"An unstable firework of a band... edgy, off kilter and off the wall, Nightnurse are actually a little bit frightening" - Kerrang!, 1999
"Catch em now before you have to pay £20 for the privilege" - NME 1997.
"Duff notes and 'melody' stagger around like baby foals on buckfast. Its fantastic!" - Melody Maker 1998.
"KKKKK - Big Drums, Strident Riffs, Haunting Vocals, Sparse Atmospherics and twisted slabs of drawn out noise" - Kerrang!, 1998
Biography
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London, 1996, and a young Nightnurse stepped out onto the London music scene with a fearsome new sound - taking in the influences of indie guitar music at the time and spitting it out with a new force and intent. Ellyott Dragon had arrived in London from Israel, and together with Alex Lutes (Drums), Ben Drakeford (Bass) and Charlotte Hatherley (Guitar) - and not afraid touch on subjects such as sex and death, stand on stage and play one chord as a cachophonous wall of noise for 15 minutes, or just write a beautiful tune, an underground following was soon born resulting in the band being signed after just their 6th gig.
Put forward for the NME new bands competition in 1997, to the shock of the band they won, and a higher profile Nightnurse stepped out with debut single 'Golem' in 1997 on Better Records. Major press ensued, with the likes of Radio1 and MTV picking up on the band in a big way, in the midst of which guitarist Charlotte Hatherley jumped ship took on the role of second guitarist in Ash. With Debbie Smith (Curve,Echobelly) taking up the guitar, the band completed their schedule of gigs inc. Reading Festival '97 ( a fearsome affair resulting in complaints from the main stage for the band drowning them out! ) Follow up single 'Skirt' was recorded with Charley Stone (Gay Dad, Salad) standing in on guitar, before Matt Platts was recruited to take up the remaining 6 strings.
Skirt got made 'single of the week' on XFM, got a 5K review in Kerrang, sold out immediately and crashed into the indie singles chart at No.11, and after laying waste to most of England and Scotland - not to mention themselves - touring and gigging with the likes of Rachel Stamp, Jolt, Snow Patrol, Monsoon Bassoon, Cay and Seafood - culminating in *that* legendary headline gig at the Highbury Garage which was sold out with 200 turned away - with all eyes on the band, they ventured into the studio to recorded their debut album.
Cue forward a few weeks, and a monstrous album is recorded at London's BlackWing Studios.. (we even laid down the definitive live favourite(?) of 15 minutes of noise simply called 'Martin'!) - but on the inside things aren't looking so rosy. Despite the band's high media profile, the label was suffering severe financial problems. Towards the end of the recording sessions, with studio bills not paid, the sessions were abandoned as the label plummeted into liquidation.
Not to be disheartened, sneaking off with a couple of masters, the band self-released 'IDF' as a limited 7" white label of just 300 copies which was deleted the same day, before it was released as an mp3. Mp3 had just come out at the time, the industry was up in arms about how it was going to kill the trade - the result of course that the single got 30,000 downloads in a week. Not content with just receiving the biggest bandwidth bill on the planet, as the first official MP3 single, the band also achieved their place in the Guinness book of records for the feat.
Picked up by Sanctuary management, on the day of release of the single, the band recorded 4 new demos at Trident studios in South London, but this was the last that was heard of the band for a while. Sanctuary managed yet again to not pay the studio bills, and with lawyers, liquidators and legal advisors crawling over the label and the tapes, Nightnurse snuck out of the back door whilst nobody was looking and went off to do something else instead for a while until things calmed down. Dicki Fliszar toured as drummer with Bruce Dickinson's band, before moving to LA, where he currently plays with Deccatree . Ellyott Dragon went to Israel and recorded an album with Pollyanna Frank, achieving a top 10 single and many DJ/Remix credits, and Matt dropped the guitar for a while in favour of a pair of drum sticks instead and has since recorded and toured with a number of industrial and extreme metal bands.
But old tapes never die, they just oxidise a bit(!), and cue forward a few more years and the master tapes of the original album are suddenly in posession of the band, with someone having finally seen sense realising that they're not doing much good in a locked room (we owe you one Eric!) Featuring all members of Nightnurse throughout its life, a retrospective album is due out one day. The band will be entering the studio with acclaimed producer Russ Russell to finish the job they started now 10 years ago. Nightnurse was always about passion, intensity, sex, love and raw emotion at its most potent, and we know you won't be disappointed.
Nightnurse, London, Feb 2006.
