Review Summary: Not for the faint of heart or those who like a safe listen, Nurse With Wound's true debut is a fascinating and terrifying listen.
Nurse With Wound started out as a full fledged band in 1978, proving to be weird straight from the start with
Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, being pioneers of the industrial scene, albeit much more avant-garde than those that came after. However, Steven Stapleton turned the band into a solo project in 1980, and asserts that
Homotopy To Marie is the true Nurse With Wound debut. With his first album on his own, Steven Stapleton has created an album of “anti-music” that is a truly terrifying and strangely hypnotic listen.
Homotopy To Marie is not an album for the faint of heart. There is no traditional instrumentation almost at all, and there are long passages of minimalist creaking, water drops, gongs, and odd sampling (an English girl saying “I didn’t know anybody and there was a funny smell.”) As a result, the album is a bit of a struggle to listen to at first. “I Cannot Feel You As The Dogs Are Laughing And I Am Blind” is the most minimal of the five tracks, starting off with the sounds of metal dropping for about three minutes, before trailing off to very quiet sounds, until you hear a distorted voice wailing. It is a very unsettling listen, but one that pales in comparison to what the rest of the album has in store.
This album is more like a 70’s horror film on tape than anything else. It is so jarring and eerie that listening to it makes the listener feel like they are in the middle of a Dario Argento acid trip. The album is in a constant state of unsettling sounds, which arguably makes the album as interesting as it is. Listening to it while knowing everything that is coming ahead of time will take away from the experience. The fear of not being able to tell what Steven Stapleton is going to throw at you next makes for an edge of your seat listen.
The album is not without it’s faults, however. The first two tracks aren’t never at the level of the next two, with “Astral Dustbin Dirge” and “The Schmurz” dwarfing the first half of the album considerably. Also, the length mixed with the nature of the album makes for a daunting listen. The album is sixty-five minutes long, and with it being such a jarring listen, many less-adventurous listeners will not make it the whole way through.
Homotopy To Marie is a truly one of a kind listen, one that takes a certain kind of listener to get through. It will toss less open minded listeners to the wayside almost immediately, while rewarding the more patient with it’s eerie atmosphere and numerous twists and turns. If one is feeling adventurous, and can embrace the cinematic qualities contained within, then
Homotopy to Marie can make for a truly rewarding experience.
