Howlin Wuelf Media :: Nurse With Wound

Nurse With Wound or NWW is the main recording vehicle of British musician Steven Stapleton. NWW was originally a band, formed in 1978 by Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak.

Their early recordings, all made quickly, were heavily influenced by free improvisation and Krautrock and were generally considered industrial music, despite the objections of the group.

By 1981, only Stapleton was left from the original trio and he now regards 1982's Homotopy to Marie, as being the first proper Nurse With Wound release.

There are now over 30 full length NWW titles. Stapleton's fondness for dada, surrealism and absurdist humor are demonstrated in much of NWW's output, which, though it draws directly on nearly every musical genre imaginable (from cabaret music to nursery rhymes to John Cage to The Beach Boys to krautrock to pop music to ambient music) retains a distinctive and recognizable aura.

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Musique concrete may be the most prominent touchstone, due to Stapleton's frequent – and often humorous – use of creative tape loops and editing. This aesthetic is fully represented in the artwork that features on the album covers, virtually all of which is created by Stapleton, mostly under the pseudonym "Babs Santini".

Although Stapleton has sole curatorship of NWW, the group has a long and illustrious list of collaborators including David Jackman of Organum, Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio, Stereolab, Jim O'Rourke, Christoph Heemann, William Bennett of Whitehouse, Annie Anxiety, John Balance, Colin Potter, Matt Waldron of Irr. App (Ext) and most regularly David Tibet of Current 93.

In 2005 Nurse With Wound returned to live performance after a 21-year absence. Stapleton, Potter, Waldron, Rogerson and Andrew Liles played three concerts at the Narrenturm in Vienna, where they performed improvisations on the album Salt Marie Celeste. These concerts were not, however, billed as NWW appearances. The first official NWW appearances since 1984 were at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in June 2006. In December of the same year, the group played at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival organized by Thurston Moore. During 2007, Stapleton gigged and DJ'ed with much greater regularity.