William's World

Went down a wormhole trying to organize early non-album tracks into something like chronological groups. Did research as possible and then put on headphones and used my ears to try to parse the home recordings via tech, recording quality, and to some extent songwriting. (Has all this already been sorted?)

BILL NELSON: A Thought Experiment About Imaginary Releases of Stray Tracks, 1979-1982

What if Bill Nelson had been able to release his new music at the speed of creation, rather than being in a situation where the recordings trickled out in a way that obscured their approximate chronology? It seems impossible to accurately reconstruct that chronology, but song credits and the sonic evidence get you pretty close.

Red Noise 12-inch

• Instantly Yours

• Wonder Toys that Last Forever

• Ideal Homes

• Acquitted by Mirrors

Quit Dreaming-Adjacent Single #1(Leckie/Mobile Unit = album outtakes)

• White Sound

• Mr. Magnetism Himself

• Atom Man Loves Radium Girl

Quit Dreaming-Adjacent Single #2 (Presumably pure home recordings, but robust!)

• The World and His Wife

• Dancing Music

• Dream Car Romantics

Home Recordings Part 1 (35 minutes)

These feature Nelson’s original “rhythm unit” - the most technologically naive recordings. All surely tracks he had ready at the time of recording “Quit Dreaming.”

• Touch & Glow

• Turn to Fiction

• Hers is a Lush Situation

• Dada Guitare

• Rooms with Brittle Views

• Shadowland

• Be My Dynamo

• All My Wives Were Iron

• The Beat that Can’t Go Wrong Today

• Sleepcycle

• King of the Cowboys

Home Recordings Part 2 (43 minutes)

New tech appears in the home recordings, and the recording sonics improve. Some tunes lean earlier, while many usher in sounds and songwriting impulses of “The Love That Whirls” period and possibly a bit later (c. “Chimera”). Side one is a strong pop music gambit.

Side One: Vocal Tracks (22 minutes)

• Dancing in the Wind

• When the Birds Return

• Love Without Fear

• Indiscretion

• Love in the Abstract

Side Two: Instrumental Tracks (21 minutes)

• Birds of Tin

• Junc Sculpture

• Daily Bells

• Carnival

• Rhythm Unit

• Konnie Buys a Kodak

• Tony Goes to Tokyo

• Spring 

Love That Whirls-Adjacent Studio Tracks (30 minutes)

A more generous version of the “Flaming Desire and Other Passions” mini-LP. “Hard Facts” is apparently a home recording and sounds so good that it might be latest track in this list.

Eros Arriving (single version)

Haunting in My Head

Flesh

He and Sleep Were Brothers

The Passion

The Burning Question

Hard Facts from the Fiction Department

What Happens Next?

“Dancing on a Knife’s Edge” is the only dangling track before the BN stray tracks obviously move on to new pastures. I’d say it’s a “Chimera” or “Holy Ghost” adjacent track.