Stereolab & Nurse With Wound - Simple Headphone Mind (Album Review)

 

Stereolab & Nurse With Wound - Simple Headphone Mind

(1997)

My copy: 1997 limited press by Duophonic Super 45s.

An exciting collaboration between two genre-bending artists, Simple Headphone Mind draws out the distinct and contrasting personalities of both in fascinating ways. Both Stereolab and the more abrasive Nurse With Wound (by this point in time mostly just the alias of Steven Stapleton) are heavily influenced by German kraut-rock bands, with this style of hypnotic percussion serving as the backbone for their collaboration.

The ten-minute title track starts out smooth with steady, with warm bass and gentle guitar melody. The momentum flows continuously, even as hints of ghostly synth ambiance begin leaking in from another dimension. While the guitar does occasionally flirt with dissonance, the mood is never dire, rather it is almost eerily calm at its compositional core - this vague anxiety increasing as new pulses of alien synths and tweeting samples shapeshift in the margins of the piece, with a robotic voice occasionally adding announcements overhead. The rhythm complicates with each new layer, though its main groove stays intact. The music eventually falls to a repeated vocal statement - one that is slowed digitally each time it repeats, turning from recognizable human communication into a horrifying and guttural death rattle, ending on a locked groove. 

Now that the cool kraut-rock jam has been dragged down into the depths of hell, with further demonic speaking and dark-ambient atmospheres, the original instrumentals revive again into “Trippin With The Birds.” The B-side doubles the length of the initial track, now committing fully to sonic mischief as everything is done to derail the main musical motif: synths cry out, samples stretch, and the music will pan across channels only to reappear on the other side, stopping and starting frequently. This is like the soundtrack to some great ego-war - as traditional rock components do battle with post-modern experimental trickery, keeping the track in a constant flux. Things do quiet down into a relatively serene volume near the end, though there is an ever-present threat of loudness in brief, occasional noise outbursts.

Simple Headphone Mind is a mastery of aesthetics; it is two sonic powerhouses colliding at full force, in uncompromising creativity. Though I wish Laetitia Sadier’s singing played a larger role, this is still an incredible collaboration that does right by the German bands it borrows from.