Entry 436 - Nurse With Wound - Echo Poeme: Sequence No 2

 

"This album consists of one 49 minute track of female vocals, spoken and chanted, looped to create a haunting meditation and evoke emotion. Steve Stapleton employs a variety of hums, sighs, and spoken phrases to create a ghostly ambience. NWW has come to be regarded as the master of avant-garde post-classical experimentation, and Echo Poeme has come to signify an important direction in its vast oeuvre."

With a hype sticker like that, I don't think I have anything further to add. Nurse With Wound has always been strange, and Echo Poeme is no different. The vocals are primarily in French from what I can tell and have a level of eeriness to them that is akin to see a child alone in a dark alley way giggling.

Music like this evokes very raw emotion in me. There is nothing standard about this, this is essentially an art-house performance piece done entirely through a recording. The start of side two is especially... disturbing. It's the same vocals as employed on side one, but there is now a low hum below them and some echo effects placed on the main vocal line. To say that it is unsettling is a gross understatement.

NWW has always been on the strange side, and Echo Poeme doe nothing to change that. If anything it adds another fold into the enigma that is Steve Stapleton and his art.