Not far into the title track of Beta-Lactam Ring’s reissue of the 1994 Nurse With Wound classic comes the incantation “a rock ‘n’ roll session is a session where we can do what we want to… where anything is possible.” For a project like NWW, that may seem like a ridiculously gratuitous statement. Haven’t they always pretty much done what they want to and in so doing expanded the range of the possible? Still, there’s a contagious sense of fun (as opposed to mischief) at work throughout this entire disc. As if the license granted by the declaration of genre is essentially liberating. Never mind that the declaration itself is a gleeful misdirection. If anything, the contents of Rock ‘n’ Roll Station are closer to hip-hop (or as it’s been called – proto-hip-hop) although not in the way that term might suggest. The beats and rhythms are more Skinny Puppy than Snoop Dogg, the overall atmosphere is closer to Roland Kayn than Big Daddy Kane. The panned bursts of spiraling noise that undercut the treble-heavy beats of the title track, the slinky bass heavy simmer of “The Self Sufficient Sexual Shoe”, and the cyclical drone underlying the introduction to “2 Golden Microphones” (before a baffling surf guitar pans wildly around) all serve to remind the listener that at its heart this is a synthesis and not an homage to any particular genre.
As with any NWW release, the surreal is represented through well-placed sonic aberrations and free-associative wordplay. The lines between conscious, subconscious and unconscious are still deliberately manipulated and transgressed. However, the appropriation of genre staples like throbbing bass and ass-shaking beats serve to draw attention away from these manipulations so that they can exist on the periphery of perception where they are arguably more potent. There are tons of standout sequences here but my particular favorite is probably in “2 Golden Microphones” where an extended didgeridoo-based tribal freak out yields (slightly) to a chanted set of dreamlike connections that form a bizarre chain of cause and effect where each step makes sense although the final destination is in no way predictable from the starting point. It’s a neat re-statement in miniature of the broader sweep of this excellent dollop of mind bending psych-dance drone from one of the masters.
