I
finally got the opportunity to explore the recently released box set,
Art/Empire/Industry (The Complete Red Noise). This set takes the “one
and done” Bill Nelson’s Red Noise album from 1979, Sound On Sound, and
gives it the deluxe reissue treatment, which has previously been done
with all the Be Bop Deluxe albums. Though I can’t afford a physical
copy and therefore cannot comment on the packaging of this set, I can at
lease enjoy the music and all the bonus material that’s been made
available. In exploring this set, it has highlighted the singular
creative spark which Nelson harnessed for this project and which still
strikes up a flame over four decades after its release.
When
this album was originally issued in February of 1979, it became my
gateway into the world of Bill Nelson. I’d seen BBD performing Panic In
the World from their final LP, Drastic Plastic, in 1978 when they
appeared on The Midnight Special. That performance caught my attention
with the band appearing in very conservative business suits, though with
Bill having dark eye-shadow under his eyes to give him a slightly
deadened appearance. It was the subtle subversion of that appearance
which piqued my curiosity. However, it took a somewhat middling review
of the Red Noise LP in CREEM magazine to inspire me to want to buy that
record. Even though the reviewer was dismissive of the album, something
about the way it was described made me feel like this album needed to
be in my collection.
When I managed to snag a copy, it
instantly became the dominant presence within my meager, yet burgeoning
record collection. There was certainly a strong influence from DEVO in
the music, but there was a poetry and humor apparent in the album that
was decidedly all down to Nelson’s hand. What struck me about the album
was the laser precision focus of the songs and the style of the music.
Its single-mindedness and coherence all felt seamless and impenetrable.
The songs were precision crafted and presented in a manner which was
relentless and supercharged with electricity. This is perfectly
encapsulated by the album’s opener, Don’t Touch Me (I’m Electric). One
felt like you might catch a spark from the turntable if you attempted to
touch it while the album was playing. And then there was Furniture
Music, a song which became my anthem of teenage angst, perfectly
reflecting that feeling of being an object in my own life. Every song
had something to connect with and put me in a state of mind where I was
saying internally, “Okay, 1984 is on the way, so bring it on!” I was
ready to end the ‘70s and start the future, no matter how bleak it might
be.
Thematically, the album bounced furiously from one vision of
dystopian alienation to another. Each song touched on themes of
political fascism, machine conformity, intellectual dysfunction,
emotional dysphoria and more. Bill’s evocative lyrics were layered atop a
relentless onslaught of rapid fire tempos and song arrangements which
felt like they’d been bolted together by assembly line robots rather
than composed by human hands. This was all perfectly encapsulated by
the LP’s cover photo, a brilliant work of found object assemblage by
Japanese photographer, Bishin Jumonji, which depicted a bed ridden robot
about to phone in sick. It’s an absolutely iconic symbolic
representation of futurist failure.
The road to this album
began before Be Bop Deluxe were formally disbanded, when Bill was
beginning the process of creating what would be their final LP, Drastic
Plastic. In fact, Bill was ready to pull the plug on the band at that
time, but was persuaded to give it another go by the band’s management.
As such, you can hear Nelson striving for Red Noise throughout the
songs on DP, which were intended to be for RN’s first album, but it’s
all a bit muted in the context of that band and the razor sharp
angularity of Sound On Sound is only hinted at by Drastic Plastic.
After DP’s completion, Bill was determined that the only way to realize
his vision was to do so in an entirely rebuilt form with clear authority
for the composer from top to bottom. So Red Noise would be a band, but
only to facilitate Nelson’s vision as exactly as he demanded. He’d
retain BBD keyboardist, Andy Clark, and brought in brother Ian on sax
& additional keyboards and bassist Rick Ford. Drums would be
handled by Bill himself, in the studio for most tracks, and Dave
Mattacks on stage and for whatever Bill didn’t do in the studio. While
Bill was the creative head, he’d relegate his guitar to a more
supporting role, rather than making it the lead instrument. It would
work in concert with the synthesizers to create what one critic
described as “DEVO given Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound treatment”.
At
the time of its release, while it performed well in the UK, reaching
#33 on the album charts, it left zero impression on the US market.
Critically, opinions were split with some marveling at its visionary
departure from Nelson’s prior work, and others lamenting it as a
contrived attempt to get in on the “new wave” trend. Music fans were
equally baffled as Bill sped off into the future, leaving the “guitar
hero” prog-rock of his past in the dust. The band embarked on a tour to
support the album, presenting themselves in Neo-fascist grey uniforms
as a tongue-in-cheek joke, positioning themselves, not as victims of
this dystopia, but as harbingers and agents-provocateurs. The conflict
of it all with Nelson's past work and mixed responses were enough to
cause both Bill’s US and UK record labels to ditch him. This put the
realization of a second Red Noise album into shambles. Bill had already
begun work on the album, but the contract termination left those master
tapes in the ownership of EMI, preventing him from doing anything for
nearly two years until he could rework that material and release it as
his first fully solo album, Quit Dreaming and Get On the Beam. By that
point, Bill had given up on trying to retain a position as “band leader”
and, instead, he set on his path as a solo artist, a position he’s
retained for the rest of his career.
Red Noise and its
attendant idiosyncratic sound would ultimately end up constrained to the
Sound On Sound album. Quit Dreaming…, while possessing echoes of SoS,
would end up ever so slightly returning Bill to the more romantic
disposition he’d established with BBD. Indeed, the stark, angry
futurism of SoS remains isolated within Nelson’s musical canon to this
day. While Nelson always maintained a sense of modernity coupled with
vintage science fiction nostalgia, nothing he’d create before or since
would strike so fiercely or with such manic intensity as Sound On Sound.
The new box set includes discs featuring non-album bonus
tracks, live performances and home demo recordings of songs from the SoS
album. Those serve to highlight how pure and imperturbable Nelson’s
vision was throughout the project. Its sheer monomaniacal consistency
is apparent throughout the process, from conception to realization to
presentation on stage. The new mix of the album, as was the case with
the BBD box sets, offers up a wonderful refresher for the songs,
allowing the listener to see through some of the density of the original
mix and into the details of the arrangements. As a set, these
recordings all reinforce and highlight the purity of the creative
execution which went into producing Sound on Sound. It certainly
renewed my disposition in terms of considering it one of the most
important LPs to ever come into my musical life.
