The 150 Murderous Passions, Or Those Belonging To The Fourth Class, Composing The 28 Days Of February Spent In Hearing The Narrations Of Madame Desgranges, Interspersed Amongst Which Are The Scandalous Doings At The Château During That Month – The 150 Murderous Passions

A one-off project between Steven Stapleton and William Bennett, The 150 Murderous Passions sounds almost exactly how one would expect a Nurse With Wound and Whitehouse collaboration to sound. The CD's opening track is more heavily NWW-focused, a sound collage of various noises, both unidentified (various bangs and clangs, including a repeated metallic note that loops for the bulk of the track) and more straight-forward (hello again, random piano mashing). The piece is considerably less messy and 'random' than earlier NWW tracks, with a sense of continuity running throughout. Bennett's contributions to the track, guided by Stapleton, are undoubtedly the occasional blasts of feedback, and the screamed vocals: it's not quite a power electronics track, but it's as close as NWW would ever come.

The second track, Bennett's, is the reverse: the overall effect is that of a Whitehouse track, with layers of distorted sound pushed into the red; Stapleton, under the guidance of Bennett, adds the more sculptured aspects which are slightly less characteristic of Whitehouse.

Overall, the album is hardly a high point of either artist's careers, but the collaboration provides an opportunity for both to break outside of their own sounds a little, meaning The 150 Murderous Passions is more than a simple curio.

William Bennett: "This is strictly speaking neither a Whitehouse nor a NWW album but was a special project. Steve Stapleton produced the 'long' track and I produced the 'short' track with assistance from each other and Peter McKay on the other's tracks. It was Alan Trench's PWC (in all but name - subsequently to be named World Serpent) and Stapleton who decided to market the album as WH/NWW for commercial reasons (to make a quick buck - like with so many of their and Current 93's releases) - it was released by them without my consultation or permission (although they later paid the money owing from it). The proof of the greed is that they could have asked me for the tapes which I would gladly have provided - but their haste proved too great. The master tapes were, and always have been, in my possession - when PWC ('UD') went ahead with the CD and LP release they simply mastered it from a vinyl copy of the album. That's why the 'mix' sounds so different (and so disappointingly poor, in my opinion) because, to disguise its origins, lots of reverb and other effects were (rather clumsily) added to it. Susan Lawly decided to include my track on Cream of The Second Coming so that at least it was available for people to hear in its proper form. If you have access to the Come Organisation original you will hear the enormous difference." NB: These recordings are available in their original format (digitally remastered) on the release Anthology 1 2xCD (SLCD019).