Nov 15, 2025
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Art/Empire/Industry - Bill Nelson's Red Noise
Besides music, one of my other big hobbies is fashion! Including, of course, emulating some of the trends you see in New Romantic, New Wave, Industrial, etc. When I can, and I won’t get fired from my office over it. It’s one of the things I’ve been missing the most about normal life, as it were. But I’ve been trying to use this time to consolidate my thoughts on how to revamp my aesthetic a bit. Here’s a fun theme playlist of tunes that deal with sartorial matters, to tide you over between now and the next time you’ll Be Seen.
VISAGE - “VISAGE”
JOHN FOXX - “NIGHT SUIT”
ABC - “SO HIP IT HURTS”
GARY NUMAN - “NEW THING FROM LONDON TOWN”
JOHN FOXX & THE MATHS - “CATWALK”
BILL NELSON’S RED NOISE - “REVOLT INTO STYLE”
MIDGE URE & MICK KARN - “AFTER A FASHION”
collage by @anysynth
It’s a pilgrimage. A congregation of eight-hundred, mostly male devotees, packed like pilchards in this clammy West Street basement, are here to see our guitar hero Bill Nelson, Baron Be-Bop Deluxe, Mr. Red Noise. It must be an odd one for Bill. Since 1976*, the only Sheffield stage he
POST-SCRIPTUM 738
JAC BERROCAL, JEAN-NOËL COGNARD, JORGEN TELLER AU SOUFFLE CONTINU AVEC AGITATION FRITE, TÉMOIGNAGES DE L’UNDERGROUND FRANÇAIS
BILL NELSON’S RED NOISE - “FURNITURE MUSIC”
Have you ever tried making a playlist to put you into a creative or artistically productive mood? Every time I’ve ever tried it, I’ve started with this song. It just puts me in that mental space of restless, frantic, impassioned, 3 A.M. kitbashing, when you can’t sleep and can’t do anything else besides work on what’s obviously gonna be your magnum opus. Whether the fruits of my moon-drunk sculpting benders looked good to me the next “morning” or not, I was always glad to be accompanied by Bill Nelson. You’ve got to love a guy who names his band “Red Noise,” and it’s an accurate description of their sound--jangling, assertive, and unafraid of getting messy and intense.
The term “furniture music” has a substantive history, going back to the prominent composer Erik Satie. He was one of the first artists to take a strong interest in the idea of repetitive, mostly-instrumental background music, and, as one might imagine, his ideas went on to influence a lot of 20th Century minimalist composers like John Cage. “Red Noise” is a more obvious joke on the more everyday term “white noise,” but Nelson’s inversion of the meaning of “furniture music” here is also pretty clever.
