Shipwreck Radio

I’ve been fascinated by the SHIPWRECK RADIO recordings by Nurse With Wound since I discovered them on their Bandcamp page.

Shipwreck Radio is a series of albums by Nurse With Wound documenting their residency in Lofoten, Norway during June and July 2004. Invited to stay in the unofficial capital, fishing village Svolvær, Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter were commissioned to produce 3 radio broadcasts per week for local station Lofotradioen of music constructed from whatever they heard or could find around the island. The project was instigated by Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young of The Wire and by Kunst I Nordland, an organisation committed to bringing contemporary art to county of Nordland[.

The duo created 24 broadcasts in total, each of either 15 or 30 minutes duration. Each broadcast was preceded by a jingle of a male voice saying “Velkommen Til Utvær” followed by a female voice saying the English translation “Welcome To Utvær”, Utvær being the most remote island in Lofoten, with no permanent residents but 2 lighthouse keepers on hand.

If you’ve got any experience at all with radiophonic sound design or crunchy electroacoustic ambient music, these are among the most accessible entries in the Nurse With Wound catalogue. It’s like putting two mad scientists in charge of The Shipping Forecast. They’re all available for streaming and paid digital download on Bandcamp, but I wanted the objects too, and that’s how I became a crate-digger on Discogs