VOTD 09/23/2025

 Nurse With Wound: Psilotripitika, record two (To the Quiet Men From a Tiny Girl) (United Dairies)

NWW day two, album two. Part of relistening to these albums is to consider them in the continuum of Steven Stapleton/NWW's work. Some things are starting to take shape on this album.

Like the first LP, I do not own an original copy of To the Quiet Men From a Tiny Girl. My copy is from the 1990 collection Psilotripitika, which includes the first three LPs plus a 12" EP of two compilation tracks.

Something that can be both exciting and frustration about NWW records is that there is no "typical" album. There are however generalities. The group's work (and to call it a group is a little deceptive in itself; it would wind up being Steven Stapleton and then a long list of collaborators) does fall very broadly under the category of musique concrète. Broadly put, recorded audio sources assembled, edited, shaped, manipulated and collected through recording techniques to create composition. 

While this record shares some of the primitive improvisational qualities of the first record, it's notably different in two ways: its spareness compared to the first, and the increased use of recording techniques. There's more editing, adjusting of mixing and audio manipulation than the first. It sounds less like a freak-out than an aural landscape. That is definably the direction future NWW records would take. (Generally.)

Another important element is the artwork. Stapleton would not only be the single common musical/audio element of every NWW album, but he does most of the graphics as well. Befitting an approach inspired by and related to Surrealism, the back cover and insert artwork is collaged. (The back cover of the first LP was a collage as well, something I failed to mention yesterday.) The back includes a famous image from the film Battleship Potemkin, the insert and record labels using medical illustrations. Gray's Anatomy perhaps? For those of a certain age and from Pittsburgh, what was the source of The Five's foot-cutting image?

The insert also has a variation on the Nurse With Wound list mentioned yesterday. Some names the same, many subtracted or added, and the text is far smaller.

While perhaps not terribly consequential, NWW once again pushes the album length. Side one over 26 minutes, side two over 27. I now that record pressing plants advise against this. They're surely  pushing at limitations. It's really closer to what would be CD length than LP. 

With this second album, did they consider themselves a "band"? With this third release (the second being Lemon Kittens' We Buy a Hammer for Daddy) was United Dairies a bona fide (if tiny) label? I suppose both of those things turned out to be true. In retrospect we know both things are true, with a further development in technique and sound to come.