It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.
JUNE 17 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE
This track follows June 15 both chronologically and on Shipwreck Radio Volume One, but it couldn’t be more different. The opening welcoming starts with a droning “emmm…” that recalls June 15 but then the track brings in the sounds of birds and snapping twigs (perhaps a fire?). It’s nearly ambient, seeming to be just the unprocessed sounds of an arctic island. As you start to hear gulls, you can also make out, faintly, a droning electronic hum in the background and here and there you catch subtle audio glimpses of sound manipulation, just enough to keep you aware that this is not unprocessed recording. For the listener who is not taking care and paying attention though, it might sound simply like one of the cheap “sounds of nature” CDs that one could get at Rainforest Café or wherever the veneer of hippiedom was subsumed and swallowed by crash commercialism. Then around four minutes, you start to hear pops, almost like a struck tennis ball, rubbery and round noises that leap out beneath the deftly processed sounds of sea birds. The snapping begins to change, sounding at times more like dripping water than cracking twigs, as the chorus of seabirds and an eerie hooting carries the track along.
A rolling electronic tone emerges, as more and more bird calls are added to the sonic structure, the rubbery popping still bursting now and then, punctuating the soundscape. By the eight minute mark there is no mistaking this for just another gimcrack sounds of nature CD as the bird calls—the hoots and honks, the chirping and caws, continue but are echoed by electronic noises, so that here and there you can hear just the hint of how the natural sounds could have been twisted into the electronic noises they float above.
By the eleven minute mark, that background crackling or dripping has now become rain, a summer shower that drenches the track, portending, naturally, a change of weather, as it were, the electronics surging over the bird calls as the water droplets pound the song. The more you listen, as the “rain” builds to a crescendo, the less it sounds like rain, and suddenly it’s become uneven and the bird calls fade away, a hint of a crowd’s whistle breaking what is now applause. Then the roar of the crowd builds at the fifteen minute mark, there is an introduction of a song in Norwegian, and then a slowed sample of an orchestra rehearsing, coughing, chatter, the rustling of paper as we leave that natural setting for a human one, the call of a lone gull there to guide us, sounding much like the squeal of a child, before there’s a cymbal-like crash and then metal scraping. A nearly human laughing repeats with the metal scraping before the track breaks into noise and the crash again, then water gently splashing against a boat. The boat motor providing a background hum, the pops returning, then bird calls, then children as the track shifts from the slow mutation of the first half to a more protean sound, the audio channels switching off and on, the metal crashing returning and then droning into a drumbeat as the orchestra returns.
Like the bird calls earlier, an incautious listening may not catch all the processing that the orchestra recording has been treated to, though then it is drawn out, slowed and made to glitch, the brass and woodwinds made to sound almost like slow and shrill beats, before we hear a child ask questions in Norwegian, to which either Steven or Colin from NWW answer “I don’t know, I’m English, I can’t speak Norwegian” and the track begins to develop this conversation into a meditative mantra, over a wavering electric tone and gull calls.
A rolling electronic tone emerges, as more and more bird calls are added to the sonic structure, the rubbery popping still bursting now and then, punctuating the soundscape. By the eight minute mark there is no mistaking this for just another gimcrack sounds of nature CD as the bird calls—the hoots and honks, the chirping and caws, continue but are echoed by electronic noises, so that here and there you can hear just the hint of how the natural sounds could have been twisted into the electronic noises they float above.
By the eleven minute mark, that background crackling or dripping has now become rain, a summer shower that drenches the track, portending, naturally, a change of weather, as it were, the electronics surging over the bird calls as the water droplets pound the song. The more you listen, as the “rain” builds to a crescendo, the less it sounds like rain, and suddenly it’s become uneven and the bird calls fade away, a hint of a crowd’s whistle breaking what is now applause. Then the roar of the crowd builds at the fifteen minute mark, there is an introduction of a song in Norwegian, and then a slowed sample of an orchestra rehearsing, coughing, chatter, the rustling of paper as we leave that natural setting for a human one, the call of a lone gull there to guide us, sounding much like the squeal of a child, before there’s a cymbal-like crash and then metal scraping. A nearly human laughing repeats with the metal scraping before the track breaks into noise and the crash again, then water gently splashing against a boat. The boat motor providing a background hum, the pops returning, then bird calls, then children as the track shifts from the slow mutation of the first half to a more protean sound, the audio channels switching off and on, the metal crashing returning and then droning into a drumbeat as the orchestra returns.
Like the bird calls earlier, an incautious listening may not catch all the processing that the orchestra recording has been treated to, though then it is drawn out, slowed and made to glitch, the brass and woodwinds made to sound almost like slow and shrill beats, before we hear a child ask questions in Norwegian, to which either Steven or Colin from NWW answer “I don’t know, I’m English, I can’t speak Norwegian” and the track begins to develop this conversation into a meditative mantra, over a wavering electric tone and gull calls.
The “I’m English” bit is drawn out into a stuttering confession, with a normal speed repetition of “I can’t speak, I can’t speak Norwegian I’m English” paired with the gull calls. Here is the groove then that the track settles into for the last third of the track, the electronic tones rising and falling behind it. After a few minutes there are additional vocal samples added with a Norwegian repeating “Nope. Nope” as NWW asks “Can you actually speak English, can you nearly speak English, do you know any words?” as the track explores the mutual unintelligibility, a theme that probably resonates with many people who attempt to listen to Nurse With Wound but find it baffling—simply seeming only to be noise and nonsense and missing the elevation of both.
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