THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

It can't be easy to anthologize 40 years of any artist's work. Imagine then, the difficulty of summarizing the career of an artist whose work is canvased across more than eighty studio albums which span various genres, styles and approaches.

Such is the task of The Practice Of Everyday Life, a fabulously packaged 8-disc box (including 64-page booklet) that chronicles the work of Bill Nelson. Starting with the hippie rock of his indie solo LP, this set traverses through his commercial zenith with art-rockers Be Bop Deluxe, the electro-punk energy of Red Noise, lo-fi ambient contemplations, various fusions of pop and dance/techno beats and finally brings us up to date with Nelson's recent amalgam of styles that might be best described as an aural Disneyland.

This is a fascinating overview of a diverse body of work that is largely currently out of print- a problem that Esoteric Recordings plans to help rectify with a reissue campaign underway since 2011. The label promises the reissue of 21 titles (including six multi-disc sets).

Oddly, the Be Bop Deluxe material here, which takes up most of the first two discs, appears to have been remastered twice in 2011: Abbey Road's Peter Mew remastered the entire Be Bop catalog for the 'Futurist Manifesto' box. The remastering for The Practice Of Everyday Life is credited to Ben Wiseman of Audio Archiving Company (London). While I find no fault with the Peter Mew remasters, the Be Bop Deluxe tracks on TPOEL seem to have a touch more clarity and crispness. In fact, all the tracks on TPOEL sound better than previous issues AND sound great together in the context of this compilation. A rare feat.

It's a minor criticism, but with only 35 minutes of BBC rarities on Disc 8, it seems a lost opportunity to include another 40 minutes of Nelson's more recent recordings.

Fans of Be Bop Deluxe who have been detached from Nelson's work would be well served by investigating some of those recent releases (only available through www.billnelson.com). For anyone interested in an overview that encompasses of the scope of Nelson's considerable output, look no further.