Bill Nelson - Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam (1981)

Bill Nelson probably got me buying 7" singles. I rarely bothered with them during my teenage years because albums seemed better value and my pocket money didn't stretch that far, so I didn't get into the habit; plus my friends Pete and Graham, respectively sons of a retired colonel and a bank manager who had seemingly done better in the pocket money lottery than myself, were usually well stocked up on all the singles I would have bought, so I taped their copies. All the same, Bill Nelson's Do You Dream in Colour? seemed like the best thing I'd ever heard at the time, and still retains most of its magic, not least for featuring three killer b-side tracks. Naturally I bought the album.

Years later, I notice that I never bought the 7" of Do You Dream in Colour? which seems like a massive oversight. I have the other tracks on The Two-Fold Aspect of Everything compilation, but sometimes it's nice to have a stack of three or four singles to play when you're having a shave and getting ready to go out, and so I tracked a copy down on Discogs; then noticed that somehow I'd confused my having taped the Stranglers' Christmas EP from Graham with possessing a copy of my own, so I bought one and then took to buying up all the singles I should have picked up first time round, which is thanks to Bill Nelson. Do You Dream in Colour? really is a fucking cracking record.

I still don't fully understand why Bill Nelson wasn't massive, given some of those singles. My guess is that he didn't quite fit into new wave, having been in a band which had featured an airbrushed guitar turning into a skull on the cover - and he clearly wasn't a skinny tie guitar band from New York singing about girls and soda pop; and his music was presumably too weird for old school hairies. Of course, there was quite a head count in the Bowie-influenced cattle truck at the time, and it could be argued that Nelson ticked more boxes than most - Banal could almost have come from the Scary Monsters sessions, for example; but listen close and it sounds more like parallel evolution than influence. We have the post-glam chug and stomp of Banal or Disposable, but there's an angular, spiky edge suggesting European art cinema rather than Warhol's factory, and literary influences that are possibly more Ballard than Burroughs or whoever, perhaps with some early Roxy chucked in; somehow, despite which, I'm not sure it's possible to mistake Quit Dreaming for the work of anyone but Bill Nelson.

This is a genuinely huge album with a massive sound which artfully strikes a balance between filmic bleeps and squelches with rocking the fuck out - big, bold populist riffs and heroic vocals. Weirdly, it's not even like this was the high point prior to some overproduced tail off, it being the first of a whole string of solid albums which somehow seem to have been largely forgotten by anyone who wasn't already a fan. How the hell did that happen?


Never mind. If you didn't already get the memo, Quit Dreaming really is a masterpiece in every sense.

Cabaret Voltaire - Chance Versus Causality (1979)

The unfortunate passing of Richard H. Kirk has, somewhat predictably, resulted in my listening to quite a lot of Cabaret Voltaire of late; and this one has stood out partially because it didn't make much of an impression at first, sounding as it does somewhat basic in contrast to The Voice of America to which it was approximately contemporary, but also because it doesn't really sound like anything else from their back catalogue - although I should probably add that I haven't heard that boxed set comprising a million CDs worth of out-takes and the like.

As you possibly know, Chance Versus Causality is the soundtrack to an experimental film by Babeth Mondini, improvised live by the lads without actually seeing the film. It's very much the opposite of multilayered, often with just a single weird atonal noise occupying the stereo field for some time and very little that's conspicuously musical - snatches of heavily treated guitar being employed for effect rather than in pursuit of anything melodic which therefore may as well be a hoover or something. Edits are often abrupt and incongruous, as is the dry insertion of taped dialogue played both forwards and backwards, amounting to something which suggests the early days of experimental film without the benefit of a visual dimension - unless you're sat looking at the cover. It works through application of the unexpected, through contrast, and through what may well have been a concerted effort to avoid the conventionally musical, arguably placing it more in the realm of Pierre Schaeffer and, I suppose, maybe Stan Brakhage, than even Gristle's After Cease to Exist soundtrack which sounds positively Ennio Morricone by comparison. It's crude, effective, and still sounds surprising after all this time and the more technically sophisticated efforts we've heard since; and, despite the minimalism, it's immediately identifiable as the work of Cabaret Voltaire.

I've seen them written off as overrated in recent years, and I disagree. As a group who worked with semi-improvised grooves rather than anything more obviously structured it's inevitable that some albums were more convincing than others, and the live albums tend to fall under the category of things which probably sounded better if you were there; but even their most chugging pieces never sounded like anyone else, retaining so strong an identity as to render most tribute acts sounding so derivative as to be pointless - although both Portion Control and Bourbonese Qualk admittedly found their own respective voices by the time it came to sticking a record out; and when they got it right, which was a lot of the time, they were genuinely astonishing, and I'd argue moreso than, in particular, even Gristle, through a reluctance to rely on shock effect for its own sake. I'm still not convinced that Chance Versus Causality is the lost classic described by most of the reviews I've seen, but it's a good indication of what made them so special and why we're still listening to this stuff four decades later.

The Bone Orchestra - When Will the Blues Leave? (1987)

The Bone Orchestra involved Charlie Collins and Peter Hope, both formerly of the Box, along with a number of other Sheffield luminaries - not least being a full horn section - and existed in the gaps between musical endeavours which the rest of us are probably more likely to remember. When Will the Blues Leave? was recorded on four track - and mostly live by the sound of it - originally issued on cassette, and really should have been snapped up by some record label and flogged to the point of it being embarrassing back in 1987; which it wasn't because who fucking knows? My guess would be that quality doesn't always receive the recognition it is due.

The songs are some sort of bluesy semi-Brechtian cabaret hybrid suggestive of bars where dreams go to drink themselves into a coma, occupying a stylistic spectrum which flies off in all directions without necessarily sounding schizophrenic, or at least not in the musical sense. The percussion section borrows from either the kitchen or the junkyard, the bass prowls, Charlie Collins honks, hoots and even squeezes an accordion, and Hope channels his demons, some familiar and a few we've never met before - switching from growl to heroic croon to almost Noel Coward on Horse, for example - the one track which reminds me of the Box, for what it may be worth.

I realise it's hopelessly lazy to make comparisons with other artists, but can be difficult to avoid where a blues influence is so pronounced given the spread and extent of the form; but to get it out of the way, When Will the Blues Leave? probably inhabits a building a few blocks along from Nick Cave, Tom Waits, and the Tiger Lillies amongst others. On the other hand, Quick Money reminds me of West African pop music* of all things. In fact, the whole wouldn't have sounded out of place issued on Billy Childish's Hangman label back when he first started hammering out those monthly albums - notably the Black Hands' Capt. Calypso's Hoodoo Party. I'm not sure there's specifically a standout track given the general level of intensity maintained more or less for the duration, but it has to be said, No New Leaves is in particular fucking incredible.

*: I'm thinking of The Vodoun Effect by Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou.