Creakiness and Other Misdemeanours

Creakiness and Other Misdemeanours collects five rare tracks spanning 1991-2005, including Nurse with Wound's side of their long out of print split LP with Spasm. That track starts the collection, an extensive five-part cut-up of stereo-panned electronics, blurts of car horns, found sound samples, and other interjections. This Dada-informed sound collage starts off full of space, slowly building steam over its various parts into a composed cacophony without ever seeming unintentional or flailing. The symphony of car horns and cartoon character samples is so immediately exhausting that these sounds are instantly recontextualized from dialogue or warning sounds into another repeating instrumental device. The sampled "Meep Meep" of the Roadrunner becomes a snare hit, the car alarm sound a rhythmic accentuation. Two tracks from a 7" called The Sand Tangled Women (Echo Poeme Sequence 3) work in a more spooky, ambient territory, with repetitive ghostly vocals floating softly over frosty synth tones and the subdued percussion sounds of reverb-doused gongs. The collection is rounded out with the similarly minded open field electronics of the 19-minute "Little Dipper Minus Two (Echo Poeme Sequence 1)" and 7" track "A Perfectly Natural Explanation." While the "Creakiness" suite is clearly the focus of this compilation, the moody electronic tones and exquisite use of space on the other tracks are more successful in their understated experimentalism where the intentionally overwhelming bluster of "Creakiness" could alienate even the most devoted NWW completist.