Nurse With Wound, Aranos – Acts Of Senseless Beauty

The first collaboration between Nurse With Wound and Czech violinist Petr Vastl aka Aranos began life as part of the 1996 NWW album Who Can I Turn to Stereo. Stapleton invited Vastl in to play violin on the album, eventually enjoying the resulting material enough to set it aside for a whole separate project.

The originating track, fourteen minute centrepiece 'A Window of Possible Organic Development', is clear in its featuring the percussion loop used on most of NWW's 1990s albums. The track opens in relatively ambient territory, before Vastl's largely atonal playing becomes more intense as the track goes on, building to a swirling, psychedelic climax.

Other than the brief pummelling of 'Bloodclot', the rest of the album is much more sedate in its approach. Opener, 'Either Open or Unsound' and its closing reprise 'Some Magic Powers' feature moody bass rumbles and unidentifiable slowed down loops, with Vastl's hypnotic violin improvisations snaking over the top, bookending the album with a sinister, Middle Eastern-tinged vibe. 'The Entertainer' fills its six minutes with a similar palette of sounds, but in a less conventionally musical manner. Vastl's violin scrapes atonally, while the slowed down sounds are harsher and more foreboding. The track, however, manages to retain a certain laid back subtlety, despite its musically confrontational aspects.

Following a string of strongly rhythmic and occasionally melodic albums, Nurse With Wound's contribution's to Acts of Senseless Beauty are strikingly abstract, maybe the most they've been since the '80s. Background rumblings and unidentifiable noises are largely the choices here, leaving Aranos to provide the main focus, with his beautiful and striking violin playing. A frequently surprising but ultimately satisfying album.

A very beautiful, ethereal record. Ambient electronics at it's most spooky and beautiful.