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.

Shipwreck Radio - June 12

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 12 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcoming and chimes are clean and crisp, then a mellow warbling tone sets in. Compared to the last two tracks I've reviewed (June 6 and June 9), June 12 is much more meditative. Tones build and crest like gentle waves behind the warbling, evoking a calm shore. They slowly swell, as if a tide was coming, minute by minute, nearly imperceptibly, until around six minutes when a metallic ringing emerges from the pulsating tones, to grow along with the warbling. Then around minute nine the ringing begins to warp, merging with an echoing and windy sound, like that of wind blowing over a pipe, if you manage to strip away the processing. The track fades away abruptly, bringing an end to the undulating littoral drones of this pensive and relaxing track.

Shipwreck Radio - June 9

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 9 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcome is muddled and muddied, then the opening chimes give way shortly to a wavering and distorted sample of a woman discussing a documentary. This is interrupted by a clanging, then the discussion continues before it is interrupted again. The clanging begins to repeat, followed by a metallic melody that begins to fade almost as it's introduced, the clanging sample becoming more frequent and fragmented while a low tone builds imperceptibly in the background. The end of the clanging sample is caught; turned into a chittering and abstract line that floats above the low tone and below the still distorted clanging that continues to return and repeat. The chittering becomes almost a buzzing, burrowing into your ears, as the clanging gives way to a fuzzy, almost gong like sample, metallic in its own way, but gentler, sounding above the chittering. 

Around minute seven an insistent, accelerating rhythm comes in, followed again by the metallic melody from before, a little slower, that dances in and out with the chittering and gongs. Without warning,  the sampled female vocals return, manipulated into incoherence, with the insistent, accelerating rhythm returning and the gongs becoming harsher, the low tone in the background providing an uneasy surface for your mind to float upon as the female vocals return again with a recognizable refrain of “I'm not sure... about the artist”. There are few other phrases that sum up Nurse With Wound as well as this, except perhaps for the “Categories strain, crack and sometimes break under their burden”...

Clearly the track means to address the very heart of Shipwreck Radio—the artifice of taking samples recorded in the remote Norwegian district of Lofoten and turning them into something both uncanny and recognizable, when you encounter the samples or similar sounds in an unprocessed setting. Say, when you can recognize the accelerating rhythm as that of a stick being run along a fence or perhaps a length of ribbed metal tubing. The song doesn't belabor this point though, quickly letting the vocals fade away again, to return to the chittering, clanging and gongs; the sounds of Lofoten re-purposed, until a male vocal line enters around minute thirteen, cut up to sound like glossolalia. The last minutes of the track meander to it's conclusion, the gongs and metallic melody being the last to fade away, as it leaves you to your contemplation.

Revised 06/09/2026

Shipwreck Radio - June 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.

JUNE 6 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME TWO

The opening welcome is echoey and slightly tinny; after the beeps the track goes silent or nearly silent, then the soundscape slowly bleed back in. First as a ghostly and wavering tone, then a slowly building, cyclical plastic rhythm. On top of that, around three and a half minutes in, a second and more metallic melody is folded in, to complete the base of the song. It’s pure Nurse With Wound, simple in its components, rich and mesmerizing, but still slightly unsettled and unsettling. Just after 5 minutes the next ingredients are added, first a juttering, mechanical sample that crashes through the tones and plastic rhythm in varying volumes, then another, more sinister tone that comes to lurk in the background, complementing and complicating that first ghostly tone. At some point you realize that something like a muted string line is also hiding in the background, building and emerging around the ten minute mark, as the mechanical juttering becomes more frequent and insistent, becoming nearly constant in the next minute, before fading again. The plastic rhythm starts to seem insectoid, the string like tone threatening to crest the surface of the song as the thirteenth minute arrives and then slipping back below the surface. The plastic rhythm floats, chitinously and nearly alone, above the still spectral tones, until the song begins to fade, the juttering machine noises making several muted returns, but never breaking through as they did before. It takes the plastic rhythm with it as it exits, leaving the uncanny tones that opened the song to wane again into silence as the song finishes. A phantom silence to end the track as it begins, an uncertain quiet, almost pulsing with the imagined tones of what came before.

Revised 06/06/2026

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

The second ‘chronologically’ is 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 re-purpose the sounds of Lofoten as they drone 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, 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 this 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.

Revised 06/05/2026

Shipwreck Radio - Introduction and June 3

 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

JUNE 3 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Going chronologically, we start with one of the ghostliest of the Shipwreck Radio tracks, the introductory chimes and greetings so stretched and spectral as to be nearly unintelligible. They give way to a short-lived silence, then a low reverberating hollow sound that becomes the phantasmal base the song is built upon. After a minute, the low hollowness is joined by a dull and irregular thudding that lingers at the edge of the track, as well as a wraithlike melody, that is almost brassy. The bass reverberations build up and sound like the deep echoing growl of some nocturnal predator hunting in a pitch black cave. At three minutes a thrumming mechanical noise joins and the clatterings come more to the front, becoming sharper. By the five minute mark the thrumming has metamorphosed into something like a door creaking in the basement of some sinister house built too near a cliff’s edge, though it remains too deep for that, remaining uncannily on the edge of any number of noises that might cause you to shudder in the dark. The phantom melody continues to levitates above the rumbling bass at the base of the song. Around eight minutes, a melody emerges enough to sound voice-like– a nearly mute banshee wailing on a moonless night, gloomy and meditative. The soft but ominous track dares you to try and find comfort in it, to let yourself to be mesmerized and taken in by its inky beauty. It is a track that is easy to dismiss when you give it only cursory attention but which is captivating and fathomless when you dive into it with your full attention.

Revised 06/03/2026

Mittwoch Mix - Brunch - Tasting Menu Mix

Continuing my Tasting Menu Mixes, the Brunch mix, like the previous mixes, features twenty of my favorite bands & musical artists, but for their side projects, collaborations and songs they helped produce for other artists.

 Like the meal, it's not quite what you get from the main mixes, but provides a different spin on the aural flavors and a way to branch out and explore if you like the main artist and want to find more like them.