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Post-punk icon and much respected independent record producer, Steve Albini, has passed away. https://pitchfork.com/news/steve-albini-storied-producer-and-icon-of-the-rock-underground-dies-at-61/

…predictive text is a pain…I have set myself a task of playing all my mixtape homemade cdrs…so far I am 556!….also I am reordering my cd collection chronologically. It’s the most sensible option for making sense. It’s clear that however fine Powertron is, and it is, it comes from a different world. Covid did change things and the is somewhere else than 2016. I am hoping I can complete listening to my music collection at least once. Obviously repeats will happen on purpose or otherwise. I count myself luCKy.

It’s always easy for me to return the fantastic albums after 1981 up to and including but yesterday and today hearing BN’s 2021 opus takes me forward to somewhere new and special.

As my previous, recent posts indicate, I’m attempting to do something like a chronological sort of stray tracks from early (1979-1985) solo Bill - first by release date but then by when undated tracks might have been recorded, based on compositional style and home studio sonics. The wildest wildcard of them all is the fourth ABM fan club release from November 1983: The World and His Wife Dream Car Romantics Dancing Music You can listen to “The World and His Wife” and “Dancing Music”on Bandcamp right now: https://billnelson.bandcamp.com/album/transcorder November 1983 is a full year after “Chimera” was recorded. And yet, ABM 4’s tracks sound exactly like the “Quit Dreaming” moment of 1979. Even ignoring the variant of “Living in My Limousine” (obvious backward connection), the other two tracks have exactly the songwriting/vocal delivery/arrangement/new-wave style of Quit Dreaming, and identical instrument sounds. They are supposedly pure home studio recordings, but I cannot square their sound or style with other 1979-1983 home recordings. If I were a Bill Nelson betting super-fan (I am), I would hypothesize that ABM 4 was derived from leftovers from the Quit Dreaming Mobile Unit/John Leckie sessions, but without the professional studio mixing/mastering that was applied to the album and the officially released outtakes/b-sides: White Sound, Mr. Magnetism Himself, and Atom Man Loves Radium Girl. I cannot imagine a situation in which Nelson would have written and recorded songs in this throwback style, post-Chimera. If he had, he surely would have announced it with intention. And I can’t find any other Nelson pure home recordings (1979-1983) that sound like ABM 4. I’m tempted to hypothesize that Nelson possessed unmastered QD Mobile Unit/Leckie outtake recordings from 1979 and released them later, without noting the connection, because some corporate entity with an original stake in them might have objected. Takeaway: I’m keeping ABM 4 (1983) attached to Quit Dreaming (1979) until someone presents evidence/testimony that I shouldn’t.