New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Bill Nelson's "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, and available digitally.
Despite being recorded during the same 2022 recording sessions that produced the "All The Fun Of The Fair" album, "Starlight Stories" has a wholly different atmosphere and intent.
Wistful and melancholic, the album contains dreamy meditations fed through the filter of Bill Nelson's contemporary musical sensibility.
"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." - Bill
Nelson 2023.
TRACKS:
1) A Wide Open Window (With A View Of The Stars)
2) Sailing Through Skies Of Blue
3) Antoria
4) My Signal Light
5) Goodbye Golden Sands
6)
Everything Is Ancient Now
7) Standing In A Starlit Room
8) Slow, Slow, Slow
9) Meanwhile, Elsewhere
10)
Ghosts Of Ancient Houses
11) Celestrum
12) Starlight Stories
13) The Land Of Lost Dreams
14) The Doctor Was An Alchemist
15) Ian's
Radio Is On
To order:
"Starlight Stories" is available for purchase at the Dreamsville Store: https://www.billnelson.com/starlight-stories
and Burning Shed: https://burningshed.com/store/billnelson/bill-nelson_starlight-stories_cd
Also available, Bill
Nelson "All The Fun Of The Fair": https://www.billnelson.com/fun-of-the-fair
Available as both physical CD (from Burning Shed) or as a digital download (from Bandcamp).
For more information: www.billnelson.com
