Stereolab & Nurse With Wound
Simple Headphone Mind

★★★½

Immune system is really lackin and slackin here. Makes it harder to listen to music, especially music like this. Actually not so much like this, but maybe other stuff. I never would've thought of this combination of genres and artists until I discovered this EP. And thanks to the creative geniuses of these two musical acts, it works pretty well. 

It stays loyal to the Kraut and motorik roots that helped make Stereolab feel so familiar but new. But then there's those splashes of Nurse with Wound industrialism and creativity. This applies for the first track especially, the ten minute "Simple Headphone Mind". The beat is consistent and much like something you'd expect on any Stereolab album, but in between pops up these loud improperly mixed spikes of volume. And maybe some stretched and compressed bird sounds. Feels like an android trying to analyze a forest around it.

There are a few vocal samples that sound almost mischievous, as well as child-like. Especially towards the end: Milky White, Miilkyyy White, Miiiiilllllkkkeey Whiiite. Pretty funny if you think about it, but otherwise it's a tad unnerving. The second track is twenty one minutes, and basically a sort of remix of the same track. Except this time there's some sort of generic UFO spaceship sounds that are incorporated within the motorik beat. The chirping becomes less and less natural; switching to hostility. The volumes are at even larger extremes that really catch you off guard sometimes. The vocal samples, even more stretched and distorted, as well as more prevalent throughout. 

In general this album is a sort of one-off that really surprised me, not only in its cohesiveness and creativity but also at how enjoyable it was. This coming together of both genres and musical acts was performed very well and I'm sure that you can't listen to this without hearing the influences both groups had on its creation. And like both Stereolab's and Nurse with Wound's music, it's funny; even though it shouldn't be.

Favorite Song: Trippin' With the Birds

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