For the most part recorded live in Vienna, this album is a consolidation of Nurse With Wound’s most recent output into one piece. The results speak for themselves; the different resources integrate with each other perfectly to give an exceptional piece of music.
ICR / United Dairies
Soundpooling contains two tracks. The first, “Soundpooling #3,” is the performance from Vienna. The performance is described as an improvisation on Salt Marie Celeste and the Echo Poeme releases. There are also elements of Angry Eelectric Finger scattered throughout the performance. The combination (or pooling to use the language of the album) of these different compositions works extremely well; the whispered intonations from the Echo Poeme material sounds like they were made to accompany the creaky, creepy drones of Salt Marie Celeste. In fact, the vocals sound much better here than they do on the “proper” releases; the oceanic background makes them sound erotic and mysterious.
As the improvisation progresses, it moves into completely new territories with only odd bits of sound acting as points of familiarity. The music is far more active and engaging than I was expecting. Explosions of noises that sound like they were spliced from a number of old records and cultured on a dish in dark, damp basement rock the atmosphere. I can only imagine how uneasy the audience must have felt listening to this in the flesh considering the lab coat uniform of the performers and the fact that the venue was an anatomy museum.
The second track is a new studio recording named “In Swollen Silence.” It is an almost calming break after the tension of the live recording. Freida Abtan’s performance and text is evocative and for the most part very beautiful, there are moments where the beauty is shattered by the sentiments of the words: “your shadow ripped from you.” Stapleton throws a few curveballs during this piece that take me by surprise each time I listen to it (I won’t elaborate as they are best experienced first hand). Soundpooling would have been a fine release if it just contained the live performance but the inclusion of “In Swollen Silence” caps off the album nicely.
The bonus disc that came with initial copies of Soundpooling is a one track studio piece with the delicious title of A Handjob from the Laughing Policeman. It contains a lot of the material recorded by Stapleton and Potter in Utvaer for the Shipwrecked Radio albums. It opens with a busy array of electronic noises, processed voices and before a groovy drum beat fades in and slows the pace down. This drum beat disappears and is replaced with an exotic, tribal beat. All the while, typically Nurse With Woundish noises, ranging from sea gulls to indefinable tones, eddy and churn around the beats. It is a nice companion to the Shipwrecked Radio discs but not something I’d be kicking myself for missing.
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