Various - Strain Crack & Break: Music from the Nurse With Wound List Volume 1 (France)
£25.00
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When Nurse With Wound released their debut record in 1979, they included in the liner notes a list of incredibly obscure artists and bands that, presumably, had some sort of bearing on the music they were making and offered listeners coordinates for their own inexplicable music. In those pre-internet times, and still now tbh, that list must have been mindblowing, and it's since become what Finders Keepers, the label finally tasked by NWW to put a collection together reflecting their choices, a 'shopping list for collectors of outsider and avant-garde music'. So esoteric were these names, it was widely assumed some of these were made up, bobbytraps and red herrings if you like, but this comp goes someway towards revealing a new hidden histroy. It's hard to categorise this music in any meaningful way, though the spirit of free-form jazz, French folk tradition, musique concrete and the somewhat overlooked French-Krautrock movement is found lurking in these thirteen (of course) elliptical, abstract and plainly odd tracks. And I'm feeling good, because I even recoginised one of these songs (Philippe Besombes' 'La plage'). Even better, it's by no means my favourite - Lard Free's 'Warinobaril' is a squalling stomper, 'Frayeur' by Horrific Child is like an entire record shop compressed into nine minutes of insane ADHD invention, and Z.N.R.'s cosmic lullaby 'Solo Un Dia' is the obvious 'hit' (you're gonna hear this one a lot the next few months, i think). Mind well and truly bent. If you're bored with everything else, you've found what you're looking for.
