Nurse With Wound — An Awkward Pause-Special Edition

This is a welcome reissue of one of the more accessible Nurse with wound Albums from 1999, which featured Current 93’s David Tibet vocal skills on a few tracks, And more rocked out, folk and rhythmic elements. It also tags on a rewarding second disk of different mixes etc, which continues the rewarding toe dippings into more electroinca beat work shown on last years Rat tape ones.

An Awkward Pause is fairly standard musically composition and structure for the first half of the album, only showing a few traces of Stapleton’s more Surreal tendencies. Intravenous opens the album up with a heady and building electro beat and guitar riff stew,  trange rhythmic shifts and odd audio elements been the only traces of this been in NWW territory. It All makes a great atmospheric and rock tinged strange driving on the open road vibe. Next we have Two shaves and a shine, with it's  bassy and playful rocking vibe, met by  Tibet’s odd surreal, macabre and funny rant. Stapleton  &  Potter really showing  here thier talents to build and alter the track sound, offering up folky traces, shifting sound elements and rocked-out guitar moments.

Next we step into more  traditional NWW territory with the 25 minutes of The Penis Fruit loop, which still holds traces of rhythmic and rock elements from the first tow tracks, but in a more subdued manner. It  starts in an unfolding surreal ambience and strange sound worlds vibe, but towards it’s fever dream end introduces more streached rhythmic and musically tones. All making one of the more rewarding long length tracks of the 90’s. Lunar Cement Sidewalk  comes next, again moving in more surreal ambient sound scapes,  like the slow unfolding of hallucinogenic fog, it slowly swirls around and engulfs you in it’s 10 minute running time. Midway it dips into a  truly inspired mix of  eerier  acoustic guitar strum and glitch surreal beat play.

Lastly we have Mummers Little Weeper which returns to the more rock based sound use, with hovering guitar and organ and harmonic tones. The track has a great feeling of ageless mysterious, as Stapleton melds all the elements into a wonderful drifting trance manner.

Going onto the second disk we find quite different version of the first disk tracks, really re-imaging them or taking them on more bizarre and often beat-led adventures. Three new tracks appear in the form of Disposition one, tow and three- which continue the albums musically themes, but also seem to really bound the disk together making it more of a corrosive and valuable listening  experience than just a collection of outtakes. It makes a enjoyable trip in it’s self, only falling down on the last few tracks where we get too many version to handle of Tow shaves and a shine.

All in all a great entry level Nurse With Wound album, that will appeal to all manner of audio lovers- from those who enjoy post rock to soundtracks to drone and ambience.  An Great everyman NWW release, with the worthy second disk to attract long time Nurse Addicts.