Bill Nelson ‘Transcorder (The Acquitted By Mirrors Recordings)’ UK CD (Sonoluxe, CD052, 2022)

Bill Nelson has been a firm favourite of mine for a long time now and so, I can’t begin to tell you how welcome a release this CD was when it was announced. I had been a member of the ‘Acquitted By Mirrors’ (and later incarnations) of Bill Nelson’s fan club/information service while they were on the go, so I already had a few of the exclusive fan club EPs that this release is compiled from already, but there were a lot of gaps. So, the prospect of a release that gathered them together was mouthwatering – and I got my order in super-quick, as Bill Nelson releases have a tendency to sell out in record time and consequently sell for inflated sums on the resale market.

So, what is it that the release compiles, exactly? Well, between 1982 and 1990, ‘Acquitted by Mirrors’ was the Bill Nelson fan club magazine that appeared intermittently and would include a 7″ EP with (at the time) exclusive material on alternating issues. Some tracks would find their way on to other releases, such as the excellent ‘Hard Facts From The Fiction Department’ (which was included on the B side of the 1984 remix single of ‘Acceleration’) and stray tracks included on the 1989 US Enigma label re-issue CDs (‘The World and His Wife’ was added on to the ‘Quit Dreaming and Get On The Beam’ album and ‘Dancing On A Knife’s Edge’ to ‘The Love That Whirls’ album).

Three tracks would end up on ‘Chance Encounters In The Garden Of Lights’ (‘Phantom Gardens’, ‘West Deep’, ‘Threnodia’), as well as a small selection gathered up on the CD releases compilation albums.

• On the ‘The Two-Fold Aspect Of Everything’ compilation, ‘Konny Buys A Kodak’ and ‘When The Birds Return’ are on both the US and UK CDs, however, ‘Hard Facts From The Fiction Department’ is on the UK single CD, while ‘Daily Bells’ and ‘The Beat That Can’t Go Wrong Today’ are on the US double CD.
• ‘The Strangest Things, The Strangest Times’ appeared on a US only compilation CD of the same name in 1989 as well as on the 1998 ‘What Now, What Next? (The Cocteau Years Compendium 1980-1990)’ compilation CD.
• The tracks ‘Dancing On A Knife’s Edge’ (which was already noted above as getting a 1989 US CD release), ‘Contemplation’ (in its original form before its re-recording for 1986’s ‘Getting The Holy Ghost Across’) and ‘Indiscretion’ were all originally recorded for a BBC Radio 1 David ‘Kid’ Jensen session in 1983 before being issued on one of the fan club EPs – and these two tracks were also issued on CD on the 8 disc Bill Nelson box set ‘The Practice Of Everyday Life: Celebrating 40 Years Of Recordings’ from 2011 (which also includes the fourth track from that radio session, ‘Time Tracking’, which was not included on the original 7″ EP, for whatever reason). (Worth noting in passing, the version of ‘Sleepcycle’ on that box set (which is from a BBC Radio 1 John Peel session) is not the same as the 7″ EP version.

Phew! A lot of tracking down odds and ends!

In total, seven of these fan club 7″ EPs were released and they make up all of disc one and the first 11 tracks of disc two. The remainder of disc two’s tracks are drawn from various sources, including previously unreleased recordings of the period.

Of these additional tracks not from the fan club EPs featured on disc two, tracks 12 through 15 were B sides or compilation tracks from various Bill Nelson or pseudonymous releases. Tracks 16 through 21 are tracks from 1984 and 1985, previously unreleased in any form before.

Tracklist:

Disc 1:

1. Sleepcycle (3:47)
2. Konny Buys A Kodak (2:43)
3. When The Birds Return (5:25)
4. The Beat That Can’t Go Wrong Today (3:26)
5. King Of The Cowboys (3:31)
6. Shadowland (3:30)
7. Carnival (2:09)
8. Spring (2:59)
9. Dancing On A Knife’s Edge (3:23)
10. Indiscretion (4:34)
11. Contemplation (6:49)
12. The World And His Wife (4:57)
13. Dream Car Romantics (In Death’s Garage Antics) (3:55)
14. Dancing Music (1:54)
15. Hard Facts From The Fiction Department (3:35)
16. Daily Bells (3:25)
17. Rhythm Unit (2:03)
18. Junc-Sculpture (2:00)

Disc 2:

1. The Strangest Things, The Strangest Times (2:23)
2. Phantom Gardens (1:47)
3. French Promenade (1:45)
4. Golden Mile (2:03)
5. West-Deep (1:23)
6. Threnodia (1:15)
7. A Dream Fulfilled (3:28)
8. Familiar Spirit (4:09)
9. Palais Des Marines (1:36)
10. Letter To Jacques Maritain (1:47)
11. Villefranche Interior (1:18)
12. Tony Goes To Tokyo (And Rides The Bullet Train) (3:41)
13. Highway 2000 (3:21)
14. Dancing In The Wind (5:06)
15. Get Out Of That Hole (2:35)
16. My Dream Demon (2:01)
17. Try (2:04)
18. The Jitters (4:27)
19. Roto-Scope (3:38)
20. Marine Drive (3:11)
21. Dark Horse (3:13)

Perhaps inevitably given the conditions, the release has some shortcomings. Those conditions being; home-made recordings dating from the early ’80s onwards and a release made without any support from any kind of major label. So, in some cases, the original tapes have gone missing and those tracks have had to be remastered from vinyl copies. In a couple of other cases, the tracks are truncated. Some excellent notes on the Discogs.com entry for the release by the contributor Clogwhistle notes these.

Despite these issues, this is welcome release for fans of Bill Nelson’s 1980s period solo works in particular. It s a sweet spot for me, and I have focussed in depth on a few of Bill’s albums of the period before, with deep-dives on ‘Quit Dreaming and Get On The Beam’, ‘The Love That Whirls’ and also the 1983 mini albums.

Bill’s work from the period, whether lavish, major label-funded professional recording studio sessions or four-track home studio recordings never fail to deliver when it comes to inventive and interesting music, so to have so much of it gathered together on a labour of love release such as this, where the packaging is also a vital and authentic part of it all, is fantastic.