ALBUM NOTES:

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Starlight Stories is an album comprising a mixture of song based and instrumental material issued on the Sonoluxe label in a limited edition of 1000 copies.

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The material for the album was recorded during the same sessions that produced Marvellous Realms and All The Fun Of The Fair, recorded between November 2021 and October 2022.

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The album title was first announced in a Dreamsville Journal entry dated 5 April 2023 which also confirmed that Nelson had tracks set aside for inclusion on it and was already busy working away on his next project, called Guitars of Tomorrow.

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The titles of all fifteen tracks destined to appear on Starlight Stories were then revealed by Nelson in a Dreamsville forum post dated 30 April 2023. These were among a list of 127 tracks that would make up future releases including All the Fun of the Fair (which was released on 3 November 2023), the afore mentioned Guitars of Tomorrow and another new album project, Fables of the Future.

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One song title earmarked for Starlight Stories was initially reported as being called 'Sailing Through the Clouds of Blue' but this was eventually to appear as 'Sailing Through the Skies of Blue'. Other than that minor modification, all fifteen tracks identified back in April 2023 would retain their place on the album.    

  

Starlight Stories was mastered at Fairview Studios by John Spence on 1 June 2023 with artwork completed by Martin Bostock in October 2023.   

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Pre-orders details for Starlight Stories were announced by Burning Shed on 2 November 2023 for release on 1 December 2023.

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CURRENT AVAILABILITY:
 

Available for purchase here in the Dreamsville Store.


BILL'S THOUGHTS:

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"The tracks on 'Starlight Stories' were recorded during the same 2022 recording sessions that produced tracks for the 'All The Fun Of The Fair' album. However, 'Starlight Stories' has a quite different atmosphere and intent.

The inspiration for many of the songs came from my memories of a set of children's story books, published in the 1920s, that my mother had owned when she was a child in the early 1930s. She had kept these books and would read to me from them when I was an infant in the early 1950s. They were thick, heavy bound books, with embossed covers and had titles such as 'The Golden Wonder Book For Children'. They were brilliantly illustrated by artists who displayed a combination of Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. The books contained stories by famous authors such as HG Wells, Miguel De Cervantes, Homer, William Blake and others, plus poems by various poets, both classical and contemporary to those times. I was entranced by the wonderful stories and illustrations they contained. They had an aura of magic and mystery about them, with fairy tales and evocatively British poetry, filled with seasonal and rustic imagery. A treasure trove of fantasy and adventure, which I loved.

'Starlight Stories' doesn't attempt to directly portray those old books but it does try to capture some of their atmosphere and manifest my nostalgia for them. Consequently the songs on this album have a softer, melancholic quality about them, albeit with some distressed, patina-like textures that evoke the scent and feel of those old books. They are dreamy meditations, wistful reveries fed through the filter of my contemporary musical sensibility. I hope they will, in some small way, connect you with your own lost story books, as well as with mine."

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