It's frustrating that one of the best Nurse With Wound albums in recentyears will probably slip through the cracks of formatting politics.Available to purchase only as a bonus vinyl LP with a pre-order of allthree collaborative albums, Raw Material-Zero Mixmay not be heard by many people. Although it was merely meant toprovide source material to be reworked by Jim O'Rourke, Cyclobe andIrr.App.(Ext.), this album should have been released on its own.Rather than sounding like a library of sounds and skeletons of ideas tobe fleshed out by other artists, this sounds like a finished, fullyformed statement. "Part One" is a side-long exploration of theinterplay between various creaking sounds and a steady blanket ofdrones. This piece recalls one aspect of their recent work,particularly the slowly developing atmospheric moods created with"Beware the African Mosquito (Ring Your Doorbell, Put You to Sleep)"from 2002's Man With the Woman Face and 2003's Salt Marie Celeste."Part Two" is in sharp contrast to "Part One's" exercise inunderstatement and tension building, as it embeds the same creakingsounds in a panoramic landscape. This section's nightmarish blasts ofsonic detritus are an aural representation of the Hell panel fromBosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Toward the end of the piece thesounds of saxophone, flute and hand drums played by members of XholCaravan are introduced. These acoustic sounds don't sound out of placeamong the electronics that have so far domimnated the album. Betweenthese untreated acoustic sounds, the quiet tones and creaking ratchetsounds in "Part One" and the chaotic shards of noise in "Part Two,"Nurse With Wound has provided an impressive range of source material.Although Cyclobe's take on this material is a widely divergent escapeinto their outer-space freakout zone, O'Rourke and Irr.App.(Ext.) haveseemingly done little to further the ideas presented by Stapleton andPotter. It may have been more exciting if the project were taken in thedirection of actual collaborations between Nurse With Wound and each ofthese three artists, who are all good choices for such a task. All ofthese Angry Eelectric Finger LPs feature excellent design work,which is a step in the right direction for Beta-lactam Ring, whose pastreleases have often looked amateurish with regard to layout. It's ashame that this album was not given proper release status. Hopefully aCD reissue is in the works, as it would give a proper perspective tothe efforts of O'Rourke, Cyclobe and Irr.App.(Ext.).samples:
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