In 1979 I bought a single, ‘Furniture Music’ by Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, on red vinyl. A while later I bought another single ‘Revolt into Style. Sometime after that (paper round money had to be saved up) I got the album, ‘Sound On Sound.’ Now 43 years later I’ve bought it again, for the 4th and, in fact, 5th time.
The world still hasn’t caught up with Bill Nelson, and to be honest I’ve heard nothing I like as much as ‘Sound on Sound’ in the intervening years. His fan base seems very much stuck with be Bop Deluxe. I came along a little late for them and only really joined the party with their last album ‘Drastic Plastic.’ Although ‘Live in The Air Age’ has joined the list of hallowed texts since then. ‘Sound On Sound’ was a mix of rock guitar and the post punk synths and spikey edges that ticked pretty much all the boxes for me.
The album blasts into space with ‘Don’t Touch Me (I’m Electric),’ a song that XTC would have given their hit singles for. Atonal guitars and synths collide with Ian Nelson’s Roland Kirk style sax and is gone in under 2 minutes. ‘For Young Moderns’ is closer to the latter days of Be Bop Deluxe, and it’s that struggle between the 70s and 80s that is one of the great appeals of the record and why I can still play it regularly after all this time. ‘Stop Go Stop’ is on while I’m writing this and the fretless bass that is one of the features of this and other songs has kept me interested in playing bass myself, hopelessly badly it must be said.
‘Furniture Music’ is one of the great New Wave singles. The little touches like the swirling synth in the last minute and piano stans at the end of the second verse raise it above the average. Following it with the pure punk of ‘Radar In My Heart’ is a masterstroke of sequencing. The old side two of the album started with ‘Out Of Touch’ a sinister piece, with bleeping synths, snarling voices, and little bass slides that pop out of the mix. Ian Nelson’s sax is doubled with a synth line and sounds like something Wayne Shorter would have added to a Weather Report tune. Ian Nelson’s work adds depths to several of the songs that were what stood the album apart from many of the lower grade Post Punk albums. On ‘The Atom Age’ he adds a counterpoint to the vocal line that adds urgency to an otherwise fairly straight rock song. It also features one of the few actual guitar solos, making it a bit of a throwback to the older Be Bop sound. The album barrels to a close with ‘Art Empire Industry’ and the sublime ‘Revolt Into Style.’
What of the new material? The De Montfort Hall, Leicester live show is brilliant. Playing the album live was clearly a challenge as there are so many layers to the recorded versions, but the stripped-out variations are just as good as my memory of the Bristol date of the tour tells me they should be. Padding the set out with two songs from Drastic Plastic was a necessity to give a decent length show and give a hint of where Nelson wanted that album to go. The new 2022 mix doesn’t tamper with the essence of the songs but adds a modern sparkle and more space and depth, and I love it.
I was hoping for great things after the remix of Drastic Plastic turned out so well, and I can’t say I’m disappointed. I’m not normally a fan of demos on these box sets, but here Nelson’s vision was so clearly in place long before the album was recorded that they add another dimension to our understanding of the music. The extra songs that were recorded for the Red Noise sessions are some of his best of the time.
With bill not in the best of health the appearance of an interview in this months Mojo was a surprise, but why put Be Bop Deluxe as the tease on the cover? They pass by a couple of his other solo albums on the way through more talk of the band he led for 8 years out of a 50-year career. ‘The Alchemical Adventures Of Sailor Bill’ is a bit of a fan favourite, although mot one of mine, and ‘Picture Post’ while a fine album will not attract the rock fan I feel.
So, once you have fallen for the charms of Sound On Sound where should you go next? The compilation Duplex is what Bill did next and eases you into solo Bill nicely. The 3 volume Dreamers Companion on Bandcamp has many of his best pieces from last 20 years or so. By then you’ll be hooked and buying the lot. I rejoined Bill world with ‘Joy Through Amplification’ in 2012, and ‘Vortexion Dream’ remains one of the best “rock” songs he’s done, after the contents of Sound On sound obviously. The recent box set of Drastic Plastic is also worth a listen, if only for the quite brilliant ‘The Saxophonist (Juan Les Pins Version)’ where Bill gives the great Jazz guitarists a run for their money.
So after the LP, the singles, the cassette for the car, the first CD issue, although I skipped the last issue a few years ago, I have now bought the 2CD version to have the best sounding version of the new mix,and also a digital copy of the whole box, because I’m not bothered by the DVD variations. Does that make me a bit obsessive about this album? Certainly does.
