Nurse With Wound

One of the most unconventional and uncompromising bands to emerge from the late-’70s post-punk scene, Nurse With Wound became an avant-garde institution. Steven Stapleton, Heman Pathak and John Fothergill were record-geek buddies soaking up obscure European prog and experimental music when they recorded an album on a lark with no musical experience: 1979’s Chance Meeting. The record’s mix of electronic weirdness and post-punk intensity became influential to multiple strains of underground music, and the list of their own obscure influences included on an insert in the album became a bible for left-field record collectors known as the NWW List. By the early ’80s, only Stapleton remained; over the decades he would refine and expand the NWW aesthetic, collaborating with Stereolab, Jim Thirlwell, members of Coil, Current 93, Whitehouse, Faust and others. Remaining resolutely underground and DIY, Stapleton would forever operate on the fringes, but the NWW legacy grew ever larger as it influenced the likes of Sonic Youth, Liars and others.