Nurse With Wound

Rotorelief inaugurates its Silver Collection with this deluxe expanded reissue of Nurse With Wound's 1986 masterpiece Spiral Insana. Two-CD version includes 30-page metallic hardcover book (15 x 20 x 2 cm) containing color and black-and-white art by Babs Santini (Steven Stapleton). One of Nurse With Wound's most deep and mysterious recordings, Spiral Insana is more ambient and user-friendly than many other NWW outings, without losing any of its surreal edge. Stapleton and guests Robert Haigh and David Jackman mix prepared piano, percussion, loops, and various bric-à-brac into an hour-long collage of mashed-up sound, jarring juxtapositions, buzz-saw distortion, and even a pipe organ. If that sounds disorienting, that's because it is. This edition marks the definitive release of the complete Spiral Insana sessions, with the contents of the original 1986 LP augmented by three recordings from the same period: "Mourning Smile" (originally released on the 1987 LP Drunk With The Old Man Of The Mountains and later included on the 1997 United Dairies CD reissue of Spiral Insana), "Nihil" (first released on the 1997 Spiral Insana CD reissue), and "A Missing Sense," a 25-minute tribute to Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing originally released as the NWW half of a 1986 LP split with Organum. Steven Stapleton: drums, cello, radio, guitar, bowed piano, percussion, loops, voice, tuba, organ, electronics; Robert Haigh: guitar; David Jackman: banjo, splutter, voice; Chris Wallis: acoustic guitar; David Tibet: trumpet; Diana Rogerson: voice; Andrew McKenzie: voice. Mastered by Denis Blackham. Cover art and pictures by Babs Santini. "Still stands as one of the clear highlights of Stephen Stapleton's singularly daunting and mountainous discography. . . . Many of the varied interludes are noisy, fragmented, and somewhat abrasive, but there is always a playful sense of mischief lurking in the shadows, ready to blunder into the steadily darkening fever dream at any second. . . . a brilliantly skewed and excellent album that has not faded with age one bit." --Anthony D'Amico, Brainwashed