FAUST & NURSE WITH WOUND: DISCONNECTED

Ha, finally Nurse With Wound makes it onto this site, albeit indirectly. NWW and Faust are both sonic innovators and there influence has been felt for decades. It is therefore a real treat to hear them together here for the first time. It's really such a logical pairing that I'm amazed it didn't happen earlier.

The best thing about this record is that it is a true collaboration, with neither artist overwhelming the other, and yet both individual styles remain intact. It is also about the rockiest I've heard Stephen Stapleton (the genius behind NWW) get, at least since his collaboration with Stereolab. Now I should fully disclose that I am more of a Nurse fan than a Faust fan, although I certainly enjoy their work as well, particularly their first album.

What Disconnected consists of primarily is a mix between freeform, Krautrocky jams and surreal electronics with found sounds and samples. The first track is a very Fausty rock piece, but as it progresses layers of shimmering noise are superimposed on top until you the band is barely audible. It has a very nice hypnotic quality to it, and really sucks you into the world of these two artists.

The title track is for me the least interesting. It is a minimal electronic backdrop, with a sampled voice repeating the word Disconnected every once in a while. Here, Stapleton uses his recent favorite technique of time stretching words until they become unrecognizable. As much as he has used this simple process in recent years, it still has not gotten old for me, however, and gives the music a quite druggy feeling.

The third track is a drum loop, with all kinds of craziness gradually unfolding on top of it. Probably my favorite track on the record, it reminds me a lot of White Light From The Stars In Your Mind, from NWW's Man With The Woman Face album. About halfway through the drum loop stops abrubtly and we get dark, spooky soundscapes. Don't worry though, the drums come back eventually.

The final track (on my copy. Silence and Hard Rain were included without Stapleton's approval and were yanked from later copies) is another Fausty jam that lasts just long enough to make you feel crazy. A perfect ending!

Overall, this is a very good collaboration, although still not even with the best work of either artist. Disconnected is a very apt title, because the music here is disjointed and will make you feel paranoid and alienated. I highly recommend it to Krautrock fans who have not heard Nurse With Wound before. I think you'll be in for a treat.

This recording is how I imagine the original Amon Düül sounding in 2007 if they'd had the technology and any sense of professionalism at hand. The opener has many similarities to 'Psychedelic Underground' from 1969. Forget about the 4/4 beat - this is a 1/1 Red American Indian tribal dirge.

Despite being well produced and being very clear in sound separation, 'Disconnected' leaves me feeling disengaged by its conclusion. I own around 40 Nurse With Wound LP's and have the first 4 'Faust' recordings so had high hopes approaching this collaboration of two very studio-bound artists.

Overall, this album sounds far more 'Nurse With Wound' than 'Faust'. I can only imagine that 'Faust' handed over some DAT tapes with which Steve Stapleton deconstructed, mashed, bashed and re-built to his own requirements.

'Disconnected' is mostly made up of the usual 'Nurse With Wound' precisely clipped vocal snippets, while all sorts of metallic drones and ethereal groans are layered one on top of the other. It creates a very odd Dadaist atmosphere where intentionally, nothing makes sense. There's even a john Cage moment called 'Silence' where you have to listen to nothing for one minute. Why?

"Tu M'Entends?" utilises that 'Nurse With Wound' electronic drum loop that he relied on heavily in the mid nineties. Steve Stapleton is the ultimate magpie plagiarist. SO many of his sounds are 'borrowed' from other bands. This is no bad thing, as they're all so fleeting it's hard to get a grip on them. But I always listen to 'Nurse With Wound' thinking I've heard that somewhere before, but can never put my finger on it. Infuriating...

'Faust' re-appear live on the last track 'Hard Rain' with some violently shouted German vocals and heavy drums. It's tuneless of course and is raw, loud and completely out of place on this recording. It does however, slap me in the face and brings me out of my dead man stupor.

This is not a good place to start if you're unfamiliar with either band. It sounds nothing like 'Faust' and there are far better 'Nurse With Wound' albums available.

Three years after Derbe Respect, Alder, Faust would expand a bit more on their industrial portfolio by doing another collaboration album. This time, instead of reaching towards the Americas with hip hop, they decided to reach out towards Ireland in pursuit of a very experimental direction, one that, while not as bold as their previous, certainly bode a uniqueness among their past outputs.

This time they collabed with Nurse With Wound (or NWW). Nurse With Wound is a group I haven't heard much of, admittedly only one record being A Sucked Orange, and also this as well. Formed in 1978, they have developed the industrial and noise scenes ever since, being next to greats like the disturbing oldies of Throbbing Gristle, the foreboding Einstürzende Neubauten, the chaotic Foetus, and the oddly sensual Coil. They even helped out on releases for my all time favorite neofolk group of Current 93. They have quite the repertoire of releases, about 91 in total according to RYM, so they clearly are the ideal group if you want help with any bizarro noise works, which Faust seemed to desire within the year of 2007.

This would be their last record in their more industrial time period as they would go for a more straight edged krautrock sound on their next, but this is certainly a good one to cap off an intriguing and noisy era from this wonderful band. We get 4 songs, each over 10 minutes in length. Each song on here has quite a lot of lovely textures and noises to go around, a speciality with NWW. I think this record has probably some of the best it has to offer when it comes to the sound production, as I can really feel each weird drone that the songs occupy. From the disoriented pulses of the title track, to the bassy grinds of It Will Take Time, I can really feel the music on here, and I really dig that. There are some records that I love that have elements such as this, namely those within post rock, so to hear a more quiet, droning album that has this much weight and girth really brings me some delight.

I do also wanna point out my love for the drum work here, namely on Lass Mich and Tu M'Entends, both having these sharp and grooving drum lines, with Tu M'Entends building up to the anxiety and horrific tension that the track has within most of its near 15 minute run. Werner Diermeier certainly proved to be quite the master drummer, no matter the context. Makes sense since he has been with the band since their debut, so he had a lot of time perfecting his craft.

Despite all this, though, this album suffers the same problem as Derbe Respect, Alder...but in the reverse now. This time it feels like Faust is in the back, with Nurse With Wound being on center stage. In fact, I'd say the band themselves get less time to shine than dälek, weirdly enough. Sure they show up from time to time, especially Werner, but after their time in a shared spotlight with Lass Mich, they give NWW a chokehold on the songs after the fact, creating less of a balance than what their previous album even did, and it is basically worse for it in my opinion. I mentioned this before, but the best collaboration is within a shared spotlight, not with one artist in the sun while the other is in their shadow. This does not feel like Faust WITH Nurse With Wound, or Nurse With Wound WITH Faust. This feels more like Nurse With Wound having Faust in their back pocket if they need them. Because of this, really only Lass Mich I can say is the best track on here since it does have both of these talented groups share the center stage. Afterwards though, you might as well count it more as a Nurse With Wound album.

This record is good, but certainly not great, and it was probably a message to Faust that they aren't quite shaped up for the world of collaborations. They would still work on occasion with some notable artists later down the line, such as with Keiji Haino on 2022's 这条路是正确的 This Is the Right Path, but the artists are more for features than collabs. This is certainly an interesting album, especially for the end of Faust's industrial zone, so I'd say it is a good listen if you can manage to find it, but I cannot quite rank it on the same tier as Ravvivando or The Last LP.

Best track: Lass Mich

Worst tracks: Disconnected, Tu M'Entends, It Will Take Time