It's just a question of style: a visit to FUTURAMA

BE-BOP DELUXE
FUTURAMA

1975

While 1974’s debut Axe Victim impresses with its solid tunesmitherry and blazing guitarage, it’s Futurama that feels more like the true stylistic nucleoid of Bill Nelson’s perpetual vinyl discount binners Be-Bop Deluxe. The glittery Ziggy vibe that casts much of Victim as a late to the party Bowie bandwagon jumper (having Nelson and crew done up in full glam regalia on the back cover doesn’t help) has fallen by the wayside, as has the rest of BBD with Nelson now and always joined by core Be-Boppers Charlie Tumahai (bass) and Simon Fox (drums). On Futurama Nelson’s erotomantic imagery provides a window to the soul of the man/child, but it’s the massed torrent of guitars, layered with the assistance of Roy Thomas Baker (the same guy who helped stack six strings for Queen) that at once delights and deranges the senses and sends Futurama’s manic quotient into the red. The songs and arrangements are accordingly often scattered assemblages of ideas held together by only sheer force of momentum, nevertheless hooks arise aplenty should one brave the firestorm that delivers them.

Awash in floodlights and lasers, “Stage Whispers” blows open the doors to Futurama in grand style, guitars galloping, sighing, then stomping to quasi-Latin beats as Nelson strokes his musical “muse in the moon” and reassures it of his intentions: “The great deception is not my achievement.” The ballad “Love With the Madman” eases in with piano and synthi-strings before flowering into full bombast and sets up nicely the album’s UK bottom of the top-40 scraping single, “Maid in Heaven.” The love on the run themed “Maid in Heaven” burns brightly over its 45-rpm friendly running time, liquid lead lines and crunchy rhythms meshing with some sweet “wooo-ooo’s” come sunrise, though it’s the perfect pause found in those multi-tracked muted string strikes that gets me every time.

“Sister Seagull” takes flight on BBD’s brand of blues, one that eschews whiskey and cigarettes for embalming fluid and electrodes before Futurama’s Side-Closing Epic #1 arrives in “Sound Track.” Filled with weird aeronautic imagery, the rolling electric piano lines and ever-ascending guitars lend an optimistic tone, while the gong and guitar-armada outro to the track finds Nelson in Icarus mode as he shreds his way into the sun.

Side two commences with the jaunty “Music in Dreamland.” Sporting a piano and keyboard line that could have bounced forth from the hands of Benny Andersson, the addition of a brass band pushes this one toward arty-pop territory, though Nelson delivers some frenzied, echo-trailed licks during the track’s minor keyed coda. With “Jean Cocteau” the mood changes entirely, light percussion and guest upright bassist Andy Evans joining Jobim-inspired acoustics for an ode to the artiste.

Side Closing Epic #2 commences with “Between the Worlds,” a frantically realized sonic sprint portraying Nelson as an intergalactic/vampiric gigolo dishing out such necromantic come-ons as “I know my way round your throat like a knife…” all while an electric symphony of axe-ageddon explodes around you. Via a bridge of more rebounding guitar lines we land immediately in “Swan Song,” Nelson still feeling the steam of the previous track as one half of a “Siamese twin in ecstasy,” he delivers Futurama’s finale blanketed in phase and backward-tracked guitar with a spotlit, thespian performance befitting the songs dramatic mood swings and abrupt ending.