Cyclic Defrost: Some lists are more equal than others

Some lists are more equal than others

By vaughan October 10, 2005

Nurse With Wound Listmania! A Music Obsessives’ Wet-Dream!

A selection of music from the Nurse With Wound List has been compiled as a four-parter here.

Part one was published in September with the final episode appearing last week. 30-odd tracks of outsider excursion and darkside vibes.

http://www.cyclicdefrost.com Seb

Nurse With Wound – If you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing any then it is your duty to track down some. Probably best described as aural surrealism, Stapleton’s work is both prolific and striking.

Better still, his best album (in my opinion), Soliloquoy For Lilith has just been reissued as a triple cd box set with an entirely new disc of material from the same period. I first heard and bought this record in 1991 when I was between the goth and rave phases and it was music that was well beyond the grasp of my ears at the time but beguiling all the same. I had picked up some of NWW’s clunkier surreal works on second hand vinyl around the same time (Automating etc) but Soliloquoy is the pick of the bunch. This album is one of the seminal ambient drone works that requires a quiet place and much contemplation.

Stapleton’s simple sleeve note setes the scene precisely -

I shall find a quiet pool in the forest and I shall be alone there often. I shall gaze into the deep, still water and that stillness will be in me. I shall sleep by my pool and dream, and I shall leave you messages in oracles and poems. Or you may dream with me, (for you are as much myself as I am you and your dreams are also my dreams) you may join me and wait through the night till the animals come to drink. Then I will show you the shape changing and we will become the animals. My magick can heal, for it comes from the place where there is no separation and we are all one, where the water of the pool merges again and is lost in the ocean.

More recently his Salt Marie Celeste is a more maximalist drone/ambient work (in comparison) worth checking. 45 minutes of drifting abandoned at sea sounds – creaking floors, waves, and unexplained drones. Again it is an album that needs a quiet place and a bit of time – things that are generally in short supply in this modern age.

This sort of music is always failed by music reviewers, at least those outside ultra-specialist media. The lure of the fast forward button when faced with a pile of unreviewed CDs is often just too much to bear, but if you do have the time and space to tune in to these two albums then they are well worth the experience.
vaughan

Salt Marie Celeste has just been reissued. Available from Durtro.com
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com Seb

Yeah I just found out that World Serpent went under.
http://spiralvision.blogspot.com/ Lyndon

Interesting comment there Seb, regarding the lack of time/patience taken these days to take in an album in it’s entirety in a proper setting. Might be a good topic for discussion as an article here on Themostat. The digital age of mass consumerism and the need for speedy connections etc. has effected the way we listen to music in a major way.
Considering well over half the population don’t know the thrill of getting up and turning the record over (how antiquated!) albums such as the afore mentioned “Salt marie Celeste” and another remarkable recording by On (“Tour Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night”)can slip down the cracks made by the mp3 era. Sad but true.
http://spiralvision.blogspot.com/ Lyndon

Oops. That album by On is “Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night”. Not “Tour”. Early morning typo.
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com Seb

When i interviewed dj/Rupture in Cyclic #10 we talked about this –

“People don’t often talk about radio as public space, but that’s what it is, and nowadays, like so many other forms of public space, it is being increasingly patrolled and privatised. At the same time the listeners are themselves happily withdrawing into the iPod’s offer of sonic seclusion – moving out to the audio suburbs if you will, apart from the dirt and disarray and unwanted interactions of public space. It sucks! . . . not only do MP3s crack music out of its necessary cultural exoskeleton, they promote fast-food style eating – people like whatever sounds good ‘on first listen’. I remember when I was a kid, I’d save up to by a cassette and would listen to it over and over again for weeks, trying to understand it and approach the music on its own terms. I had enough time to really focus and see what the music was trying to do . . . Much music (except pop) isn’t designed to hit you on first listen, a lot of styles require time and attention and repeat listens before they reveal their gems. In the post-MP3 landscape with its intolerant attention spans, you just click on the next tune in WinAmp or iTunes or whatever, or go searching for another tune that fits better in the default consumer mode of instant gratification . . . I like a lot of difficult music like musique concrete, noise and more ambient drone-y music like Dead C and Main but if I was first presented with those sounds as MP3s, I probably wouldn’t have been able to give them the necessary attention. I mean, is popular music nowadays just music that is good to write emails to?”

Cyclic Defrost

An Australian magazine focusing on interesting music

Some lists are more equal than others