Shipwreck
Radio is a series of albums by Nurse With Wound documenting their
residency in Lofoten, Norway during June and July 2004. Invited to stay
in the unofficial capital, fishing village Svolvær, Steven Stapleton and
Colin Potter were commissioned to produce 3 radio broadcasts per week
for local station Lofotradioen of music constructed from whatever they
heard or could find around the island. The project was instigated by
Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young of The Wire and by Kunst I Nordland, an
organisation committed to bringing contemporary art to county of
Nordland.
I have been obsessed with these albums since I first encountered them in 2007 when I was collecting and consuming as much as I could of Nurse With Wound. The series consists of three main albums: Volume One, Volume Two and Final Broadcasts, and two bonus albums: Lofoten Deadhead and Gulls Just Wanna Have Fun.
The duo created 24 broadcasts in total, each of either 15 or 30 minutes duration. Each broadcast was preceded by a jingle of a male voice saying "Velkommen Til Utvær" followed by a female voice saying the English translation "Welcome To Utvær", Utvær being the most remote island in Lofoten, with no permanent residents but 2 lighthouse keepers on hand. Many of the broadcasts treated or manipulated the two introductory voices with one consisting of nothing but such manipulations. 20 of these transmissions have been made available by Nurse With Wound across a number of separate releases with all tracks listed only by the date of original broadcast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipwreck_Radio
During the market crash of 2008, I was working in brokerage ops opening self-directed trading accounts for fools who thought they could cash in on cheap stock trading, often working 12-14 hour days, six days a week and these albums were on heavy rotation, helping to keep me sane.
Each track on the three main albums, as well as Lofoten Deadhead, bears the date of its original broadcast, and for the last five years I've had a tradition of listening to each track on its namesake date. There are twenty tracks associated with nineteen dates between June and July, and for each I'll be provided a descriptive review of the track for that date, or two tracks, in the case of June 5. All the tracks are available to stream for free on Bandcamp.com, so my hope is that this series will encourage readers to discover these eerie, meditative and haunting soundscapes.
No comments:
Post a Comment