THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Revered British rock innovator and icon Bill Nelson — the founder and former leader of the legendary ’70s art-rock outfit Be Bop Deluxe — is back with his latest solo album Powertron.
Better make that relatively new. An album of predominantly vocal pieces, Powertron’s creation was commenced immediately after Nelson completed work on The Jewel album in 2016. At that point, he realised he had 13 (yes, 13) completed albums waiting in the queue for release. He confirmed plans for “another album” in a post on his Dreamsville forum dated 3 June 2016. The starting point was a leftover from sessions for The Jewel.
“I thought this track, titled Drive Shaft, was a bit too rock for The Jewel, so I’ve decided to follow on from it with a second track titled Last Night The Moon Came In My Window, a vocal track with a strong foundation in straight-ahead rock,” Nelson said at the time. “I’ll see how this album develops over the coming weeks and try to keep it on its rock music course as much as possible.”
Within four weeks, Nelson had recorded 11 tracks for the album and announced that he needed to add just one more song to finish it. On 16 July 2016 he confirmed that the album was now complete, but that it would be at least four albums down the line in his release schedule. As it turned out, Powertron would continue to be overlooked a number of times in favour of newer recordings, and would take nearly eight years to finally appear.
“It’s an album of left-field rock songs, mainly vocal but layered with loud and edgy guitars,” he says. “It will appeal to those who enjoy the wilder side of my work… (and) should hit the spot for those of you into the more abrasive side of what I do. Not without its lyrical moments though, and a nice step on from Special Metal.”
Powertron features a guest appearance on the song Smoke And Dreams (Flow With the River) in the form of Django, the Nelsons’ pet cat, who entered the recording room and offered a well-timed meow, immortalising himself onto the recording in the process. Nelson was unaware of this until he came to mix the track — and decided to leave in Django‘s contribution to the song.
“In fact, when I was mixing and the recorded sound of the cat happened, I thought he had actually entered the room but, when I looked around, he was nowhere to be seen!” Nelson recalls. “It was only when I repeatedly ran the mix past that point that I realised it was actually on the recording. I guess I could have muted it out at the appropriate moment but decided to leave it in to immortalise Django… his meow goes really well with the spooky, bluesy nature of the song. You’ll have fun, methinks, listening out for this moment in the song when you get to hear it.”
The album was mastered at Fairview Studios by John Spence in February 2024, with artwork compiled by Martin Bostock, using images selected and manipulated by Nelson.
