Sinister Whimsy to the Wretched combines the two early '90s Nurse With Wound compilations Sugar Fish Drink and Large Ladies With Cake in the Oven, released on United Dairies in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The former ties together a number of tracks from the late '80s and early '90s, mostly from a period when Steven Stapleton was working on very little music and settling into his new home in Ireland, between the two big albums Soliliquy for Lilith and Thunder Perfect Mind. It's a strange set of tracks that mashes together some very disparate sounds into a messy but intense listen.The latter is an expanded version of the Gyllensköld/Brained 12", featuring a number of compilation tracks and unreleased cuts to fill the release out. Despite covering a decade of recording, this set hangs together much better and, despite containing a number of short tracks, feels more closer to a standard NWW album. Released within a year of each other, these two collections of relative obscurities have always felt like sister albums, and tying them together in a 2CD package is a logical, and generous, way of reissuing them. Andrew Liles's remastering is superb as ever, and Stapleton brings in Babs to provide some wonderfully trippy collages for the cover. I've actually found the art on the recent glut of reissues quite samey, but the images here are refreshingly striking. An excellent value reissue.