This weekend sees Steven Stapleton play his first Nurse With Wound show in Berlin since 2007 as part of a new event series put together by producer Manuela Benetton with all the gigs set to take place in various Berlin churches.
On Friday (April 28), the show will take place at Sophienkirche with Stapleton, Colin Potter and Andrew Liles joined by special guest James Hill. As ever with a live set from Nurse With Wound, you can expect a show unlike the set they will play before or after, as they look to make no two sets the same.
To mark the occasion, Stapleton has selected a number of tracks which he has found influential on his work over the years for a mixtape which you can check out above, while you can find more information on the show, and get tickets, here. The tracklist for Stapleton’s mixtape can be found below too, as well as a short Q&A with Nurse With Wound’s Andrew Liles.
The series will continue on May 31 at St. Elisabeth-Kirche where Merzbow will play with Keiji Haino and Balázs Pándi for their first ever concert in Germany, presenting the album An Untroublesome Defencelessness which the three have recently released. Pan Daijing, Valerio Tricoli and Werner Dafeldecker will all team up for a further show in September while Beatriz Ferreyra will also play.
For the uninitiated, can you tell us how distinct the Nurse With Wound live experience is from the near 40 year long back catalogue of albums put out under that name?
Andrew Liles: It’s nothing like the records really and it has become a standard slogan of ours to say "Every NWW show is a rehearsal for the next one". After 12 years of rehearsals we are getting pretty good, our last ever gig will be the first… if you catch my drift.
What should people attending the Sophienkirche expect?
AL: It generally goes like this – calm and sedate, angular and difficult, calm and sedate followed by chaos and claustrophobia and possibly back to sedate or more chaos all of which is back dropped by an ever evolving projection of Steve’s art.
You played St John’s in Hackney recently – what advantages are offered by playing in churches?
AL: There are few advantages to playing in a church. They are cold and echoey, the toilets are situated in complex, discreet and unfathomable alcoves. You don’t have a lot of control over the sound which bounces around. But me personally, I enjoy the perversity of it, a bunch of devout atheists making an unholy racket in Gods house. It’s a clear indication of the decline of religion in Western Europe if they allow us to play in a church, I see that as nothing but a good thing.
I once shared a hallucination with another audience member at a NWW gig in the Netherlands that there were some monks on stage (there weren’t). Do you have any advice for those who experience anything uncanny at any of your shows?
AL: We once had a guy try to throw himself off a balcony in Sweden, it’s all too much for some people. My advice? Come with a responsible adult.
When’s the next NWW record out?
AL: There are several in various states of undress. We need to clothe them and add some delicate embroidery. But by the end of the year there will be at least one brand new album along with Dark Fat as a triple LP in a box and just mixed and mastered is a follow up to The Swinging Reflective.
Stephen Stapleton Mixtape Tracklist
Van Morrison – ‘TB Sheets’
Pere Ubu – ‘Slow Walking Daddy’
Z.N.R. – ‘Solo Un Dia’
Luciano Berio – ‘Visage’
Edgar Broughton Band – ‘It’s Not You’
Buffy Saint Marie – ‘My Country; ‘Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying’
David Thomas – ‘Bird Town’
Robin Trower – ‘Confessin’ Midnight’
Juicy Lucy – ‘Who Do You Love’
Country Joe And The Fish – ‘An Untitled Protest’
