Bill Nelson’s Red Noise
Sound-on-Sound
(Harvest / EMI, 1979)

Like Robert Fripp, Bill Nelson has always stood out as a prime example of the thinking man’s prog-rock guitar hero. Coming straight out of Yorkshire, England in 1972 with his artfully blues-based rock ensemble Be Bop Deluxe, Nelson’s savvy way with a guitar riff made him the envy of bands better known than his own. Lyrically, Nelson imbued his songs with the kind of Bowie-friendly glam typified by “Jet Silver and the Dolls of Venus” from Be Bop Deluxe’s debut, Axe Victim. While subsequent BBD releases, Futurama, Sunburst Finish, and Modern Music all received wide critical acclaim (and some actual sales in the UK), shortly after the band’s fruitless attempt to clear the bases in the US market with Live! In the Air Age, a KISS Alive!-style retrospective concert set, in 1977, Nelson began to feel that the band had run its course. Newer acts like Talking Heads, XTC, Devo, and (John Foxx’s pre-Midge Ure) Ultravox were, despite being leaner displays of technical prowess, redefining what it meant to be cutting edge. Like Brian Eno, another old-school art rocker with an innate understanding of new wave’s boundary pushing potential, Nelson couldn’t resist plunging into the emerging tide. After a noble attempt at modernizing Be Bop Deluxe with the angular futurism of Drastic Plastic in 1978, Nelson withdrew to his studio with Be Bop Deluxe and XTC producer John Leckie to remake and remodel his sound.

He emerged in 1979, under the banner of Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, with Sound-on-Sound, a collection of short, sharp, and shocked rock songs that masterfully incorporated the zeitgeist of ’70s twilight. Arguably, the name change was cosmetic—Nelson had retained Be Bop’s Andy Clark on keyboards alongside brother Ian Nelson on saxophone, bass player Rick Ford, and drummer Steve Peer—and was merely following a musical direction already in evidence on “Possession” from Drastic Plastic. The clean break in Red Noise’s sound, however, was found in its hyped up, rambunctious arrangements, which now echoed the new sounds of Talking Heads, Television, and XTC. Gratefully, what hadn’t changed was Nelson’s gift for riffs, futurist lyrics, and Velcro-sticky pop hooks.

Sound-on-Sound opens with a fiery call-to-arms, “Don’t Touch Me (I’m Electric)”, in which Nelson’s Andy Partridge-ish vocal histrionics sound a warning over a track that wouldn’t have been out of place on XTC’s Go 2, but with more synthesizers. In less than two minutes, we’re on to the manifesto “For Young Moderns”, featuring Clark’s trebly Yamaha electric grand piano pounding away as Nelson declares:

The old world is burning
There’s ice in my veins
Your breath, it inflames me
It fills me with flames
It’s a brave new world for young moderns!

The Devo-esque “Stop/Go/Stop” entertains, but is ultimately a stall before the standout track “Furniture Music.” The title may refer to Erik Satie circa 1917, but Nelson’s song has more in common with Talking Heads 77, from its loping guitar riff—an overdriven but almost note-for-note homage to David Byrne’s “No Compassion”—to the Byrne-esque lyrical ruminations on Nelson’s home décor.

Elsewhere, Nelson’s songs seem born of a therapeutic desire to join the new revolution, from “Out of Touch” (a wake-up call to himself) to the album’s big finish, “Revolt Into Style”:

The music in my room is always slightly out of tune
My harmony is up on trial
And though I know the rhythm you’d prefer me dancing to
I’ll turn my revolt into style

The finale simmers along with a post-punk urgency until the very last bar, when Nelson lets his pedigree show, via a full-on quote of the intro riff from Pete Townshend’s “Substitute.” Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

It may seem like a put-down to play spot-the-influence, but make no mistake, Nelson chews up and fully digests his contemporary influences impressively over Sound-on-Sound’s 12 tracks (a reissue CD added in two extra live versions). So while “Radar in My Heart” may feature an almost Blondie-ish chorus and Clark’s cheesy Vox Continental organ on “Stay Young” is redolent of the Attractions’ Steve Nieve, the whole album feels organic and a logical evolution from Be Bop Deluxe. Listening to Sound-on-Sound some 30 years later, the energy and exuberance still feel exceptionally potent, with only the harshly compressed and slap-echoey mixes sounding dated.

Met with commercial indifference, Nelson never released a second Red Noise album. Within a year, he had reverted to a series of increasingly esoteric solo singles before finally settling into his current status as a comfortably cultish ambient artist. But for a brief moment at the dawn of the ’80s, Nelson took an admirable stab at showing the post-punk crowd how it was done. He’d turned their revolt into his own style.

Listen: “Furniture Music” [at youtube.com]