David Bedford - Nurses Song With Elephants (1972)

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David Bedford - Nurses Song With Elephants (1972)

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Debut solo album from one of England's most surrealist composer, and this bizarrerie came out after a spell in Kevin Ayers' Whole World and helping Kevin reach an entirely different dimension than his usual quirky pop songs with the very strange Shooting At The Moon. But Bedford's works are in an entirely different realm as well and if progressive music it is, it's anything but pop or rock music. Indeed, his songwriting has more to do with unclassifiable contemporary avant-garde music or minimalism (not exactly either, because it's not really repetitive enough to qualify as such), often being disjointed and dissonant, but it's definitely still accessible to reasonably open progheads, because NSWE is a mix of both difficult instrumental passages and much easier sung songs. The album's lunar landscape-like artwork is actually somewhat representative of the un-earthly music, but it might also (mis-)lead a few unsuspecting progheads into error.

Some of the music is played or created by Bedford himself, and while there are many un- credited musicians and singers (on melodicas, recorders, guitars and vocals), but he gets some help from buddies like Kevin and Mike Oldfield, and more surprising DJ John Peel, who released on his own Dandelion label. After the short and dissonant Easier Than It Looks, played with 8 recorders and 8 melodicas (droning in the background), the album veers towards the more accessible (well sort of) guitar realm. Some ten acoustic guitars (The Omega Players) are indeed interlocking and fighting it out, sometimes in gently, sometimes much more indigestibly, but overall it goes down fairly well, especially in the second phase, just before the Elephants passage from hands sliding down the guitar necks; and somewhat later down the track, the sung folk passage over a W Blake poem seems like a welcome, but unrepresentative of the album, resting passage.

Across the slice of wax, some 80 female voices fight it out in the short Some Bright Stars, where space sounds are overwhelmed by 2001-like chitter-chatters from chickens and hens. The 12-mins Trone track is more like totally dissonant contemporary musique concrete (played by the Sebastian Bell Ensemble) and can sound like Stockhausen's followers or something of the genre. The closing Sad And Lonely Faces opens on some difficult piano before Ayers come in for a short poem, softening the piano's propos and Kevin singing to some grandiose classical music ending, which is mostly unrepresentative of the album's general feel.

A good deal of this music was apparently created before Bedford's membership in Kevin's Whole Word, and the least we can say is that it was a lot more "serious" music than Bedford seems to care to remember in the liner notes from the Voiceprint CD reissue. This musical medical treatment is best indicated to avant-prog fans and contemporary music fans, rather to anyone who wants to listen to some prog-light rock. Be warned and this is valid for the following Star's End.

by Sean Trane, Progarchives

To most people, David Bedford is best known for his work with Kevin Ayers and Roy Harper, but Bedford was already a composer with avant-garde credentials before teaming up with them. The title track, for example, is a piece for ten acoustic guitars, with elephants represented by a moistened thumb dragged across the back of the soundbox; the "Nurse's Song" is actually a setting of the Blake poem, with a bass guitar accompaniment by Mike Oldfield (with whom Bedford had worked in the Whole World). Every track here is scored for unusual ensembles, such as "Sad and Lonely Faces," which has six pianos and four woodwinds, behind Ayers intoning a poem, or "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College," with 80 voices and 27 plastic twirlers. In some ways, it's a product of its time, when boundary-pushing in modern classical music was the norm, not the exception. And as such, some of it works, some of it is experimentalism for its own sake. Not the best, or most cohesive, of Bedford's records, it's still pleasant to hear again.

by Chris Nickson, AMG

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David Bedford - Nurses Song With Elephants (1972)

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David Bedford - Nurses Song With Elephants (1972)

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David Bedford - Nurses Song With Elephants (1972)

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