Felix NEill

After Nelson broke up Be Bop Deluxe in 1978, following their extraordinary techno swan song "Drastic Plastic", he formed Red Noise, a New Wave five-piece that produced one album, "Sound on Sound," which would eventually function as the template for the first two or three XTC albums. "Quit Dreaming," which began life as the second Red Noise album, eventually transformed into Nelson's first full-blown post Be Bop Deluxe solo album, producing a couple of UK (very minor) hit singles ("Banal," "Do You Dream In Colour?") and climbing to number 7 on the British charts. The record sounds as current as it did 25 years ago. "Living in my Limousine" predates Flock of Seagulls (whom Nelson would later produce), "A Kind of Loving" taps into early 80s ska, "Youth of Nation on Fire" and "Life Runs out Like Sand" boast an exotic Asian air, and ""Banal" has the marks of a classic piece of postmodern new wave.

I like this album a lot better than the Red Noise outing, although it lacks the killer double whammy of "Furniture Music" and "Revolt Into Style".

As an album though, it's a much more solid affair, with a heap of great songs which reveal themselves over a couple of listens and still sound fantastically inventive today. I'm pretty much in awe of Bill Nelson and the bravery of his journey from glam guitar hero to post-kraut electronicshe frontman to new wave warrior to solo herky-jerky bedroom tunesmith to ambient pioneer. What a hero.

The initial copies of this album came with Bill's initial proto-clockwork-ambient experiments in the form of an additional album called "Sounding The Ritual Echo". It's wonderful stuff, which I have ripped as a single side one/side two, as it seemed wrong to divide these pieces up into the single tracks they have been listed as. I think that they are definitely best listened to as an entity. As vinyl intended.

Stay tuned for the follow up double album, which again was pioneering in setting the the template for a lot of early Eighties pop.

Vinyl rips at 320 Kbps.

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