which better: Hafler Trio or Nurse With Wound?

which is better

  • Nurse With Wound

    Votes: 11 68.8%
  • Hafler Trio

    Votes: 5 31.3%

  • Total voters
    16

zhao

there are no accidents
I've enjoyed scattered pieces in both entity's discography, which are almost as messy as Coil's. and my knowledge of their respective histories is very choppy at best (Nurse came from Post-Punk/Goth territory, right? where did Hafler come from?) . but was wondering what other peole thought of them and the ways they changed through the past several decades. (I expect comparisons with Coil)
 

massrock

Well-known member
This poll didn't go very far. Give it another shot?

Anyway, for Nurse With Wound fans -

Try watching this with the sound from this playing in another tab. Hopefully I got that the right way round. It's like that Pink Floyd thing with the Wizard Of Oz.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
NWW for me - more variation.

I like the Hafler Trio though, but found it quite hard to connect with.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
It's Hafler Trio for me just cos I saw them do a live thing in Brixton yeeeears ago and was so out of my head that I literally saw cubes of bass flying through the air, and it was and still is a profoundly inspirational moment.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
4 years after making this poll i'm leaning towards the position that most of what both did was pretentious crap, with a few genuine magic moments scattered about here and there.
 

Oss

Member
NWW requires less focus to be enjoyed. H3O works best under full concentration, otherwise it often sounds too distant and has no strong effect on me (except A Thirsty Fish, that one's fkn amazing).
I havent seen NWW play yet, but Hafler Trio was one of the weirder gigs I've seen. The sound was ace, really loud but mostly soft drones with sharp interruptions and noises. He burned some really strong insence and it seemed the changes of insence followed the intensification of the sound. Then some guys with black masks walked off the stage and started getting into our faces and pulling threads over our heads. The vibe was incredibly heavy, both comical and really unpleasant. I loved it.
But I'd say I love Nurse more.
Coil seem quite conventional if compared to either. Not a bad thing in any way though.
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
NWW, easily.

i suspect Hafler Trio are:

a) a practical joke, sans punchline
b) a litmus test for the listener's pretentiousness
c) an excuse for esoteric, beautiful and outsized packaging
 

zhao

there are no accidents
c) an excuse for esoteric, beautiful and outsized packaging

the package promises a netherworld of unfathomable sonic riddles and horrific communion with the dead, but what you got was some dull hour long recording of sea gulls.

edit: but it certainly did work on my younger more susceptible to scams self.

who did the Lilith 4CD thing? that was pretty nice i thought.
 
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martin

----
Can't stand Hafler Trio, everything I dislike about 'experimental' music; willfully obscurist, unchallenging, 'for its own sake', stay at home music. Might be the odd nice sound now and then, but it's basically muzak for Wire readers. No?

NWW, well, I think they fall into the same trap 98% of the time - their records are 'outlandish' and off the wall - but you always kind of KNOW what it's gonna sound like, right? Do you know what I mean? There's a certain 'Nurse' sound, it has changed gradually over the years, but so much of it's similar. I think Stapleton's pretty constrained, especially set against all the hype I read about his LPs before I heard them.

I'd vote for NWW just because I think "Soliloquy for Lilith' is beautiful (tip - listen to it while checking out the Egyptian section of the British Museum), 'Automating Vol 1' is entertaining and varied, and 'Insect and Individual Silenced' has its moments of surreal malevolence. Whereas I like nothing by Hafler Trio.
 

franz

Well-known member
dunno who i would vote for. have spent many hours with wide swathes of both fellers' catalogues. i do not by any stretch of the imagination love what all or even most of what either of them has put out. their works are probably frustrating as often as they are enjoyable. that said, i don't think either of them deserve the slagging so far received in this thread. i'd love to hear a case for one of their contemporaries/imitators whose work was consistently better. i feel like i have heard most of them, and the only one who maybe shades them out in the long haul is Coil. otherwise i would say my above descriptions are pretty par for the course (if we're talking about one of the good ones, mind you).

two random works i would recommend (just offhand) would be NWW's album with Christoph Heemann, "Melchior" (or at least the first side for sure), and a latter day Hafler 3" cd, "Being a Firefighter isn't Just About Squirting Water"

i can see how from one angle one could call some of this work pretentious, but from another it really doesn't sit well with me--i think in terms of the sustained sincerity in practice that has kept both these men working for decades now. they've gotten it right often enough and pushed their musics into new territory often enough to deserve more than some of these offhand criticisms would suggest.
 

version

Well-known member
Something that Chris started off with Cabaret Voltaire was picking somebody at random out of the phonebook and it was a butcher in Sheffield. I don’t know if Chris is still doing it, but for many years they sent a copy of everything they did to this butcher. Most of the Hafler Trio records got sent to him with no explanation or return address (laughter). Consistency is the key thing here! So you get one, and you think, “Oh well that’s just a mistake.” And then two, and then three, and then years go by and you keep getting sent these damn records! (uproarious laughter). So there are lots of things like that.
 

woops

is not like other people
i was there man, it could never happen these days, you could never get one these days
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Never listened to NWW or The Hafler Trio, but quite enjoying this interview atm.

They all have their merits and bunk bits. Nurse can be sublimely hypnotic, simple, uncannily weird, overly complex and dull, some times in the same tune. Hafler Trio traverse those realms from different cue wanky term assemblages. On work phone and headshot memory derails listing Hafler track favourites, but Hafler can’t out-drone Nurse and Nurse can’t out-juxtapose Hafler. Even that‘s overly simplifying both. It’s probably an unreliable statement as a result. Soliloquy For Lilith is my next 23, so after Thunder Perfect Mind and not having gone to an AM all day workshop session, there‘s fine audio to be found within both.

Problem is the searches and bounty paid, if you’re not seeksoiling, to access what you may or may not like takes the michael. People end up unwitting completists just from the promise of panning gold, because it is in there. The broader networks both acts have worked with over the years - Chris Watson, Andrew Liles, Colin Potter (a genuine audio master) and vice versa - show that’s no small talent pool. Colin Potter’s contributions are worth anyone’s time. Cross reference anything his name or his studio’s have had a hand in. Man is disgracefully under appreciated. J Coleclough and that whole world of British electronica like Darren Tate, Ora, Monos. Watson has ears like a photographer has eyes for capturing moments


 
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