and female moans. This is a piece destined to receive very little radio airplay, but conjours peculiar images of some kind of avant-porno phone sex session designed not so much to gratify the punters as freak the living fuck out of them on a wave of dehumanised, stiltedly lewd words and glowing technomagical audio stimulation. Taken as a whole, She And Me Fall Together In Free Death is proof positive that Stapleton is still the great avant-garde weird dream merchant and no mistake.
-Linus Tossio-
