Finders Keepers Records – FKR101LP
After years of mythology, misinterpretation and procrastination Nurse
With Wound’s Steven Stapleton finally chooses Finders Keepers Records as
the ideal collaborators to release “the right tracks” from his
uber-legendary psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The
Nurse With Wound List, commencing with a French specific Volume One of
this authentically titled Strain Crack Break series. Featuring some
Finders Keepers’ regulars amongst galactic Gallic rarities (previously
presumed to be imaginary red herrings) this deluxe double vinyl dossier
demystifies some of the essential French free jazz and Parisian prog
inclusions from the alphabetical “dedication” inventory as printed the
anti-bands 1979 industrial milestone debut.
When Steven Stapleton, Heman Pathak and John Fothergill’s anti-band
Nurse With Wound decided to include an alphabetical dedication to all
their favourite bands on the back of their inaugural LP the notion of
creating a future record dealers’ trophy list couldn’t have been further
from their minds. By adding a list of untravelled European mythical
musicians and noise makers to their own debut release of unchartered
industrial art rock they were merely providing a suggestive support
system of existing potential likeminded bands, establishing safety in
numbers should anyone require sonic subtitles for Nurse With Wound’s own
mutant musical language. Luckily for them, the record landed in record
shops in the midst of 1979’s memorable summer of abject apathy and its
sound became a hit amongst disillusioned agit-pop pickers and artsy
post-punks, thus playing a key role in the bourgeoning “Industrial”
genre that ensued. On the most part, however, the list , like most
instruction manuals, remained unreadable, syntactic and suspiciously
sarcastic… As potential “real musicians” Nurse WIth Wound became an
Industrial music fan’s household name, but in contrast many of the names
on The Nurse With Wound List were considered to be imaginary musicians,
made-up bands or booby traps for hacks and smart-arses. It took a while
for the rest of the record collecting community to catch on or finally
catch up.
Since then, many of the rare, obscure and unpronounceable genre-free
records on The Nurse With Wound List have slowly found their own feet
and stumbled in to the homes of open-minded outernational vinyl junkies,
D’s and sample hungry producers, self-propelled and judged on their own
merit, mostly without consultation of the enigmatic NWW map. But, to
the inspective competitive collector’s chagrin, one resounding fact
recurs, NWW got there first! via vinyl vacations, on cheap flights and
Interrail tickets, buying bargain bin LPs on a shoestring while
oblivious to the pending pension worthy price tags after their 40 year
vintage, Stapleton and Fothergill, even if you’ve never heard of them,
were at the bottom of the pit before “digging” became paydirt. And NOW
at huge international record fairs that occur in massive exhibition
halls (or within the confines of your one-touch
palm pilot) amongst jive talk acronyms such as SS, PP, BIN, DNAP and
BCWHES the coded letters NWW have begun to appear on stickers in the
corner of original copies of the same premium progressive records
accompanied by a customary 50% price hike to titillate/coerce the
initiated as dealers extort the taught. Like “psych” “PINA” or
“Krautrock” did before, “NWW” has become a buzzword and in the passed
decades since its first publication The List has been mythologised,
misunderstood and misconstrued. It’s also been overlooked, overestimated
and under-appreciated in equal measures, but with a growing interest it
has also come to represent a maligned genre in itself, something that
all members of the original line-up
would have deemed sacrilegious. Bolstered by the subtitle “Categories
strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden,” all bands on the
inventory (many chosen on the strength of just one track alone) were
chosen for their genre-defying qualities… A check-list for the
uncharted.
Forty years after Nurse With Wound’s first record, Finders Keepers
Records, in close collaboration with Steve Stapleton remind fans of THIS
kind of “lost” music, that there once existed a feint path which was
worn away decades before major label pop property developers built over
this psychedelic underground. As long-running fans and liberators of
some of the same records, arriving at the same axis from
different-but-the-same planets, Finders Keepers and Nurse WIth Wound
finally sing from the same hymn sheet resulting in a collaborative
attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks
from the list, succeeding where many overzealous nerds have deferred
(or simply, got the wrong end of the stick). Naturally our lavish
metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium would only scratch the surface
of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities hence out
decision to release volume one in a series which, in accordance with
Steve’s wishes, focuses exclusively on individual tracks of French
origin, the country that unsurprisingly hosted the highest content of
bands on the list. Comprising of musique concrète, free jazz, Rock In
Opposition, Zeuhl School space rock, macabre ballet music, lo-fi sci-fi,
and classic horror literature inspired prog, this first volume of the
series entitled Strain Crack And Break throws us in at the deep end,
where the Seine meets the in-sane, introducing the space cadets that
found Mars in Marseilles.
Like the Swedish flat-pack record shelves that attempt to house the vast
amounts of vintage vinyl that goes into a multi-volume compilation like
this, it is time to prepare your own musical penchants and preconceived
ideas about DIY music and hear them slowly strain, crack and break.
