Various – Strain Crack And Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound List, Volume One

Finders Keepers

“Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden — step out of the space provided”, goes the intro to the Nurse With Wound list – as the rivery wound within the typographics become your rabbit hole, the spidery black text your ladder. Mythology is a strange thing: a seed of truth dropped in the enquiring mind some might say.

I’m really glad Mr Stapleton and company penned that gigantic list of influences on the back of their first record (expanding it on the second), something that has taken on a life of its very own since, exploded with the advent of the internet. The shrinking distances of the blogosphere fed your feral imaginings with actual “real” musicians, and records that had slipped the world’s attention; or just simply lost to private press exclusivity, their qualities ejector-seating your senses far beyond.

Now some forty years after this list was set free on the world, the Finders Keepers label and Steve Stapleton have collaborated to remind us of those riches, before some money-minded twit with an acoustic guitar ruins it all for us YET AGAIN. (Isn’t there enough beige strumming and harmonious shiraz knocking the door already). Don’t you hate when things are proclaimed the “future of music” and simply just aren’t? (Something that happens too often these days). Well this lot simply ARE the future — even if (ironically) most of this was conceived way back in the ’60s or ’70s and this excellent idea for a series (or more like homage) Strain Crack And Break hits you with some convincing evidence.

The first volume contains thirteen tracks, all plucked from the country of the three plumes. The splintered tractions of Jacques Thollot’s “Cécile” are an amazing starter, with an investigative tinderbox of off-key dynamics puckering a simple undercurrent in hiccupping error. The dark brooding shapes and succulent sci-fi of Philippe Besombes‘s “La Plage” bubble over in operatic orgasm-o-tronics and purring weirdlings climbing over the still-wet paintwork. Just two tracks in and it’s an instant satisfaction guarantee; then Igor Wakhévitch‘s “Materia-Prima” hits and takes things to a whole new level, with its roomy reverb and yelping trippy blurs curving it up into a wah-drizzled-jazzation.

Could this get any better? Oooh yes, shaking its tail feathers in chanson shivers, Mahjun’s slinky sensuality champagned by slippery sax steals me completely, its breathy shadowing blooms your hemispheres as the giddy concoction loses your bearings to some funk-driven surprise, then the tasty Lard Free transportation of smooth psychedelic jazz-rock blooming into a disconcerting overload. I did found the bonkers loose-leaf avant-expressionism of Etron Fou Leloublan‘s “Le Désastreux Voyage Du Piteux Python” a bit wearing though, and like Jean Cohen-Solal‘s “Captain Tarthopom” too comically cast; but Red Noise’s “Sarcelles C’est L’avenir” recovers things with its fifteen-minute free jazz assault, a freewheeling reaction basking in an enfant terrible of aggressive psychedelic colour, like a sun-damaged Oneida full of jostling chromosomes.

I have the LP from which Horrific Child’s “Freyeur” has been extracted,one of the strangest albums I own and worth tracking down in its own right, here supplying a beautifully damaged slant to this collection’s unhinged ambience. Loving the pace of the LP, really surprised Ghédalia Tazartès isn’t here though, or Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes , but Pierre Henry’s slow-burning beauty does make up for this, as well as Dashiell Hedayat’s fleeting fantasies.

Without a doubt this is an adventure that will inspire many adventures to come.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-