Last night a Mixtape saved my life
The NWW List from A to Z
Before the internet and the era of reissues, when musical knowledge traveled by radio, word of mouth and brief notices in magazines and fanzines, a list of more than two hundred names took on a legendary role – albeit within a rather narrow niche – for its ability to guide listeners toward the discovery of out-of-the-ordinary music, extremely heterogeneous and resistant to being pigeonholed by any genre criterion. This is the list included in the liner notes of "Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella", the debut album by British experimentalists Nurse With Wound, released in 1979 on United Dairies.
Two hundred and thirty-seven artists, later expanded to 294 with the follow-up "To The Quiet Man From A Tiny Girl" (1980), spanning a stylistic range that runs from progressive rock to freak psychedelia to post-punk, brushing up against pure avant-garde, electronics and the first stirrings of industrial (a movement Nurse With Wound themselves pioneered). The geographical spread is equally wide: alongside British and American acts, the list features many names from continental Europe, particularly France and Germany, but also Italy, Spain and Sweden, along with the occasional detour into Japan or behind the Iron Curtain, in the Czechoslovakia of Modry Efekt, Collegium Musicum and Plastic People Of The Universe. Although the list's main architect, Steven Stapleton, has claimed over the years that some of the artists were invented, to date every name included has been traced back to an existing, credible project.
The list features artists who were already well known to connoisseurs even at the time: King Crimson and Velvet Underground, Stooges and Neu! — despite the mythology that grew up around them later, these were acts already celebrated by a significant part of the music press. The names that have remained most closely tied to the list, however, are those that were hard to find mentioned anywhere else at the time, often linked to music that still sounds "on the frontier" even decades later. Perhaps even more so today than back then: while at the time stylistic boundaries seemed blurred and the field of possibilities felt, from the inside, more plural than ever, the perspective granted by historical distance now allows us to more clearly recognize dominant trends and genre aesthetics — and, by contrast, to perceive with amplified force just how far outside the norm the chimeras populating the list truly were. Ethno-noise jazz-rock messes, mocking and apocalyptic progressive rock, electronic torments laced with spoken word interjections, proto-new-age dirges still redolent of psychedelia, lopsided jams steeped in ritualism…
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1979-80. Thanks to the web, much more direct and analytical paths now exist for stumbling upon many of the artists covered in the list: on this very site, several of them are the subject of milestone reviews and in-depth profiles, or take center stage in features such as those on Canterbury Sound, kraut-rock and progressive from around the world. Yet the internet hasn't stripped the Nurse With Wound List of its allure at all: if anything, it has only fueled the myth, making it an integral part of the retromania imagination.
Mindful of these changes, this playlist tries to capture some of the aura that the NWW List still radiates today. It does so with a lean format: 25 tracks for as many artists – one per letter, minus Q, which isn't represented on the list – for a total running time of an hour and a half or so. To try to translate the disorienting quality of the original selection into the present day, we've tried to set aside the names that are widely known and instead populate this "cave of wonders" mainly with outsiders that readers will hardly have come across on the pages of this or any other site. For the same reason, we'll refrain from describing the music of the artists involved, leaving readers the pleasure of digging up the information themselves.
It hasn't always been possible to go for the most striking choices: the pursuit of brevity, the limited presence of certain artists on streaming platforms, and the alphabetical constraint of "one letter, one artist" all forced some compromises. Even so, we've tried to make the most of unusual juxtapositions, so that listeners find themselves leaping from one style to another in a labyrinthine flow at least somewhat similar to the one experienced, forty years ago, by anyone who tried to make their way down the initiatory paths of the NWW List.
Have a good trip.
The complete list of the 237 original names, followed by the 57 “additions” from the following year:
Pekka Airaksinen
Airway
Albrecht D
Alcatraz
Älgarnas Trädgård
All 7-70
Alternative TV
Alvaro
Ame Son
Amon Düül
Anima
Annexus Quam
Arbete Och Fritid
Arcane V
Archaïa
Archimedes Badkar
Gilbert Artman
Art Bears
Art Zoyd III
Arzachel
Robert Ashley
Association PC
Banten
Han Bennink
Jacques Berrocal
Birgé Gorgé Shiroc
Blue Sun
Raymond Boni
Don Bradshaw Leather
Brainstorm
Brainticket
Brast Burn
Brave New World
Anton Bruhin
Bruhwarm Theatre
Franz De Byl
Capsicum Red
Chamberpot
Checkpoint Charlie
Chêne Noir
Chillum
Cohelmec Ensemble
Jean Cohen-Solal
Collegium Musicum
Roberto Colombo
Companyia Electrica Dharma
Cornucopia
Creative Rock
David Cunningham
Dadazuzu
Wolfgang Dauner
Debris
Decayes
Dedalus
Dharma Quintet
Dies Irae
Doo Dooettes
Philippe Doray
Jean Dubuffet
Dzyan
Eiliff
Emtidi
Eroc
Etron Fou Leloublan
Exmagma
Fille Qui Mousse
Floh De Cologne
Food Brain
Walter Franco
Friendsound
Gash
Ron Geesin
Gila
Förkläedd Gud (billed as God In Disguise, translated from Swedish)
Gomorrha
John Greaves & Peter Blegvad
Fernando Grillo
Grobschnitt
Group 1850
Jean Guerin
Friedrich Gulda
Guru Guru
Hairy Chapter
Heratius
Hero
Hugh Hopper
Horde Cataltyque Pour La Fin
Ibliss
L'Infonie
International Harvester
Iskra
Island
Jan Dukes De Grey
Basil Kirchin
Frank Kolges
Kollektiv Rote Rübe
Komintern
Krokodil
Steve Lacy
Lard Free
Le Forte Four
Lily
Limbus 3
Limbus 4
Bernard Lubat
Colette Magny
Mahjun
Mahogany Brain
Malfatti-Wittwer
Michael Mantler
Albert Marcoeur
Maschine Nr. 9
Mate & Vallancien
Costin Miereanu
Min Bul
Modry Efekt
Anthony Moore
Moving Gelatine Plates
Fritz Muller
Thierry Muller (Ilitch)
Musica Electronic Viva
Music Improvisation Company
Mythos
Nico
Night Sun
Nine Days Wonder
Nosferatu
Nu Creative Methods
Oktober
Operation Rhino
Out Of Focus
Ovary Lodge
Tony Oxley
Parker & Lytton
Pataphonie
Pauvros & Bizien
Pierrot Lunaire
Plastic Ono Band
Plastic People Of The Universe
Pôle
Michel Portal
Red Noise
Reform Art Unit
Achim Reichel
Catherine Ribeiro & Alpes
Rocky’s Filj
Ron Pates Debonaires
Roth, Rühm & Wiener
Ray Russell
Terje Rypdal
Martin Saint Pierre
Samla Mammas Manna
Günter Schickert
Second Hand
Secret Oyster
Seesselberg
Semool
Sonny Sharrock
Silberbart
Siloah
Sperm
Sphinx Tush
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Supersister
Tamia
Technical Space Composers Crew
Mama Bea Tekeilski
Thirsty Moon
Jacques Thollot
Thrice Mice
Tomorrow’s Gift
Ton Steine Scherben
Trans Museq
Uli Trepte
Twenty Sixty Six & Then
Vertø
Patrick Vian
Michel Waisvisz
Igor Wakhevitch
Trevor Wishart
Woorden
Xhol Caravan
Xhol
ZNR
Zweistein
Anal Magic & Reverend Dwight Frizzell
Aqsak Maboul
Steve Beresford
Philippe Besombes
Henri Chopin
Come
Deep Freeze Mice
Der Plan
Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft
Dome
Cupol
Roger Doyle
Family Fodder
Free Agents
Jef Gilson
Glaxo Babies
Good Missionaries
Grand Magic Circus
Ragnar Grippe
Juan Hidalgo
Horrific Child
Martin Davorin Jagodic
Osamu Kitajima
Lemon Kittens
Magical Power Mako
Mama Dada 1919
Mars
Mnemonists
Moolah
Negativland
New Phonic Art
Nihilist Spasm Band
Orchid Spangiafora
Poison Girls
Bomis Prendin
Boyd Rice
Sally Smmit (& Her Musicians)
Snatch
Taj Mahal Travellers
Ghedalia Tazartés
Tokyo Kid Brothers
Tolerance
L. Voag
Lawrence Wiener
James White & The Contortions
Whitehouse
Wired
Ya Ho Wa 13
Ride the wave of great music
Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.
19/12/2025
This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Marco Sgrignoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
Latest features
original design & development by
Edoardo M. Cappuccio
Edoardo M. Cappuccio
redesign by
Gabriele Brombin
Anna Quaranta
Gabriele Brombin
Anna Quaranta