Electronic Music 411 - Nurse with Wound -

Lately, I have been having some type of old fondness returning for the early nineties Industrial music. I spent most of my mid to late teen years cutting my teeth in electronic music in this scene. Back when "granular synthesis" to me was modulating loop position on drum n bass beats on my old ASR-10. And spending hours making patches so that it would sound like someone pounding a Mig welder against an oil drum.

Anyways, I was lucky enough to see a group last night that is quite prolific, but until recently, I had never actually been acquainted with their music. I got to enjoy this show in one of the best areas in the San Francisco, the Tenderloin. I think the area added to the gritty charm of this show. Another interesting thing for me was to see the remnants of aging industrial music fans attending this show. The crowd has always been one of my favorites as its always a weird and diverse group of people flung together by the music and culture. There were a couple of "Patrick Bateman" look-alikes, which I found hilarious, along with the typical white girl with shaved eyebrows and red and black dreadlocks. It made me miss the 90's.

The stage was decoratively littered with steel, cabling, speakers and boxes with knobs. From my viewpoint, unfortunately, I had no idea of what gear was actually on the stage. The show started out with a low pulsing sine with fluttering hi-hats and was enhanced with a visual display above the performer with a dream like movie of a woman slowly floating about, really more like having an acid trip while watching belly dancing. The visuals were amazing, and the sounds that accompanied were great. The only problem was that it went on a little too long for me. This preceded another live visual, which became more interesting once I realized that it was being done live with a projector and a bunch of found objects. Slightly disappointed, because I had no idea what the correlation was with the activity on the display and the sounds coming from the speakers. Pretty captivating nonetheless.

The next set involved two of the members from Nurse with Wound, I later learned. This was more of a live performance as one of the guys started playing guitar, and banging on drums while the other was playing with filters on a massive ARP Odyssey. A little more interesting to watch, it also kind of sputtered off after too much noodling.

Finally, the rest of the group for Nurse with Wound comes on stage. It was beautiful to see these older gents on stage with the same amount of vivacity as any rocker would bring as his stage presence. They even started off the set on a creepy vibe, with some strange and slightly disturbing footage of this dingey and claustrophobic apartment in which there seems to be a problem with blood and guts seeping from the walls and nobody seems to notice. The music and video definitely made the vodka tonic in me bring up a little queasiness. But, luckily, the setting changed a bit, and everything became ablaze in the apartment on the screen, and some granular rhythms and notes started cutting through the air. The show went on like this for awhile, morphing from scene to scene. My favorite is probably the footage of a couple having a nice raw fish dinner underwater.

Overall, I was seriously impressed with this group and HIGHLY recommend seeing them if they play near you. They are now one of my new favorite bands. I am definitely looking forward to Throbbing Gristle next month.