Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella

LP, deluxe metallic gatefold. This is the long-awaited vinyl re-issue of the timeless Nurse With Wound debut release from 1979. Described by Sounds at the time as a record that “makes The Faust Tapes sound like Carousel,” nothing has changed to alter this view over the last 30 years, and to say that this work is the “Sgt. Pepper of the avant-garde” would not be hyperbole. Members include: John Fothergill (synthesizer, guitar, keyboards, wind), Heman (synthesizer, guitar, keyboards, wind), Nicky Rogers (guitar), and Steve Stapleton (synthesizer, flute, guitar, keyboards). The album’s equally unusual title is a quote from the surreal, poetic novel Les Chants de Maldoror by Uruguayan-born French author Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, written under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont. It has been included in the “100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)” by TheWire in 1998, and is one of the records that have had a lasting impact on avant-garde, experimental and psychedelic music.It was on this record that the famous “NWW list” appeared for the first time, featuring dozens of names of musicians and groups who had influenced Nurse With Wound – a list that now serves as a treasure map for many collectors of the genre and fans of outsider music. It’s been replicated here in the innersleeve of the gatefold.

“The album came about when Steven Stapleton was working as a signwriter in London in 1978. Completing a job at an independent recording studio, he engaged in conversation with the studio’s engineer, Nick Rogers. Rogers, frustrated with the advertising and voice-over work the studio brought in, expressed a wish to work with more experimental bands. Stapleton informed Rogers that he was in such a band and a studio date was arranged. Stapleton, however, was lying and had to hurriedly put something together. He called his friends John Fothergill and Heman Pathak, telling them to get hold of an instrument of some sort. Thus, the first line-up of Nurse With Wound (whose name supposedly relates to a scene in the film Battleship Potemkin) was quickly assembled, Stapleton on percussion, Fothergill on guitar (with built-in ring modulator) and Pathak on organ. The trio didn’t have a chance to rehearse before entering the studio, yet the album was completed within 6 hours, with Rogers adding what was called “commercial guitar” on the sleeve. The studio’s piano and synthesizer were also used. The tale is so fortuitous as to appear unlikely but Stapleton and Fothergill agreed on the story when interviewed separately by David Keenan for his book England’s Hidden Reverse.
The album contains 3 lengthy tracks and Stapleton has stated that these were edited from improvisations with some overdubbing. Stapleton designed the sleeve using an old pornographic magazine
One of the most talked-about aspects of the album is the legendary “Nurse With Wound List”, a list of bands and artists whose interest was to make them known, since at the time most of them were totally unknown.