Shipwreck Radio - June 5

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 5 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Another ghostly track off Volume One, though less sinister than June 3. It begins with the welcomings slowed down and pitch dropped slightly, then gives way to a tinny warbling with a pulsing and resonant tone building up in the background to lurk just behind the metallic warbling. This pulsing reverberation bubbles and mutates until it’s joined in the fourth minute by a growing buzz that swells to cut up through the warbling, the ghost of the clattering we’ve heard in other Shipwreck radio songs waiting, just barely audible at the edge of our awareness. The song remains meditative, though in a brooding fashion, and as we approach the seven minute mark we hear the chittering we’ve heard before. Here again, one can be amazed by how Messrs Stapleton and Potter repurpose the sounds of Lofoten, as the sound drones on. A note, here, to say that I mean drones on in the best possibly way, a drone to lose your ego in, to give your full attention to a deceptive simplicity, the changes in the track small enough to lull you in, yet never becoming flat or monotonous. The chittering is almost a purring by the tenth minute, the clattering rising up through the other sounds of the track but unable to reach the surface, the pulsing tone become sharper at its peaks, nearly tinnitus-like at times. By the thirteenth minute the song seems to begin to ebb, as the tone becomes piercing, the clattering more insistent as it struggles to break through the soundscape, chugging along until the pulsing reaches its biting tinnital peak as the song approaches its fifteenth minute and then fades into quietude as all the tones and noise drop away to leave you pondering as the sounds rattle around in your brain.

JUNE 5 - LOFOTEN DEADHEAD

Here it is, the secret key of Shipwreck Radio, twenty five minutes of Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter wandering the arctic isles of Norway and recording the sounds they'd manipulate and twist (strain, crack and sometimes break?) into the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Without the other songs before, the clips of seagulls, rocks thrown into water and so forth would be trivial, but listened through the lens of Shipwreck Radio as a whole it's enthralling to hear someone walking on a creaking wooden walkway and think of how that was used in the other songs and likewise, after you've listened to the track you'll hear the other Shipwreck Radio songs differently as well. There's no manipulation until after twenty minutes, where laughter echoes into what could be electronic processing, but also could just be the nature of the location where it was recorded. Then in the 26th minute there's a discussion with some Norwegians about singing a song about Lofoten Cod that breaks into mirthful laughter which is then layered and twisted for the remainder of the track. It's not the most interesting ending, which could explain why this was released on the bonus Lofoten Deadhead disc and not a main Shipwreck radio volume, but the track as a whole provides a sonic map to the world that was deconstructed and rebuilt by Nurse With Wound when they created the incredible structures and episodes of Shipwreck Radio.