6x6 - February 2025

 

Going back through an old document from 2020 I found a cryptic reference to "6 by 6," and notes that reminded me that I had grand plans to publish recommendations. From my fragmented scrawlings I think had meant to have six stable categories that I would return to again and again, with six new recommendations but always the same types.

Since I've lately been wanting to force myself to focus on sharing positive things, I decided to revive this castaway blog feature, but I decided against locking myself into six fixed categories and instead just recommend six different kinds of things each month. 

Paradoxically, despite my often esoteric tastes, I tend to imagine the things I seek out and enjoy are widely known, but I suspect that is less the case than I assume, still hopefully even for readers with wide-ranging and capacious tastes there will be something new to discover.

I've also realized that in my delay in composing this first installment, I've missed the perfect chance to have these 6x6 recommendations to be published on the sixth of each month, which I'll try to rectify in the future.

With all of that ado laid out and addressed, here then are six things immaterial & material that I recommend heartily... For February 2025 I've decided that they will be listed arbitrarily in reverse alphabetical order...

Mittwoch Mix - hwæt! Without Song All Will Perish

 

Over a year after I first mentioned this mix was in the works, here it finally is, 'Without Song All Will Perish'. A thematic mix of tunes about songs and music based around Nick Cave & the Bad Seed's classic "The Weeping Song".

Joined by 12 other songs that touch on musical themes, though Sister Machine Gun's "Smash Your Radio!" feels very nostalgic and probably would be something like "Smash Your Spotify!" today. 

Speaking of "Without Song All Will Perish", everyone who values music should stand in full solidarity with groups like Bandcamp United and the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers.

#	Artist	Track
1	Pharaoh Overlord	Without Song All Will Perish
2	Anita Lane	Lost In Music
3	The Young Gods	Once Again
4	Sister Machine Gun	Smash Your Radio!
5	Krom	Music has Become My Enemy
6	Akron/Family	Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms
7	Uncle Fido	They Hear Music Everywhere
8	Einstürzende Neubauten	NNNAAAMMM
9	Nouvelle Vague	This Is Not A Love Song
10	Scarling.	We Are the Music Makers
11	Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy	Madeline Mary
12	Rogér Fakhr	Sad Sad Songs
13	Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds	The Weeping Song

Mittwoch Mix - hwæt quarterly report 1st quarter 2023

 

 

I do a lot of thematic mixes, but this series of Quarterly Reports compiles tracks from the albums released during the quarter that captured my attention.

#	Artist	Track	From
1	Lankum	Go Dig My Grave	False Lankum
2	BIG|BRAVE	the fable of subjugation	nature morte
3	Ashenspire	Plattenbau Persephone Praxis	Hostile Architecture
4	Dawn Ray’d	Requital	TO KNOW THE LIGHT
5	Betty Benedeadly & Brandon Guess	Primordial Rhythms	At the Institute of Mentalphysics
6	Score	Brink	COPE
7	Zohra	Empire Grave	Murder in the Temple
8	Sightless Pit	Calcified Glass (feat YoshimiO & Gangsta Boo)	Lockstep Bloodwar
9	Dynasti	A Ticking Tyranny	Quantum Primitiv
10	Úzkost	Arise: Assemble! Conjoin Your Flame!	For Property and Profit
11	Earth	the dark and bloody ground	Even Hall has its Heroes
12	Transgressive	Unheard Voices	Extreme Transgression
13	Enslaved	Forest Dweller	Heimdal

Of course, since I limited myself to my usual 13 track mix length, a few albums I quite enjoyed from Q1 2023 didn't make it into the mix but are still well worth seeking out. In no particular order here are a half dozen more albums you should grab.

Radical Romantics - Fever Ray

Does Spring Hide Its Joy - Kali Malone

Satanic Transgender Terrorism - Wolven Daughter

Rise of the Machines - Mychorrhizal

Spacetudes & Spacetudes Too - Binaural Space

Denies My Tongue To Tell - Espi Kvlt

Mittwoch Mix - 2021 AotY Overflow

While I’ve already provided my Idiosyncratic Top 25 Albums of 2021, here are thirteen more that just missed the cut—some because they are soundtracks, reissues or EPs, but all are great albums but just didn’t quite make my top 25.

 

The top gross of albums I listened to in 2021, upon which many of these albums feature.

An Idiosyncratic Ranking of the Top 25 Albums of 2021

 

It is again that time of year when post my idiosyncratic Top 25 albums of the year...

According to last.fm, where I track most (but not all) of my listening, I listened to 16,297 tracks and 1,699 different artists in 2021 alone. Albums are harder to track on last.fm if they have multiple artists, but I easily listened to over 800 different albums...

68% of those over 16 thousand track were new to 2021, so picking out 25 albums, even of just what was released in 2021 and not just new to me in 2021 was tough, but here are my current top 25 of 2021...

You can find a mixcloud mix with a sample track from each album here. 

Recommended Discoveries - Yule Tunes 2021

 

If you haven't been able to tell from the eleven Yule Tunes mixes I put together this year (easily found in one spot on the Yule Tunes Page), I picked up a fair bit of holiday music this year.

From that haul, here are some tracks and albums I recommend...

Shipwreck Radio - July 28

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.

 

JULY 28 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

Here we are, the final chronological track of Shipwreck Radio—it starts with the opening chimes and welcomings stretched and compressed like taffy. After the opening, we get the low rumble, slowly building in the background, and then a shrieking whistling, that will dominate the track, comes piercing in. Around a minute, a ghostly wavering tone, like a moaning wind joins as well. Sometimes the whistling takes on a more ringing quality, but sometimes it's just piercing and biting as it floats above the ghostly moans and low background rumble.
These sonic structures swirl and dance slowly as the track glides along, both soothing and sharp. At six and a half minutes the moaning wind is turned into a soft, stuttering beat, before it fades away, replaced by a new wind that floats quietly behind the now grinding high pitch. At ten minutes the high tones double, into a buzzing and a ringing as the wind sweeps behind them. The whistling begins to peak at higher and higher tones, piercing into your skull as it dares you to turn off the track, the gentle wind blowing in to provide a comforting layer to retreat to when the shrill tone fades for a second, right up until the 15th minute when the whistle fades quickly ushering in the end of the track.

Shipwreck Radio - July 24

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.

JULY 24 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Another eerily meditative track, July 24 starts with the opening chimes sped up and the opening welcomes given a warbling effect. Then we get the low rumbling, dragging sample, that sounds like a stick being dragged along corrugated metal at the bottom of an abyss. Building on top of that comes another mechanical rumbling, creating an intertwining rhythm that is joined by an more electronic jutter around two minutes. The stuttering fades in and out, and by three minutes, it’s clear that the origin of the stutter is a bit of unrecognizable vocal sample.
As the track continues its ruminative rumbling, higher tinny metallic rings enter, some sounding almost like cymbal crashes as the base rumble chugs along, the juttering carried along with it. The track continues to seethe, daring you to dive into it and stay afloat on its churning sonic surface; the patterns may repeat, but they are just off-sync enough to the aural ocean choppy and unsteady as the various sonic structures fade in and out, some becoming clearer for a moment, almost recognizable before being pulled under into the jostling of the track.
Near the fourteen minute mark, the last ingredient is added, a sound like a metallic cord, being twanged that evokes a kind of noisy , almost rubbery, chewing sound as it echoes, repeats and is processed and put into play with the swirl of the other sounds. Then finally, a metallic crash and the sound of a dropped metal bar closes out this track, the unsettled groove that had carried it along abruptly gone, a bracing finish for a track that dares you to attempt to follow it.

Shipwreck Radio - July 21

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.

 

JULY 21 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

In many ways this is a prototypical Shipwreck Radio track, it starts with the greeting and welcoming charms sped up slightly and then repeats them slowed down moves seamlessly into the track as a main. It’s got all the elements we’ve come to expect from Shipwreck Radio songs, the ringing metallic sample, rushing roars and waves that could be vocal samples. The rushing roars, like rough choppy waves, make up the base of the track, sometimes rumbling in the background and sometimes surging to the foreground. The metallic ringing is joined by a low metallic scraping and both those periodically crest above the roar of the background.
Around the five minute mark a tinny metallic reverberation joins which is followed by the more familiar ringing, the track remaining resonant and reminiscent of previous Shipwreck Radio songs, while also remaining distinct, faster in tempo than many of the other tracks that mine the same vein of Sturm und Drang sonic structure of the low rumbling waves and ringing metal. At nine minutes it becomes a cacophony, more insistent and urgent in feel than the earlier tracks, which featured a menace that built slowly, where this track hits you at times like a torrent of water. The pace and insistency are maintained until the 14th minute when, abruptly, the track begins to slowly fade away, the roar waning and deteriorating until it breaks apart into silence.
Here again is another Shipwreck Radio track that successfully walks that uncanny line of familiar samples and complex and interesting structure.

Shipwreck Radio - July 18

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.

JULY 18 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcoming and chimes flow in like waves, then the track launches into a melancholic and haunting melody that sounds like ghostly voices. The undulate and shift slightly, several choruses folding in on top of each other, forming a constantly changing pattern of haunting moans. Behind the chorus float brassy samples, echoing the voices as they dance around each other. There’s a pause near the halfway point, with a few seconds of silence, before the chorus begins again, the peaks and valleys of the flowing melody growing more pronounced. While the track never grows complex, it also avoids the issue that July 13 had, of being too simplistic and expected; instead the swirling and pensive choruses of moans and brassy samples remain dynamic, never settling into a tedium.

Shipwreck Radio - July 13

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.

JULY 13 - SHIPWRECK RADIO: FINAL BROADCASTS

The opening chimes and welcome are nearly uncanny in their clarity, then the track goes right to a heavily processed vocal sample and already unrecognizable phrase where the only intelligible words are “Shipwreck radio“. The sample repeats, each time more processed than the last, the sounds drawn out into long buzzing drones. Between each iteration, is a silence, which, like the quickly inhuman sounding vocal sample, is drawn out longer and longer each time. This, unfortunately, is my least favorite of the Shipwreck Radio tracks, unlike many of the other tracks which seem deceptively simple, this one is just… simple, with the repeating (if longer each time) pattern of processed buzzing vocal sample and then silence. Most other tracks would establish a pattern and then subvert or break it, but regrettably, this is not the case with July 13. There is no surprise awaiting you down in the depths of July 13 as it drags on for 30 minutes, the pattern is establish early and drags on, with the only predictable change of each iteration being longer than the last…But one lackluster track out of the twenty that comprise the Shipwreck Radio sessions? That’s not bad at all.

Shipwreck Radio - July 10

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.

JULY 10 - LOFOTEN DEADHEAD

The track begins with the opening chimes and welcome distorted to nearly the point of unrecognizability, and then instead of leaving that behind, as many of the other tracks do, it seems to use that initial distortion as the base of the track. That is joined by barely audible gull caws, manipulated to sound more like chirps creep into the background; the initial distortion still churning, until a metallic and electronic scraping tone is added near the two and a half minute mark. The distortion surges at the three minute mark, boiling over, the electronic scrape caught in the maelstrom and chop, the chirp of the gulls circling above like ill omens. 

The scraping becomes a buzzing near the five minute mark, cutting through the eddies of the distortion but this break doesn't last long and the distortion swells and crashes by the six minute mark—waves of it breaking upon the shore of the soundscape, the gulls still calling out ominously against the storm. The scraping is gone and we're left with the surges and roils of the distortion until after the nine minute mark when the scrapes make their resurgence, clearer and crisper now as the distortion seethes around it. After the eleven minute mark the distortion splits, and a lighter distortion bubbles on top of the deeper rumbling, like foam on storm waves, the gulls returning to chime their warnings as the track remains tempestuous, refusing to ever give in to quiet or calm until the very last seconds.

Shipwreck Radio - July 8

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.

JULY 8 - LOFOTEN DEADHEAD

The opening track off the Lofoten Deadhead companion album, it begins with the opening chimes and welcomes slowed down—sounding as though they were descending slowly into a bottomless abyss. Then the track begins in earnest, with what sounds like a mournful low brass melody, a gentle ringing metallic rhythm above it. At the two and a half mark, a slowed and stretched gull caw joins this melancholy pondering, with less processed gull calls following it a minute later. The bird calls increase in frequency and variety as the mournful brass and chiming metal continue, giving the impression of a somber and clouded afternoon on the seashore. 

After the six minute mark, we get a brief bit of waves and then the low brass and chiming fade out, giving way to bird calls and more sounds of waves, a hint of footsteps on a rock shore. The melancholy is gone; giving way to a slightly sinister set of stretched electronic tones below the bird calls by the eight minute mark and then after the nine and half minute mark strange echoing and highly processed bird calls join the more naturalistic ones, giving one the impression of going to an uncanny shore as the processed bird calls drown out the unprocessed ones. The calls are largely alien in sound after the eleven minute mark—strange high chirps and stretched out warbling caws, whistlings and noises that echo as though you’ve left the shore for a strange dark cave; a long way from the gloomy shore the song began at. In the final moments of the song the bird calls are entirely electronic sounding, more like the chirping of robots than any organic life. 

While I must admit a preference for the slow and mournful beginning of the song, the slow transition of the bird calls from natural to artificial sounding provides an excellent example of how the natural sounds gathered by Nurse With Wound in Lofoten can be transformed; the calls echoing at the end reverberate not just in the soundscape but also with the weight of their original nature.

Shipwreck Radio - July 6

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.

JULY 6 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Here is another track where the opening chimes are drawn out into a stutter and the welcome is processed into a pulse that barely hints at the original source. Once that sputtering opening has passed, we move into a low sonorous tone with a gentle gonging rhythm riding upon it. Alongside the metallic, gonglike ringing, there’s an almost cymbalic, dragging metal tone that builds and repeats. As the song approaches the four minute mark, all these sounds build and intensify, then a pair of hissing whistles joins, slicing through the sonic structure of the track, setting the stage for the heart of the track; the low and gentle thrum of the base tones, the meditative rhythm of the two metallic elements, like gongs in a peaceful temple, and then the disquieting whistles, complicating and breaking the otherwise pensive soundscape. 

The hissing divides and dances with itself, nearly drowning out the underlying sounds as we approach the seven and a half minute mark, the meditative opening of the song seeming to fade away, a mere reminder as the whistling dominates the track, lurking in the background as the warbling shrieks pierce deep into your skull. The whistle never quite manages to drown out the meditative drone and ringing though, leaving the listener to find it beneath the sharp edges. Then after the eleven minute mark the hissing is chopped up, stuttered out like the opening chimes, and what should be stabbing is somehow softened as though the shorter whistle doesn’t have the piercing power that it did when it was long continues shrieks.  This lets the contemplative base of the song, the low rolling tones and the reflective metallic rhythm re-emerge, until the thirteenth minute mark when the spiking whistling begins to lengthen ever so subtly, becoming uneven, until it speeds into pulsing dings at the fourteen minute mark, the base having faded away, leaving these pin sharp hisses until they too fade away as the song ends. 

Here is another well-wrought transmission from Shipwreck Radio, building a simple, mesmerizing, contemplative base and then complicating it… Showing how one can hold onto the meditative even in the face of blaring distraction… and then, when one focuses, showing how you can even find the ruminative quality in something seemingly unpleasant as a  keening whistle.

Shipwreck Radio - July 4

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.

JULY 4 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening chimes splutter and there is just the barest hint of the customary welcomings, then the song moves into a low grumbling tone. A sliver of a ringing tone lurks below the choppy growling that dominates the track. About four and a half minutes in a disquieting whistling joins the track, breaking through the chop; woeful and piercing. The whistling wails above the low bass rumble of the base of the track, threatening to tear into it two tones, and around seven and a half minutes the song begins to be broken up by infrequent electronic glitches that break the soundscape for just a fraction of a second at a time. Near the nine minute mark, the whistling does finally spit into two shrill tones, a distressing duet gliding above the clangorous base. 

At eleven minutes the whistling seems to crack again—almost shredding into a dozen tones before it begins to stutter, less shrieking as it pulses now, the high constant tone broken into a fraying rhythm. The whistling continues to pulse along, broken and fractured, but less screeching until there's another break in the song just before fourteen minutes and then the whistling pulse doubles on itself becoming frantic and fast, reminiscent of violin stabs in a horror soundtrack before it fades away to the end of the song. Easily one of the more difficult listens of the Shipwreck Radio recordings, but no less rewarding for anyone who wants an arresting meditation

Shipwreck Radio - June 22

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 22 - SHIPWRECK RADIO: FINAL BROADCASTS

The first track we get to from, and coincidentally the first track off of, Final Broadcasts, it opens with the opening welcomes and chimes echoing wildly between the left and right channels. Then a ringing builds and pulls in a roar with it—the two samples, the ringing and the roar, almost vocal at times, swirl and play off each other, before they’re joined by a tone that’s almost like a crashing wave. Here are the three main components of the track, a simple audio palette that becomes something much greater; its hard not to picture a starlit walk, a little too dark to be truly safe, along a seaside cliff, the waves crashing below. At times you can almost hear voices calling out in the roaring wind, and as the ringing returns to cut through the nocturnal roars and crashes, it begins to sound more and more like an alarm. The night is dark and full of terrors, and as your mind roams with the track, the dark depths hinted at by the sounds here seem almost tempting, a call to a darker place, just hinted at, as the roars and howls of the sampled sounds, the ringing alarms, all seem to herald a darkness that would be cliché in a metal song. Here is a sense of the sinister that pulls us back through the eons, to that primal base of our brain which fears the gloom of the moonless night and thrills at it as well. 

Around the 12 minute mark, the roaring becomes more claustrophobic, seeming to echo down a murky tunnel. A low, profundo tone building in the background—a rumbling drone, like the deep drawn out moan of a demon cast up from the depths. The ringing reemerges slowly as well, building gradually until it’s overwhelmed by the roar, nearly a scream and then the tones of the track become more ragged. As we near the fifteen minute mark, it’s as though we’re caught in a tempest, thunder boiling in the distance, winds howling around us, the ringing calling out an alarm. There’s a gentle and soft rain-like sound that comes in after the 16 minute mark, but it’s quickly overwhelmed by the alarum of the ringing, insistent and blaring before it fades, leaving us with the moaning wind before it bursts in again, loud and disquieting, before fading back. This repeats again, the ringing more muddled as the track passes the 18 minute mark, nearly becoming a scream, the ringing sample stretched nearly to breaking as it cries out, ebbing a little, but lasting over a minute until the profundo drone in the background is left to carry us along. 

The ringing tries to return several times, bubbling up in the background, is joined by a metallic scraping, but can’t quite break above the boil of the bass tone of the background until 20:30 when it seems to crash into the low towns, a churn of the ringing and hissing swirling together, the moaning voices tossed up momentarily out of the seething. It fades away near the twenty third minute, only to return, more sibilant as the hissing dominates, then giving way to metallic wails. The wails fly above the low oceanic background tones and by the twenty six minute mark almost fade away, taking a place in the background as the ringing returns, lower, sounding at first like a crashing wave, then growing slower and lower as the track settles into a descent, the last winds of a storm rushing away, light on the horizon as the clouds crack and break, leaving one with the impression of a danger just passed, but knowing the danger could someday return.

Shipwreck Radio - June 20

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 20 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

The deceptively simple, final track of Volume 1: it opens with a drastically slowed down version of the welcome and chimes, then starts in with a slow and gently rolling tone. Like lapping waves, the slowly building tones swell slightly, the higher tone slightly metallic and the lower tone rumbling like thunder at the edge of the horizon. After about four minutes, the melody begins—a simple and repetitive clanging, that gradually increases in volume as the tones beneath it slowly shift. The track continues its slowly metamorphosis, the melody clinking along while the tones provide a meditative base, the changes in the sonic structure small and imperceptible to the casual listener while rewarding an engaged listener who is willing to give all their attention to this hauntingly mesmerizing song.

 

Shipwreck Radio - June 19

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 19 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

A track from the second volume of Shipwreck Radio, the opening charm and welcome are drawn out, then sped up—announcing this as highly processed track. There’s a low and lowing electronic tone, then jangling metal adds to the eeriness. There is a moaning sample that is folded in as well, then another, and more jangling metal. After two minutes, we get the haunting calls of gulls, as a thudding echo is added as, then a shuddering beat enters with a ringing behind it building into a groove that takes over the track. After a few minutes a second beat enters, developing into a groove reminiscent to that of June 15, with some of the same tempo irregularities and seeming skips, but where the groove of June 15 was noisy and industrial, this groove stays just a bit sinister in its sonic structure. 

There are more ghosts from June 15 in this track, with the Lofoten Deadhead returning with “Lean back, you know, if the day has been hectic you just put on a record” being brought in after 7 minutes. But where June 15 seemed to invite you to relax, June 19 manages to take many of the same sounds and make it feel hectic and claustrophobic. Near nine minutes, a rushing metallic sheen slices through the track, a paranoiac cutting intruding before the groove seems to double in on itself and resume. As it returns after the ten minute mark you catch the edge of gull caws in it as the beat almost collapses like a heart beat in an arrest before the drawn out gull sheen begins to swirl, drawing the listener into the sonic whirlpool as a female vocal sample of “okay, okay” begins to repeat, the Lofoten Deadhead being drowned out by gulls that build an overwhelm the track like a scene out of birds, the groove continuing to chug unevenly along. In the last moments of the song, the Lofoten Deadhead sample begins to build again, layered over and over at faster and faster speeds until the track dissolves into a thinning colony of gulls, leaving you almost tempted to cast your gaze to the sky and make sure they’re not swirling above you.

Shipwreck Radio - June 17

 

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. 

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.

Shipwreck Radio - June 15

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 15 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

When you’re not listening to the Shipwreck Radio Sessions in “chronological” order, this is the opening track of Volume One and the introduction to Shipwreck Radio. And what an introduction it is…after the a drawling “ehhh” that prefaces the opening greeting and chimes, we get a sample of a man’s voice saying “Shipwreck Radio” and then the track launches full bore into a churning industrial groove. Crunchy bass beats with a metallic ringing melody over them. But this is Nurse With Wound, so it’s not quite that simple, in a hint of what’s to come the groove seems to glitch or skip several times in the opening thirty seconds before it settles in. Gradually a second, deeper, dirtier groove emerges from beneath the first; crashing into it as the song churns, the tempo fluctuating, unsteady, staying just off-kilter enough that you can never quite settle into it. The “shipwreck” radio sample returns, floating up to the boiling surface off the track as the groove gets filthier and filthier, each beat seeming to accumulate more sonic debris, the ringing metallic melody overwhelmed at times. 

At times it seems as though the track will glitch or skip, as it did near the beginning, the structure seething like turbulent waves. An almost roaring noise enters in, pairing with each beating, rising and falling as the song continues it’s never quite steady commotion. The “Shipwreck Radio” sample begins to become more insistent as the track passes the eight minute mark and the beat becomes tinnier, the bass dropping out as it becomes just crashing metal then almost guitar like, a low rumble building beneath it that I would swear is a re-processing of the drawling “ehhh” from the opening before it becomes almost a grumbling and after 10 and a half minutes the opening chimes return, winking at the shift in the song to an entirely new sonic direction by reminding those who are familiar with Shipwreck radio that this is a sound of beginnings. 

The beat fades out and sped up vocals introduce a drawling male voice, possibly slowed down, possibly not, the low grumbling sound contrasted with the helium high sped up vocal bursts. This drones on until for over a minute until a high, possibly female vocal sample enters saying “Kinda like thin slices of, um, a cross between… well it’s very livery, um, not very fishy, maybe liver, tuna…”. This new vocal sample repeats, describing what sounds like a possibly acquired taste, starting to be cut and processed more and more until we hear the sound of footsteps echoing on a wooden dock and then at fifteen minutes there is a dragging sound and then a crash of wood and then metal, like a dropped box that a spanner falls out of, and the third, final and shortest section of the song begins. Now we get a conversation between two males, one Steven Stapleton or Colin Potter, the members of NWW at the time, and the other, the Lofoten Deadhead, after whom the bonus disc for Shipwreck Radio Volume One is named. The droning male and higher vocals continue, keeping the sound muddy but the conversation, the heart of the song, I’d argue, still comes through.

NWW-“So, why the Grateful Dead?”
LDH-“Cause the Grateful Dead is the ultimate band (sigh); you know, it’s been my all-time high since the late sixties. I, uh, it’s the perfect kind of music to relax to and, you know, if the day has been hectic, you just put on a record, lean back and, well, there you are, rather a long and strange trip.”

This conversation repeats as the other sounds drop away, so that “well, there you are” becomes the last word on the track.

Here then is the genius of Nurse With Wound, the inspired working that goes into these Shipwreck Radio tracks. We start with an electronic, noisy groove that people expect when they imagine there is a genre called ‘Industrial Music’, but done extremely well and left as a convulsing beast, never settling into a predictable or clichéd rut. Then, it’s nearly impossible not to connect the muddled and mixed description of the livery tasting fish to the way NWW mixes and muddies genres, creating a taste, that while it may need to be acquired, is like nothing else. Finally, we get the Lofoten Deadhead, a short bit of conversation so inspiring to Steven and Colin they named the bonus disc after him, and well, you know that I’m going to argue that Shipwreck Radio is actually the perfect kind of music to relax to, and well, there you are.