Nurse With Wound- Mute Bell Extinction Process: Angry Eelectric Finger 3

Artist: Nurse With Wound and Irr.App(Ext)
CD Title: Mute Bell Extinction Process: Angry Eelectric Finger 3
Label: Beta -Lactam Ring Records
Reviewer: Matthew Johnson
Date: 1/11/05

The third and final part of Nurse With Wound’s “Angry Eelectric Finger” series features electronic artist Irr.App.(Ext.), otherwise known as Matthew Waldron, taking on Stephen Stapleton’s original source material. Consisting of three tracks, each clocking in at around fifteen minutes, it’s perhaps the most diverse disk in the series, ranging from gentle to grating, soothing to frightening. The first disk begins with soft gongs, their echoes extending into waves of sound and eventually interrupted by a menagerie of noises: chirps, clanks, whirrs, buzzes, nervous rustlings, and creepy music box chimes. The relaxed assortment of industrial percussion sounds on the second track is reminiscent of Einsturzende Neubauten’s calmer instrumental “floor pieces,” but then come the tortured tape loops and sampled screaming. The piece ends with bubbling and droning that blends seamlessly into the final track’s soft ringing pulses. Part of the original source material for this series included flute and saxophone played by Hansi Fischer and Tim Belbe of the German psychedelic pioneers Xhol Caravan, and here their jazzy meanderings are surrounded by driving feedback, whistles, whoops, chortles and percussion. It’s like space rock by way of tropical rainforest. Though Waldron greatly expands on the original source material, his pieces are very much in tune with Stapleton’s Krautrock influences, and he thus manages to keep the sense of Nurse With Wound intact while making the music his own. It’s a fine collection of avant-garde compositions and a wonderful note for the “Angry Eelectric Finger” to end on.

Check in on Nurse With Wound at www.brainwashed.com/nww and visit Matthew Waldron at https://www.holocenesound.org/irr/