From: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc
Subject: Re: Bill Nelson's Red Noise circa 1979
Date: 5 Jan 93 12:38:30 GMT
Reply-To: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Organization: The University Of Edinburgh - Department Of Computer Science

And lo, ajd@oit.itd.umich.edu (Arthur Delano) spake unto the masses saying:
>
> Just today i got to listen to Bill Nelson's Red Noise album 'Sound on
> Sound'. It's good, although the hyper energy might not hold up over a
> long spell.

It doesn't - while _Sound On Sound_ is a pretty good album, I've found that
after an initial burst of listening to it a great deal it's gone onto much
less frequent rotation, although it does still get taken out every once in
a while.

> My copy was Enigma's reissue on cd, and i noticed that the longbox has a
> long roster of other albums by Bill Nelson as well. Are all these albums
> in the same style, or does he reach into other forms of pop? Although the
> name is somewhat familiar, i've never heard anything by him before.

Bill's music has, since 1979 or so, been split into two distinct streams,
one instrumental and one vocal. Since you're asking about _Sound On Sound_,
I'll deal with the vocal stream first...

His vocal work has evolved pretty consistently over the years, with _Sound
On Sound_ as the starting point - there've been no drastic changes of
direction, and each album sounds identifiably similar to the next (although
his direction in the long term *has* changed). Probably the closest album
in sound to _Sound On Sound_ is his first solo album _Quit Dreaming And Get
On The Beam_ which was recorded at roughly the same time although it wasn't
released until considerably later. From there, it's not a big step to _The
Love That Whirls_ and from there...and so on. It's fairly safe (with his
vocal material) to buy the next album then, if you like it, buy the one
after that, and so on. You can also sorta go in the other direction -
there's a definite progression from the last Be Bop Deluxe album _Drastic
Plastic_ to _Sound On Sound_ although it's not as obvious as the link
between _SoS_ and _Quit Dreaming_.

_Quit Dreaming_ is generally similar to _SoS_ but is less frantic and
(IMHO) rather more polished, with less affected vocals. It's also got some
really neat tracks on it but, just to make things awkward, Enigma changed
the track listings for the US releases, removing some pretty good tracks in
the process. You can get all the tracks if you buy *everything* but I
personally think it's a crime to deprive the casual listener of "Do You
Dream In Colour?"

Onto the other stream - his instrumental work. There's a *load* of this and
it's style has been somewhat less consistent. Most of the early stuff (to
1986 or thereabouts) is a mix of tape snippets and loops and truly cheesy
cheapo synths. It does sound very home-recorded (which it is) but there's
some good material in there - the main problem is that there's just so
*much* material it tends to get buried. Bill's always been completely
out-to-lunch with regard to the commercial viability of his instrumental
work, hence you get such treats as an album recorded entirely using damaged
or faulty equipment, and so on.

Later instrumental material is more polished. The two disc _Chance
Encounters In The Garden Of Lights_ set is a wonderful collection of short
instrumental pieces intended for meditation and is (IMHO) his best
instrumental work to date. Other later instrumental goodies include
_Simplex_ (Larry Spence will no doubt flame me mercilessly for mentioning
this again :-)) and _Map Of Dreams_. He's also done two related projects as
Orchestra Arcana which are in a similar vein but tend to be much more
sample/tape segment based and veer almost into relaxed dance music in a few
places.

For more details on Bill's releases, check out my CDography which is still
hanging around somewhere on Dave Datta's music archive at ftp.uwp.edu. It's
getting a bit out of date (not been updated in over a year now) and my
project at attach a reviewette to each album has yet to make it to the
"published" CDography, but it's got everything that's made it onto CD in
it, except for the most recent album.

> also -- since the Enigma label is no more, has another record company
> taken over the Bill Nelson catalogue?

Unfortunately not - no US company has taken over the rights to the discs,
and even here in the UK the availability of his albums is greatly reduced
since his own Cocteau label went kerblooey. See For Miles *did* get the
rights to some of the material and put out a 3 disc box set containing
_Quit Dreaming_, _The Love That Whirls_ and _Chimera/Savage Gestures_
recently but that's about the only material that's still being published
these days. There's apparently been some rather nasty goings-on w.r.t. the
rights to Bill's releases. I'm hoping that his recent signing to Virgin
might see home of his earlier material being given a proper re-release on
that label sometime soon though.

Al

-- 
			Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk
	  Department Of Computer Science, The University of Edinburgh
   Rm 1410, JCMB, Kings Buildings, Mayfield Rd, EDINBURGH, EH9 3JZ, Scotland
	     Tel: +44 (0) 31 650 5165  Fax: +44 (0) 31 667 7209