Nurse With Wound- Paraparaparallelogrammatica: Angry Eelectric Finger 2

Artist: Nurse With Wound and Cyclobe
CD Title: Paraparaparallelogrammatica: Angry Eelectric Finger 2
Label: Beta-Lactam Ring Records
Reviewer: Matthew Johnson
Date: 1/11/05

The second installment of Nurse With Wound’s “Angry Eelectric Finger” trilogy sees the original source material reworked – or as the liner notes put it, “dismantled, raped, and set fire to” – by Cyclobe’s Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower. The quietest disk of the series, this can be almost subliminal at times, with muted ambient tones and sampled voices reduced to indistinguishable mutterings. Even the jazzy moments of saxophone and flute – provided by Krautrock pioneers Hansi Fischer and Tim Belbe of Xhol Caravan – are so heavily processed, looped, and cut up that they act more as adornments to the washes of electronic noise than as melodies in their own right. Despite the emphasis on effects and soundscapes over instrumentation, Cyclobe wring some surprisingly naturalistic textures out of their experimentation. The last track on the disk in particular, though comprised mainly of softly undulating layers of feedback, sounds uncannily like wind on a foggy night and dead tree branches tapping at the window. Wind chimes, church bells, and engine sounds are carefully put together, creating a more direct sense of time and place than the chaotic mix of found sound usually associated with Nurse With Wound, and it’s strangely captivating.

Go to www.brainwashed.com/nww for more on Nurse With Wound, and visit Brown and Thrower at www.cyclobe.com.