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REVIEWS
BRAINWASHED
Written by John Kealy
Saturday, 02 May 2009
In 2006, Steven Stapleton and his crew played their first official live
concerts in over 20 years (the previous performances were not billed under
the Nurse With Wound name). These performances in San Francisco saw the
group focus mainly on the musique concrête- and krautrock-inspired
elements of Nurse With Wound, eschewing recognisable tracks for live jamming
with (what was then) new sounds and samples. The end result is a remarkably
good album whose almost incidental ambience is as unsettling as it is
compelling.
This album was a surprise
for me because I was under the impression that these San Francisco shows
were live versions of Salt Marie Celeste along the lines of the Vienna
concerts that preceded these concerts (released as Soundpooling three
years ago). Although the familiar strains of Salt Marie Celeste does intrude
several times during the course of this CD (a blend of both nights at
the Great American Music Hall), Nurse With Wound explore very different
terrain here compared to the other live performances I have heard (either
in person or in bootleg). This is most likely because Nurse With Wound
are credited as being a nine-piece band for these shows, a far bigger
line-up compared to their other performances. As such, there are times
when the music stops sounding like Nurse With Wound at all; electronic
drones appear a few times that could be from Coil’s Live One recordings
and later on in the performance there is some music that I believe is
taken from a track on Irr. App. (Ext.)’s Perekluchenie.
One of the most striking features
of May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels... is the use of Diana Rogerson’s
vocal tracks that would later end up on her albums The Lights Are On But
No-one’s Home and No Birds Do Sing. Here they take on a different
character, melting into the abyss and then resolving into a crystalline
clarity like a ghostly transmission fading in and out of contact. Unlike
the more recent performances by Stapleton and company, there is little
in the performance resembling humor (although the photoshopped sleeve
art of Andrew Liles spanking Colin Potter is hilarious). As time has gone
on, the group have incorporated more of Nurse With Wound’s absurdity
into their live performances and it is obvious from this album and Soundpooling
that the early performances were less light-hearted. The music here is
strongly imbued with those dark hues that colour the more unnerving moments
of Stapleton’s work. Due to this eerie atmosphere and the range
of novel sounds and textures, this becomes less of a live document and
more of a “proper” entry in Stapleton’s back catalogue.
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels
Infest Your Armpits is not only a good Nurse With Wound album but for
geeks like me who like to chart when and where changes in artistic direction
happen, it is a valuable record in showing how the “not a Nurse
With Wound” ensemble that performed in Vienna became the all-singing,
all-dancing Nurse With Wound experience that is now very much enjoying
the limelight. Like Soundpooling, it is hard to hear that this is a live
album as it sounds every bit as polished as any of Stapleton’s studio
releases. The bass is booming and the mix is superb, every minute of the
performance sounds as crafted as any studio project. Because of this,
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels... should not be discounted as just
a live album but a release that sits up there with Stapleton’s best
work of this decade.
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