Man with the Woman Face

As with any Nurse With Wound record, its hard to know what to expect, except that it will be something completely out of the ordinary. Man With the Woman Face begins on the ambient side, with lulling drones pulsing in the background, but at the same time particles of rhythm begin skittering around at ten- or 15-second intervals. Other sounds are slowly weaved into the mix, a trio of xylophone tones and some indefinable noises that twitter and flutter, to create a multi-layered mosaic of dreamy and yet discombobulating sound. Surrealism and Dada have always been NWWs strong suit, and this album, like Spiral Insana, is one of the more surreal. The second track, Ag Canadh Thuds Sa Speir (which in Gaelic translates roughly as Up in the Sky, Singing), is a bit more of a sonic collage with lots of abrupt twists, as ambient drones are disrupted by sporadic bursts of noise. A bomb goes off at one moment, and avant rock with Middle Eastern flare blazes up near the end. The final track begins like the opening piece with the subtle drones and tones, augmented by breathing noises and some vocal samples, and slowly morphs until about a third of the way in, when a remake of the original Amon Duuls Paramechanical World, with clunky tribal rhythms and flanged vocals, stumbles out of the swirls of hallucinatory clatter and drift. The drumbeat continues through most of the rest of the track, while after a brief creepy organ solo the music becomes even more processed and weird, until finally youre left with just a subtle high drone and a voice muttering the songs title over and over again. ~ Rolf Semprebon