Audiopile Review: ‘Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella’, the debut album from industrial legends Nurse with Wound, occupies a confounding spot in music history. It is surely better known for the infamous list printed on its cover than for the music on the record itself. Doubtless, that list outlines an extraordinary array of strange and obscure musical artists. But the Nurse with Wound list isn’t what you might expect, and neither is the record itself. Look closely and you might be surprised to find punk institution Alternative TV on the list. Do some listening, and you’ll discover that band’s second album ‘Vibing up the Senile Man’ is among the oddest albums… well, ever! ATV were, it turns out, closely associated with industrial music inventors Throbbing Gristle. In 1979, when ‘Vibing…’ and ‘Chance Meeting…’ were released, the parameters of industrial culture were not yet set in stone. So, while the S&M cover art of NWW’s debut may seem recognizably ‘industrial’, the music is a million miles from the bleak, mechanized metal of later industrial rock. But it certainly is weird. Weird enough that it stands as a true outsider classic, with or without that list on the cover. Like ‘Vibing…’, ‘Chance Meeting…’ reimagines the electro-acoustic improv of AMM (on the list) via liberal doses of punk attitude. Where NWW have the edge over ATV is a deep knowledge of krautrock’s freakier fringes (all over the list). Great to see this essential classic back in print. And if that were not enough, we also have a reissue of 1992’s ‘Thunder Perfect Mind’, which may just be NWW’s masterwork. This mixture of juddering, TRULY industrial percussion and beautifully spooky dark ambience has everything you true heads want from industrial music and nothing you do not.

Official reissue. New remastering vinyl of the 1979 LP by Colin Potter. Gatefold cover plus complete Nurse With Wound list on gatefold inner. This is the long-awaited vinyl re-issue of the timeless Nurse With Wound debut release from 1979. Described by Sounds at the time as a record that “makes The Faust Tapes sound like Carousel,” nothing has changed to alter this view over the last 30 years, and to say that this work is the “Sgt. Pepper of the avant-garde” would not be hyperbole. Members include: John Fothergill (synthesizer, guitar, keyboards, wind), Heman (synthesizer, guitar, keyboards, wind), Nicky Rogers (guitar), and Steve Stapleton (synthesizer, flute, guitar, keyboards). The album has been included in the “100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)” by The Wire in 1998, and is one of the records that have had a lasting impact on avant-garde, experimental and psychedelic music. It was on this record that the famous “NWW list” appeared for the first time, featuring dozens of names of musicians and groups who had influenced Nurse With Wound — a list that now serves as a treasure map for many collectors of the genre and fans of outsider music. It’s been replicated here in the inner-sleeve of the gatefold. The album contains three lengthy tracks and Stapleton has stated that these were edited from improvisations with some overdubbing. Stapleton designed the sleeve using an old pornographic magazine.