Faust/Nurse With Wound - Disconnected

A match made in heaven, of course. Steven Stapleton, Nurse with Wound's kingpin, was one of the pioneers of industrial music along with the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten, and he has never made any secret of the influence Krautrock, and particularly the wild sonic innovations of Faust, had on his work. Legend has it that as a lad he even travelled to Faust's head quarters in Wumme only to find Faust were away on tour. It's no surprise that the styles of Stapleton and Faust (here comprised of Zappi Diermaier, Steven Stapleton, Jean-Herve Peron, Colin Potter and Amaury Cambuzat) gel so perfectly on Disconnected, although fun can certainly be had in trying to work out who's influence holds sway over which section. First track 'Lass Mich' begins as mystic, pastoral folk, complete with muttered French intro, and as such sounds perfectly in tune with Faust's more bucolic pieces such as 'Giggy Smile' from their classic Faust IV. However, it's not long before the music's calming waves give way to destabilising blasts of concrete and sonic bricolage, switching abruptly from jazzy piano tinkling to Radiophonic Workshop style oscillations, which one more readily associates with NWW. In a sense, such cattleprod dynamics take Faust right back to the Dadaist experiments of 'Why Don't You Eat Carrots?', the disorientating first track on their legendary debut album. This gleefully impish attitude towards sound manipulation, the feeling that lunatics had barricaded themselves into a studio filled with cutting edge equipment, is at the heart of every great Faust track. The second and title track is a long, doom-laden ambient piece which conjures up images of an endless expanse of space filled with drifting sonic debris colliding and conglomerating in the vastness. Eventually, a chorus of droning voices, like the ones that accompany the appearance of the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey, emerge to draw you further into the funereal grandeur of the music. Third track 'Tu M'entends?' continues the ambient theme, throwing a looped bongo rhythm under organically surging and falling organ drones and a spectral, pixilated voice chanting incantations in half-creepy, half-sensual way. This gives way abruptly to metallic banging and pounding which could be straight off an early Einstürzende Neubauten album. The voice reappears, this time sounding as if it is trapped in some hell world and begging to be set free. The music relentlessly heaps pressure upon the listener, eventually cutting out with a shudder. The resulting peace is like feeling your ears pop unexpectedly. During final track 'It Will Take Time', the listener is left to float through burbling soundscapes, occasionally bumping up against snatched, deteriorated sampled of dialogue. It's as if you are slowly drifting out of the solar system and into deep space, watching the Earth shrink to a milky dot and then disappear. If you are not already familiar with either group's back catalogue then this album is not really the place to start. But for those already hooked on the psychedelic/punk/jazz/ambient/industrial explorations of both bands, wallowing in the wild and weird textures of Disconnected will be strange paradise indeed.