Nurse With Wound ‘The Vursiflenze Mismantler’ CD ICR DISTRIBUTION

Nurse With Wound with The James Worse Public Address Method – The Vursiflenze Mismantler. Cover art by Babs Santini. Back cover art… could be Worse.

A Thrasm For Pungdust
Smarch Of The Bomberdast
Gwelt Awone On A Sursibass
Lumpless, Gloon And Muttersmuch
Nana
The Frole Of Pondulation
Suspific Hellibesque Of The Poagenbloke
The Ockenbloster’s Froasum
Quoakive Jollery
Soasal Fractivation
An Ossivistic Frollularde
The Gwiffid Overbulge
Brostles
My Gloadious Parpinelle

Review from Brainwashed :

It has been a hell of a long time since Nurse With Wound last surfaced with a proper new album on United Dairies, but 2019 is looking to be an uncharacteristically prolific year with the epic Trippin’ Music looming on the horizon.  In the meantime, however, there is the endearingly strange The Vursiflenze Mismantler, which pairs Steven Stapleton and Andrew Liles with Australian vocal artist James Worse.  It is very hard to imagine an artist more attuned to NWW’s surrealist whimsy than Worse, as he is best known for his poetry crafted almost entirely from made-up and nonsensical words.  Louis Carroll’s “The Jabberwocky” is the obvious and unavoidable reference point with Worse’s “Worsicles,” but his poetry only escapes the gleeful mutilations of Stapleton and Liles on one piece here.  The rest of the album is a Dada-esque collage of chopped, digitized, and gurgling vocal sounds that occasionally coheres into some unlikely and delightful grooves.

It is not difficult to guess who named the songs on The Vursiflenze Mismantler, as the first piece is entitled “A Thrasm for Pungdust.”  Pungdust is quite lucky to get such a fine thrasm in his honor, as it is one of the album’s most endearingly deranged and instantly gratifying pieces.  It sort of resembles a remix of “Rock n’ Roll Station” made by a gibbering lunatic, as it has a similar half-stomping/half-lurching beat.  The central monologue, however, has been replaced by a lysergic miasma of skittering electronic flourishes and growling, moaning, and whimpering voices.  The weirdness naturally deepens with the following “Smarch of the Bomberdast,” which is the album’s primary showcase for Worse’s playfully eccentric vision.  It begins with some distracted, colorful muttering over deep vocal growls, calling to mind a drunken pirate trying to argue with a disinterested didgeridoo.  From those modest beginnings, however, it slowly builds into a dense, howling cacophony of squirming, abused sounds that pan and scuttle across the stereo field.  Eventually that wonderfully eruption subsides, making room for more gargling and strangled yelps, yet that jabbering abruptly stops as well and Worse ends the piece with a crisp, mannered recital of one of his Worsicles that sounds downright Shakespearean.  It is nice bit of compositional sleight-of-hand, as it feels like I narrowly escaped some synapse-frying madness to find a perfectly sane and pleasant man reciting his poetry.  But the word-like things coming out of his mouth are completely incomprehensible, making me feel like my brain has been well and truly broken (or mismantled) by the song’s roaring crescendo.

Most of the other memorable pieces on the album also appear during its first half, but that is because the warped phantasmagoria of The Virsuflenze Mismantler increasing dissolves into pure texture and abstraction as it unfolds.  The fifth piece, “Nana,” is probably the closest thing to a fresh NWW classic on this release, as it is a stuttering and chaotic pile-up of chopped and diced sounds.  It feels like a howling nightmare that prominently features a cartoon duck, but then the maelstrom dissipates to make room for a choppy, distorted monologue from a jolly man who has much to say about bananas.  The closing “My Gloadious Parpinelle” is another strong contender though, as the trio are joined by Af Ursin and Aranos for a hauntingly weird twist on classic exotica.  The lazy vibraphone melody evokes a tiki bar in a moonlit grotto, but everything else feels deeply wrong with that picture, as there are a host of metallic cranks, odd squeaks, clopping sounds, and menacing drones that curdle and confuse the experience.   There are also a couple of excellent “ambient” pieces lurking throughout the album.  I especially enjoyed the eerie beauty of “Gwelt Awone On A Sursibass,” in which warm, seesawing drones seem to be emanating from the bottom of a bubbling sea.  “The Ockenbloster’s Froascum” is notable as well, as a simmering, crackling, and rumbling soundscape blossoms into an unsettling crescendo featuring a backwards robotic voice.  

Anthony D’Amico