Transcorder - The Acquitted By Mirrors Recordings

Experiencing again just how good the original version of Contemplation is! That is some inspired song.

Just thought I'd pop up here and say... 'I agree with Bill-I-am' ...on pretty much all of that. There are tiny snags, but Transcorder is fun, fun, fun.

I wanted to add my 2 cents worth of opinion about this release.

Of course no producer can satisfy all the fans, and my only complaint is that I would have liked some footnote in the booklet discography detailing the mastering sources for the tracks. For example: 'all music mastered from original tapes unless otherwise noted: c=previous CD release; v=previous vinyl release.'

A few tracks are obviously sourced from vinyl, and for those (and any others not so obvious) the producers/engineers did a damn fine job cleaning them up.

Back in the '80s I dubbed my Club EPs to cassette. I probably haven't played the discs in 30 years, but I listened to all of them waiting for these CDs to arrive. They are in great shape but, as one would hope, the CDs sound better.

As mentioned in a previous forum post, the track "Rhythm Unit" does seem to have a beat oddity at about :50, but I can't confirm without digitizing my EP and comparing wave forms. If there is an oddity, it is a matter of milliseconds and of little consequence. If an engineer can confirm its existence (and length of dropped samples) maybe the Bandcamp file for the track could be replaced and individually sold (at a reduced price) for the hardcore fan who bought the CDs. (Those who previously purchased the album from Bandcamp can just re-download.)

The other alledged sonic problems (ticks, vinyl noise) are VERY insignificant. "Dancing Music" matches my EP copy; there are no 'edits'.

The running time of Disc 2 would have allowed more tracks to be added, but maybe the producers are planning to surprise us with another archive collection rounding up more of Mr Nelson's 'strays'.

This is a really well done package. Obviously the choice to do all Black & White graphics was appropriate for the reproductions of Mr Nelson's art and it all looks very 'classy' and distinguished.

Thanks to all involved!

I am actually so pleased to get this collection. I feel like a true fan now. I mean I signed up ages ago for ABM and got one newsletter (no single). I felt that it was because I was in the USA or something. I was one of the few devotees on the Mark Ruston BN website - which went to Chuck Bird - then finally to Bill. I donated for the equipment upgrade a couple of times, made sure that Victor arrived in England, contributed a line or several to the Nelsonica Poem project. I participated in the Dreamsville Projects marveling at the variety of Nelsonians out there all talented and willing to share their songs. One of my favorite photos is of Bill holding a cd-r that I made for him (The Return of Birthday Bill).

I have advocated to go to the vaults as there is gold in there and this double disc is proof.

And through the magic of time travel, I am much younger whenever I hear it. If only between my ears. 🎧

At the end of the day I'm thankful for the effort,no matter the quibble

.....never toss those old "masters" we made back then....ironically my Contemplation skipped and abm replaced it.

My copy arrived and would like to add that the packaging is outstanding, well worth the price of admission. Those who did the download-only are missing out on a real treasure.

Feel like it’s possibly my first time hearing ‘Get Out Of That Hole,’ ‘My Dream Demon,’ ‘Try,’ ‘Jitters’ ‘Roto-Scope,’ ‘Marine Drive’ and ‘Dark Horse.’

All the previous are old friends.

Don’t know how I’d somehow missed out on those magnificent seven. 

🤷🏻‍♀⭐️☁️⚡️👺👹🦎

to quote the great Peter Hammill: "I love the noise..."

To pick up from some earlier comments re: clicks and skips, there’s quite a bit of surface noise at the beginning of “Dream Car Romantics” that is either from vinyl or from an old tape. Once the big string synths kick in the track sounds just fine.

The three instances noted earlier notwithstanding, I‘m still very grateful for this set, and think it sounds great—way better than the vinyl ripped MP3s I played to death over the last 20 years. Happy to have it. Now bring on the remaining b-sides from this era!

Pre-ordered the set way back when ... and arrived well before Christmas Day.

Just in case anybody's tracking the tracking:

Mine arrived in the US (West Coast) in under ten days 😎

As of today, it looks like both members of Corduroy Institute have a chance to discover the contents of Transcorder:

still waiting for my copy (in the USA). decided to give my tape of "Two Fold Aspect" a spin. sounds real good- a tape from the early 80's- now how about that? something to be happy about. lo-fi fun without the high tech blues. glad i'm still able to enjoy the time machinery of good music!

I have now had a chance to listen to the 'offending' tracks and, yes, there are a few minor crackles on Sleepcycle, but all things considered, nothing to write home about. Carnival and Spring sound fine to me and certainly better than either mine or Mick Winsford's copies from our digitising exchange.

As for Dancing Music and Rhythm Unit, these are not needle skips, that would sound way more clunky. It sounds to me like they have been edited, presumably due to some glaring crackle, pop or, indeed, jump that couldn't be otherwise masked. While it would have been preferable for better copies of these two tracks to have been sourced from the Dreamsville community, I don't feel it's worth making too much of a fuss about.

Oh Santa Claus! You saved Christmas, I‘ve been rockin around the Christmas tree all day!😘

My only complaint is that I’ve never got mine yet☹️Maybe for New Years

Not to belabor anything (and some questions)

Over the years I have come to embrace sound-recording anomalies.

To be honest, speaking "emotionally... all of a sudden", I am so grateful

for my cherished collection of CDs.

To my ears Sleepcycle vinyl artifacts do not really compromise the recording

But I must say, I think the only version I have heard is the Peel sessions version.

which was,I assume a live recording mastered directly to tape.

Is not, then, the Transcoder version, a direct (re-master) from a vinyl disc?

Plus I am not so sure this was not part of the "Master" plan for this track.

Take a listen to a more recent Gentle Spirits Prevail ...

What I wouldn't give to recreate my whole CD collection with a turntable and a whole set

of Vinyl versions! Not enough $ and, well, yes, I am getting older by the minute not enough time left 8-\.

I am so grateful to have at, as it were, Transcoder

I can hardly wait for some hidden treasures from the Trial By Intimacy archives

to be uncovered ... ...umm, hint hint

LOL

Cheers

&

EMBRACE THE CRACKLE

I Agree with Retroman.Really nice artwork /packaging let down by poor mastering.I dont get why every track has to be so compressed & messed with.

I have to say Transcorder is one of my favourite CD of the year - blasting away in my car I don't notice any imperfections but it feels as fresh and enjoyable as it ever was

my wallet is too small for all the hundreds & my Corvette only goes 180mph. Plus, my diamond cowboy boots are too tight & the sushi bar is out of jumbo shrimp. My private chef is gone today & it's too cold to golf. My '56 Les Paul needs new strings & my 1967 Marshall stack is too loud.

For some of us, this period of Bill's was when we first discovered him, and the music is almost sacred. We went on this great musical ride, expanding our horizons, and have been looking forward to a digital release of this material for decades. What I think Retroman is expressing is frustration that it's less than pristine, given our current technology and community options for clean sources. "I've always heard vinyl clicks" may be true, but the opportunity to hear it without those imperfections is what we were all very excited about. So it's understandable that some of us would be very disappointed - not with the music, or tracklisting, or the very existence of this release, but with the audio issues.

The tracklist of Transcorder is a collector's tracklist - the discs contain all the stuff from that broad period that missed out on a CD release, while focussing on giving the full set of pieces from the rare Fan Club EPs in order. Any complaint about what was chosen misses the purpose of the set in the first place.

The 'noise reduction' referred to simply, to me, creates more of a modern-CD-feel. No harm is done there.

I have never heard Sleepcycle without vinyl clicks. I didn't notice it sound any different than it always has.

So, let's be clear, if there are items to grumble about, it's the single jumps on Dancing Music and Rhythm Unit. If someone could donate a lovely FLAC skip-free version of each of these, to be put up as downloads on this site, I see no problem at all.

I love Transcorder and don't feel like going down the rabbit-hole about why it isn't perfect. It works for me!

Thanks to everyone who put it together for release.

I remember when myself and Mick Winsford collaborated in digitising our ABM and oddments tracks, we both had rather crackly copies of Carnival and Spring (the latter in particular). I'll have to check Rhythm Unit and Dancing Music, but I don't recall having issues with our copies of those tracks. I agree that if there were glitches with some of the source material used on this that a call should have been put out to anyone with superior copies. An official release should be the best quality possible.

Been looking forward to "Transcorder" for an age.

The second disc, with the newly released material, is wondrous. Disc 1 has a couple of "fails" on it for me, I'm afraid. These are minor (to me, as I've long since digitised and cleaned up the originals) but here goes : "Sleepcycle" has quite a few digital glitches on it, as it appears to have been mastered (remastered ?) from the original vinyl, and a few artifacts of that remain. Then something that made my ears jolt : a digital edit right at the end of "Dancing Music". If the originals were in a poor state, could not an "APB" been put out to beg for better sources (someone out there would have them !) ?

Some of these I've not heard in so long. So nice to have them so conveniently accessible.

It'll get there soon RG....the post's all over the place at the moment.

Transcorder is fantastic but does anyone know why there's a couple of seconds missing from "Dancing Music"?

As if Christmas is going to be bad enough with all that is going on around us, my copy hasn't turned up yet; (and New Vibrato Wonderland). So looking forward to them. Oh, Yes also; I've got toothache and can't see a dentist until mid-January. Christmas is going to be painfull in more than one sense.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Had the email, not here yet...........

"Transcorder"

I absolutely love this period of Bills, can't believe where the time has gone.

Our Steve will be listening in somewhere nodding his head in appreciation.

I've also got Vibrato Wonderland which I will be listening to through the cans see how the new recordings stands up

Thanks Bill and the team, Burning Shed and all for a job well done.

To plagiarize a bit (well, exactly) on the first comment in this thread

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!

I didn't actually track the description of the new release when I ordered the new cd's

(on their way)

I just indulged on getting the Bandcamp download so I could start revisiting these tracks

RIGHT NOW!

To digress a bit ... could this portend some future release of archived "nebulous" treasures from

the Book of Splendours period.

jusssst wondering

;-))

Mine's arrived in the post, along with New Vibrato Wonderland. Both look fantastic. Very cool open-out digipak type packaging for Transcorder, with some superb examples of Bill's art from that period - quite a stunning CD package actually. Looking forward to listening...

Ordered!

Just had notification from Burning Shed. Great news, Xmas has come early!

My order has shipped. Thanks Bill!

So pumped for this. Like others, I have vinyl rips from the old singles, but have long wanted hi-fi versions of these irresistible lo-fi gems. Already pre-ordered.

Can we now hope that a reissue of The Two-Fold Aspect of Everything is forthcoming?

The 2005 Mercury CD reissues of Quit Dreaming, Love that Whirls and Chimera gave us roughly half of that compilation in remastered form. The new release adds two more ("Konny Buys a Kodak" and "When the Birds Return"). Going by the original vinyl release, that still leaves the following tracks unreleased in remastered form:

Acceleration (Single Remix)

Eros Arriving (Single Version)

Ideal Homes

Instantly Yours

Atom Man Loves Radium Girl

The Burning Question

Touch and Glow

Love Without Fear

Dada Guitare

Turn to Fiction

Hers is a Lush Situation

With those 3 2005 CDs and the new Transcorder release, we can almost compile a complete remastered Two-Fold, but it nags at the completist in me to have the above tracks orphaned into temporary oblivion.

BTW, I'm lucky that I have the increasingly rare Engima 2CD edition from the late 80s, which substitutes "The Beat That Can't Go Wrong Today" for "Acceleration (Single Remix)" and "Daily Bells" for "Hard Facts from the Fiction Department," which already appeared as a bonus track on the 2005 "Chimera" and reappears on Transcorder" alongside its fellow tracks from the original Cocteau EP. That CD sounds just fine, but falls short when compared to the remastered editions on the 2005 CDs. And so a beautiful bright red digipack re-issue of Two Fold, with Savage Gestures tacked onto CD2, would be a godsend.

Kudos to Jon for compiling these tracks, and Eddie McSheffrey, Martin Bostock and John Spence for their help! That's 2 new Bill Nelson CDs to put under the tree!

Wow, merry Christmas to me! Now I can pretend Bill was my not -so - secret Santa!😎♥️

I have now put some 'samples' of half a dozen of the tracks on the album's page in the Discography...

Really looking forward to both Transcorder and New Vibrato Wonderland. Just ordered both. A bright spot in what has been a year unlike any other. Thank you for the music Bill.

Though I have most of these tracks converted to digital from my vinyl and tapes, I'm still getting this for what will hopefully be (as far as is possible) a pristine collection.

I took all my abm singles down to a studio and put 'em on a cd,

can't wait for the deluxe treatment...is Konny going to have the volume increase : )

Ordered the double pack. Can't wait to get them both. Really looking forward to getting Transcorder and having all the old ABM recordings collected in one place and a few brand new recordings thrown in. Big shout out to Eddie, Martin and John who helped to source the best available recordings.

Great. Most of this older stuff his very new to me. Cant wait to hear this.

Love the cover art.

Wow, look at the track listing! Amazing. Apart from a few that made it onto later CDs (eg West-Deep), I've not heard these tracks for such a long time (since I gave away my Hi Fi deck to a charity shop when moving house years ago). I have extremely fond memories of many of these pieces - it'll be good to hear them all together!

Double pack ordered. Wow! New and old at the same time. Great idea. I do have all the ABM singles, but can't wait to hear them all in one place especially with the bonus tracks. Some great stuff on this. Also really looking forward to hearing what Bill has been able to produce with the new recording system. Feels like it's been a long time since the last new works were released.

All ordered for joyous Christmas sounds......

Great news! Ordered both just now.

Ordered as a double pack - Transcorder AND New Vibrato Wonderland!

ordered straight away today. yay!

Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!

... more than a bit pleased about this one!

Thanks so much, Bill.