BE BOP DELUXE

"Drastic Plastic" is exactly the right name for the album, as Be Bop Deluxe now travels a new wave keyboard/synth laden pop/rock sound with elements of art rock, instead of the art rock of the previous three releases. The signs were already there on "Modern Music", which featured a decrease in the use of guitars and especially solos, which had otherwise been the greatest assets of the band´s music on the previous studio albums, so it´s not a bit surprise that Be Bop Deluxe went all the way on "Drastic Plastic" and transformed their music into something pretty much unrecognisable if you´re only familiar with the preceding releases.

When that is said "Drastic Plastic" is a pretty pleasant new wave styled pop/rock release, which is obviously performed by a skilled unit of musicians, but that´s about it. It´s not an album which stands out much on the scene and it makes sense that it´s not an album often mentioned. A 2.5 - 3 star (55%) rating is warranted.

"Futurama" (July 1975) and "Sunburst Finish" (February 1976) were both art rock records with small touches of progressive rock, but built upon a basis of 60s UK blues rock. "Modern Music" is a more polished and tame affair, showing Bo Bop Deluxe within a polished environment and lacking the most raw and wild guitar antics of frontman/guitarist William Nelson. It´s still well composed rock music, performed by skilled musicians but the more futuristic keyboard-laden rock sound takes the tiger out of the band. The occasional guitar harmonies and rare guitar leads don´t save "Modern Music" from being a bit of a disappointment after the two preceding albums, which showed Be Bop Deluxe at their best.

So upon conclusion this is a decent quality release from Be Bop Deluxe and fans of polished and uneventful rock music with a strong keyboard presence should take notice. A 2.5 - 3 (55%) rating is warranted.

"Sunburst Finish" pretty much continues the art rock direction, which was introduced on "Futurama", but Be Bop Deluxe have refined the formula a bit more on "Sunburst Finish" and the inclusion of Clark to the lineup has also meant a stronger keyboard/piano presence. It´s still frontman/guitarist William Nelson who shines the most though, and his many leads and interesting rhythm riffs are the greatest asset of Be Bop Deluxe´s music. His vocals are decent but not a standout feature of the music.

The slightly more mainstream commercial touch (Be Bop Deluxe even had a hit single with "Ships in the Night") makes "Sunburst Finish" a slightly less appealing release than "Futurama", if you´re interested in listening to the most adventurous material by Be Bop Deluxe, but "Sunburst Finish" is still a well composed, well produced, and very well performed release and a 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

Bill is a guitarist right? I get it he probably felt he took the band as far as he could with what they had been doing so it was time for a change. Even the vocals are noticeably different, more theatrical but not as commanding as say David Byrne making Bill's vocals simply disappointing on this one. It is interesting that the closer "Island Of The Dead" is the one track that could have fit on any of the three previous records. Mostly though we get synth dominated tunes like the opening three tracks including some robotic vocals. The fourth tune "Surreal Estate" is more light and poppy while "Dangerous Stranger" sounds like a 50's tune. "Panic In The World" screams TALKING HEADS along with a few other tracks and "Visions Of Endless Hopes" sounds out of place, pretty much being a guitar track done right.

Sounds like an 80's album beating many bands to the punch, but this is not an album I recommend at all. 2 stars, fans only.

And while I'd suggest "Futurama" their second record is my favourite it's also an immature work where we get flashy solos or Bill singing but it works to my ears better than the three albums that follow. It may be more about the songs after "Futurama" but I'm just not into the music. So while "Modern Music" and the previous record "Sunburst Finish" stand as favourites among the Prog crowd, this Prog fan just can't get into them, this not my music. So of course we get some half decent tracks here among the fifteen but this is consistently doing little for me. I like "Twilight Capers" and "Down On Terminal Street" quite a bit, especially the latter as the former is inconsistent. Some samples to open the title track which is different.

Almost half the tracks are around 2 minutes or less. 3 stars.

The production isn't as good here either but one thing they did do here was try different things like bringing in some orchestral stuff along with guest sax on one track. The guitar solos tend to be near the end of the songs on this one and this seems to be more consistent than "Futurama", but I am not connecting with this record at all. I'm actually surprised at this after enjoying a lot of "Futurama".

One track that works for me is "Sleep That Burns" with that galloping start and chorus. "Crystal Gazing" is another good one where they slow it down which is a nice change. The closer "Blazing Apostles" does little for me along with "Beauty Secrets", I mean come on. Love the guitar in "Heavenly Homes", pretty sure my house number will be 63. The other track that was pretty good was "Life In The Air Age" with percussion galore to start as guitar joins in. I like when it settles with vocals.

I am scratching my head over the love for this one, but keep in mind I did not know this band at all back in the day so there's no nostalgia for me it's just the music which is worth 3 stars.

Nine tracks over 35 minutes and how about the first sounds that we hear on that opener "Stage Whispers" as in screaming guitar. The flashy solos will continue on this one. "Love With The Madman" is a top three for me. They slow it down after that energetic opener and the vocals sound different, better. Some emotion. "Maid In Heaven" sounds like a single. "Sister Seagull" is another top three. The melancholy does it for me along with the guitar solos.

"Sound Track" and the closer "Swan Song" are about the two proggiest songs on here which isn't saying a lot. Both the longest tunes here clocking in around 6 minutes. Some orchestral stuff on "Music In Dreamland", some brass. "Between The Worlds" is an uptempo rocker while "Jean Cocteau" is trippy and relaxed and I like it better than the rocker. The closer "Swan Song" is my final top three by the way.

I've seen Bill's name so often over the years so it's finally good to hear him play and sing. A solid 3 stars.

Side 1 leans into the luridness of glam, with the usual reflexive cynicism about rock stardom (think Ziggy Stardust) and some lyrical nastiness that seems, in hindsight, affected and shallow. Thankfully, Side 2 uncorks Nelson's wide- eyed lyricism with the lovely "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape," a hypnotic paean to his native region: a downtempo ballad in strumming 6/8 that mostly amounts to a gorgeous solo. There's also the draggy, bittersweet postwar reverie, "Jets at Dawn," another navel-gazing ballad and beautiful guitar workout. The climax is "No Trains to Heaven," a longwinded, anthemic rocker that swipes at religious dogma (there's no martyrs and no kings, because the kingdom lies within) before dissolving into a flurry of, again, solos. It's epic boogie: overegged, overwrought, and crude by the standards of later Be-Bop. I've always liked it.

The playing throughout the album is virtuosic and flashy, at least from Nelson, who seems determined to earn a guitar hero badge through sheer overkill. The rest of the band is serviceable. The mood, meanwhile, seesaws between hard-bitten, swaggering decadence and a dreamy, contemplative vibe that honestly seems more like the real Nelson. A tuneful single, "Jet Silver and the Dolls of Venus," strives to patch those two moods together. Its title may be stenciled from Ziggy, but its vibe is more rapturous than decadent; it's less like Bowie's louche rock 'n' roll anthem and more like a dispatch from some vintage SF mag of the Raygun Gothic era (the music comes out across the heavens, to a listener robed in space). Hinting at the retrofuturism that has since become Nelson's trademark, "Jet Silver" may be the only number here that is fast, catchy, but also personal.

Of the nastier numbers, the album's title track and opener is best. In true glam fashion, "Axe Victim" casts a cold eye on its own rockstar heroics and on rock fandom: You came to watch the band / To see us play our parts / We hoped you'd lend an ear / You'd hoped we'd dress like tarts. This sort of biting-the-hand-that-feeds will show up in later Be-Bop numbers too, like "Stage Whispers" and "Fair Exchange," and may be the one thing about glam that really spoke to Nelson: unease about the whole damn business. The song grinds gears awkwardly between verse and chorus, charging in but then downshifting at the refrain, all to make room for Nelson's skirling guitar fills. The final solo is a corker, the sort of thing that aspiring guitarists study. Quite a way to start an album. The remainder of Side 1, barring "Jet Silver," is not so good; as I've said, Side 2 is really where it's at.

I do enjoy listening to the whole album at a stretch, but I think I've already named all the songs that are good. The rest are a bit duff. "Third Floor Heaven," a leering song about sex work, is propulsive and riffy in a Mick Ronson sort of way, yet also mean-spirited and crass. "Love Is Swift Arrows" is better, yet still one I tend to forget. Fast, tangled, and prolix, it's a hint of better, tighter rockers to come. The trifling "Rocket Cathedral," the only number written by anyone other than Nelson, is frantic and boasts an arpeggiating guitar bit that Nelson would soon put to better use in "Maid in Heaven." Two songs stand out as especially overripe: "Night Creatures," another flirtation with decadence, evokes a shadowy glam demimonde, but it's no patch on "Walk on the Wild Side." It screams Hunky Dory, but with more cheese. Cheesier still is the final track, "Darkness (L'immoraliste)," a rank ballad that nods to Andre Gide. This one is gussied up with strings and choir in an earnest, artsy way. Perhaps Nelson thought that it would end the album with a big, sincere statement (his love of darkness, we're told, is no fashionable disguise, i.e. no mere glam pose). It's absurd, but I love its pompousness. That is, I don't think it's good, but I wouldn't want the album to be without it. Actually, that applies to most everything here.

On balance, Axe Victim sounds like the work of a self-conscious young genius trying to exercise his guitar, build a band, and at the same time ride the coattails of an already shopworn fad. Be-Bop's wannabe glam was Nelson's ticket into the mainstream, but my guess is that he was less interested in the rock 'n' roll throwback appeal of glam at its dirtiest and more interested in soaring, Romantic art song (though with an air of glamor and sexiness). His interest in literary Decadence was genuine enough, but he couldn't pull off sleaze convincingly, and was a bit shy of the shamelessness needed to sell a glam persona. Nelson, as I understand him, was ambitious and fussy and needed a better, sharper band to support his obsessive sound painting. Hence the sacking of this early lineup after this one album and the recruiting of a whole new Be-Bop.

Be-Bop Mark 2 turned out to be much better. Still, Axe Victim is about one half of an excellent album, and, for me, remains fun to listen to today. I think I prefer Nelson's Northern Dream, for all its naivete and clumsiness, but Axe Victim was a fair bid for stardom and a grand first stunt.

This expanded reissue has been newly re-mastered from the original master tapes and features an additional 39 bonus tracks drawn from a stunning new 5.1 surround sound & stereo mixes from the original multi-track tapes by award winning engineer Stephen W. Tayler, previously unreleased out-takes from the album sessions, a BBC Radio "In Concert" performance from January 1976, a rare John Peel Show session from February 1976 (unavailable on CD for over twenty years), along with an unissued and previously unreleased 1976 Harvest Records promotional video for "Ships in the Night" and a session for BBC TV's "Old Grey Whistle Test" show from January 1976. Another highlight of this limited-edition boxed set is a lavishly illustrated 68-page book with many previously unseen photographs and an essay of recollections by Bill Nelson. Additionally, the set includes a facsimile of the 1976 'Sunburst Finish' tour programme, postcards and a replica poster.

Sadly, I just have the digital, which contains the three CDs, but that is more than enough to get my excited. The first disc features a remaster of the original album, along with the original single version of "Ships In The Night", the second disc features new stereo mixes of the album along with six alternate versions, while the third features six songs recorded live for the BBC, and three more from the John Peel session. So that is 36 songs, while the fourth disc features 5:1 mixes of the albums as well as the videos.

Bill co-produced the album with John Leckie, and I suggest you go to YouTube and search for the informative documentary which has been released by Cherry Red Records to tie in with this, which has them both looking back on the sessions and the recording process. For those like who may who find this part of the process fascinating, it is enthralling.

What is the music like? Do really have to ask? Have you really never heard this album before? It surely is a staple in every music lover's collection. Although they sound nothing like then, in some ways they remind me of Gentle Giant in that they produced some amazing albums that are still played and enjoyed today the world over, but never really gained the commercial success they deserved. Nelson is a consummate songwriter, and here it really all came together with "Ships In The Night", "Life in the Air Age", "Blazing Apostles" and "Fair Exchange" rightly agreed to be some of the very finest songs they ever recorded. But, to be honest there isn't a duff song on this album, and since I first discovered this album not long after it was originally released back in 1976, it is one to which I have constantly turned. As many of you know, I live in New Zealand, and my home is just outside Christchurch. When the terrible tragedy was unfolding last month, I finally had to turn off the radio and seek comfort in music. After much thought, there was only band that felt right for me at that time, Be-Bop Deluxe.

I was a burgeoning young green-teen guitar player looking for any clues in the day before the net and DVD(!) - anyone who offered a glimmer was idolised and revered and Maid In Heaven was all it took. The opening wammy bar note sounded exactly as my Yamaha RD200 electric start did on power-up and as I swung my leg over to blast off onto the mid 1970s streets with this song in my head it made me feel vital and relevant.

The Album's soaring guitar deliveries created a life-long love of the classic Gibson Semi and I eventually got to own one too!

I may not have all the riffs and licks off to pat even now, but I have squared the circle. Hell I even got to discuss his technique and gear with him direct on his Dreamsville Inn Forum at billnelson.com - - Maid an ageing '16' year old feel In Heaven all over again!

Thanks Bill!