The four tracks on this 2009 album that obviously belong together are a fabulous update of the beat-less, sampled-vocal, semi-ambient soundscapes of earlier periods (e.g. Trial by Intimacy, Orchestra Arcana, Chance Encounters, Console) - but blown out into outré epics with complicated plots:
This is Like a Galaxy (7:04)
Yes and No (8:36)
Matérialisation Phenomena (11:01)
The Departure of the 20th Century (16:24)
Together, these tracks total 43 minutes – a perfect Bill Nelson LP, unlike any other music he created in this period.
Hypnotic, trippy, non-song adventures. Headphone music. Shifting sonic sands of meditative psychedelia - patient, full of surprises, and sometimes menacing.
Two tracks interrupt this experience:
The title track (more than 15 minutes) is a vocal performance that collages Dreamsville forum members’ submitted lyrics (mine included). It is a nice souvenir, but it has no business being on this album.
“When the Invisible Circus Comes to Town” is a fun guitar/rhythm track from the period, but it also has no business being on this album.
If you’re not already intimate with this album – or if it has been a while – I recommend you isolate the four tracks that make the singular statement and play them several times.
If forced to add tracks to the core-four of "Non-Stop Mystery Action," I might choose the pure instrumentals "The Raindrop Collector" (And We Fell Into a Dream, 2007) and "All Alone in a Boat of His Own" (Neptune's Galaxy, 2006).
Hello John H, I was about to gently correct you but I see Jon W has shed some light 😄.
I totally agree about the 4 songs being very complimentary, almost an entity in their own right. And that's part of the joy of Bill being so prolific, we can mix and match to create our own Bill albums with relative ease.
Just to clarify...
The title track (more than 15 minutes) is a vocal performance that collages Dreamsville forum members’ submitted lyrics (mine included).
The track is called 'Welcome to the Dream Transmission Pavilion', so it isn't the title track of 'Non-Stop Mystery Action'. 😉
Also, and more importantly, this track includes a poem that was written entirely by Bill and is NOT the 'Dreamsville Poetry Experiment', which has never been released on a CD in its poetic state, although a revamped instrumental version was included on 'Mazda Kaleidoscope' called "Blue Skies Listen, the Unstruck Bell".