Having a great night in ... pint of freshly delivered 5.3% Shining Clough with large Black Bush chaser, following up fab Strictly final with a bit of old Top Gear series 11 & now the first spin of early xmas present that is New Vibrato Wonderland ... also, while watching Bill Bailey dancing, thought of great new band name/Zappa instrumental title ... 'Winkleman's Fringe'!
Currently most played albums The Unrealist, The Jewel, Chance Encounters & Plectrajet
Bring on the new year - let's hope we're out of this mess & festivals can go ahead - have big plans for EOTR 2021!
Heeee yeah Steve, wonderful !!! Bill's new album is like a to the 80's at times 😁😁😁
Sitting on a Bandcamp ... waiting for the disc to come ...
Really digging it so far. Really nice to dream along, occasionally looking at the image whilst listening.
My copy arrived today (all the way to California in 6 days!) and I just had my first listen, and quite enjoyed it. Good variety, top notch songwriting and the usual amazing guitars....some very personal, and insightful lyrics, too. Another good one, Bill! Thank you!
Mine's arrived today two with Transcoder. All platforms accounted for!
😁😉😋😎
Finally received it in the mail yesterday...sounds really, really good. Bill, I liked how you have the Tom toms tuned just right for the drum pattern in the first song.
Only made it through NVW half way and I think I’m noticing some new textures in there - possibly some Cubase synths? Nevertheless, it is a refreshing effort that I appreciate. Thank you.
Just seen one on Ebay for £29.99 - really sad
My lovely Judy and I just went out to see a few family and friends, social distancing all the way. Only to come home and find New Vibrato Wonderland and Transcorder in the mailbox.
There really is a Santa, and he's from Yorkshire. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Someone in the US can have mine, freebles. Lots of great music on it, of course, but I was never a big fan of the crooning style 😘 pm ?
'the crooning style'... Me neither. Nothing wrong with Bill's voice but I still prefer the pop/rock vocal tracks. That said, there is some pretty amazing sounding music in the tracks available on Bandcamp. Really enjoying Mercuria Magnetica. Classic BN.
Well I'm digging it...vocals especially.🙂
Have always dug Bill's unique style of crooning, which he's done since 1970 and probably since the '60s.
Maybe we've got different definitions of what crooning is.
Track 6 'Complicated' fits the definition of the "crooning" that doesn't really work for me.
There's such a mountain of other tunes of his that work how they need to work, over and over that I don't have time to fiddle about trying to makes ones work that don't want to. 😉
@sheltech From this List of Crooners entry in Wikipedia it says, "Crooners are singers who sing in a soft, intimate style made possible by the introduction of microphones and amplification."
Why isn't David Sylvian in this list?
Why isn't Bill Nelson in this list?
Bill's great at that "soft, intimate style" and I like that earlier, other style of crooning like on 'See It Through' from 'Northern Dream.' [That song was playing endlessly in my head yesterday]
To me that also means, since the advent of mics, Nat King Cole as opposed to Little Richard or Billie Holiday (why's she not on the list?) as opposed to Bessie Smith (even though Bessie Smith I think was pre-microphones/amplification).
Maybe only guys can be considered crooners?
If that's the case, my favourite crooners span some decades, people like Frank, Dean, Nat, Bing, Sammy, Billy Eckstine, Andy Williams, Elvis Presley, Bryan Ferry, Scott Walker (why's he not in that list?), Bowie, Sylvian ... and I consider Bill to be in that line of singing, his own version of it.
Bill Nelson's not really part of the Little Richard style of belters and screamers, which includes Bon Scott, though not the Bon Scott in his The Valentines era. 😁
Paul McCartney's got a good Little Richard type of screaming and he's also what I'd consider a crooner, a crooner from the land of elves.
Did you know that the name Elvis means "with the elves/friend of the elves?"
Rod Stewart is kind of a unique crooner, a whispering screamer crooner.
Elvis Presley considered himself a Dean Martin style of crooner, but he was a good screamer sometimes.
Even something like 'The World And His Wife,' for an example, to me that's crooning.
'Don't Touch Me (I'm Electric)' I guess is one of Bill's non-crooners.
'A Better Home In The Phantom Zone' ... that to me is a crooner.
Maybe my definition is broad.
Exactly Alec...I've always loved Bill's vocals....and same for this recording, subtly nuanced and perfectly suiting the mood and feeling of each track, whilst still retaining the bigger picture.
However, I suppose we all see, and hear, things differently.
All Bill can do, is put the music 'out there'..🙂
First spin yesterday while driving. Interesting to hear how, despite the new Cubase system, it doesn't sound radically different from other recent works. Kudos for mastering a completely new system. I would argue that the introduction of the Fractal Audio effects processor had a bigger impact on Bill's tones than the transition to a DAW. Perhaps further listening will reveal subtleties and differences that I didn't catch on the first go.
Standout track for me was #13, "Earthbound." Really interesting rhythmic introduction with the ghost of drum 'n bass co-mingling with seemingly-Hindustani elements. Not sure how that even happened, but it's a sound world I'd love to explore further.
Gave it four complete spins earlier - standouts for me are Hide & Seek, Mercuria Magnetica & In The Middle Of A Dream.
My favourite is still 'Crazy Right Now.'
Have listened to it 3 -4 times and can't get into it. But that doesn't matter--when Dreamland to Starboard came out years ago, for about a year I couldn't get into it, then one day it "hit me" and now it's one of my favorites. This one is going to take a while to digest. That's one thing about Bill's music, it takes a while to digest.
Some of the one-day-it-hit-me releases are for me ‘And We Fell Into A Dream,’ ‘Neptune’s Galaxy,’ ‘Quiet Bells’ and ‘Loom.’ Always something new in these. Felt slightly disconnected to these before and maybe having them so handily available via Bandcamp has influenced this connection to them now. Great for dreaming.
@Alec LOVE And when we fell into a dream. Perfect morning music for me! Think that one also took me a while to get into//
@Skyrocket morning music as well. Sleeping and/or waking ... it's so nice.
So far the disc has put in me a Lost In Space sort of mood ...
... as in Athena
and The Saticons ...
Right now one of my favorite tracks is I Oil The Ticking Of Antique Clocks. I love everything about the track, but I find the sample voice very inspiring, after the past few years: "The pessimism of our gloomy era will vanish like snow in the sunshine of Spring. And under the inspiration of returning joy, a great renaissance will spread throughout the world."
Forgive me if I've misquoted. I would love to know where that sample came from.
New Vibrato Wonderland is starting to work its magic on me. Some really beautiful songs - immediate stand-outs for me: In the Middle of a Dream, Crazy Right Now, and the title track, New Vibrato Wonderland. But it's all glorious to my ears, and has a really luxurious and colourful sound. The striking psychedelic modernist architecture seems very apropos.
My copy arrived Saturday, 2 January.
Just getting around to listening to it now.
.
The bundle finally arrived after a three week journey across the pond. The "Seasons Greeting" card from Burning Shed in the package was a nice touch. Re: New Vibrato Wonderland, is it me, or is the new recording set up a richer and fuller sound? Deeper bass, crisper highs and more clarity and separation in the mix? Some new sounds percolating in there, to boot. And.... the e-bow! Stand outs for me: "Crazy Right Now" (an instant classic) and "The House of a Hundred Clocks" (loving the coda). Overall, I give the CD an A+!
PS: should add that the packaging for Transcorder is outstanding. Well worth the price of admission. Those who did the download-only are missing out on a real treasure.