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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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