Bill Nelson – Special Metal (2016) + The Awakening of Dr Dream (2017)
Review:
Bill Nelson is both an enigma and a highly public person whose motivations sometimes seem shrouded, yet whose at-times prodigious output amounts to public development of song ideas and musical experiments. He has been both a guitar hero and the background figure in any number of art installations, exhibitions, and theatrical presentations. While difficult for record company executives to grasp and often obscure to the general public, Nelson has nonetheless built up a strong and loyal fan base around the world.
He rose to prominence as the chief songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of the rock group Be-Bop Deluxe, which he formed in the 1970s. Nelson has been described as “one of the most underrated guitarists of the seventies art rock movement”.
“Special Metal is an outsider album for me… It’s an album which, as the title suggests, strays into heavy rock territory but with some ballad intervals. It might be said that it falls out of character for me, especially when I tend to eschew rock music for something less brutal these days. But it’s an interesting proposition, with a certain dynamism that can only be regarded as straight ahead ‘rock’, albeit with some twists and turns that, inevitably, locate it firmly in a more contemporary mode.”
“The Awakening of Dr Dream is an album of instrumentals, mainly guitar oriented. The style ranges through ambient, rock, melodic and even a little jazz, making for a richly varied listening experience.”
Album List:
Special Metal (2016)
The Awakening of Dr Dream (2017)
Summary:
Country: UK
Genre: post-rock, prog-rock
