“Acceleration” (1982) – Bill Nelson * Written and produced by Bill Nelson * 45: “Acceleration” / “Hard Facts from the Fiction Department” (Cocteau) * UK LP (MiniAlbum): Chimera (Mercury)
British composer Bill Nelson’s expansive catalog, including his ’70s work with Be Bop Deluxe, now seems to overshadow his new wave credentials, his moment in the early ’80s when freshly-conceived American alternative rock stations like Los Angeles’s KROQ played him with regularity. The radio industry never categorized these stations as “new wave,” although it may as well have, and Nelson techno-pop tracks like “Flaming Desire,” “A Different Kind of Loving,” “Empire of the Senses,” and “Acceleration”—all of which appeared on his US Vistamix compilation—shimmered with new music authority and, even though they never charted in the US or UK, helped calibrate these outlets’ overall sound. After this, Nelson would follow the zigzag course of the musical experimentalist, but listening back to “Acceleration,” in particular, brings to mind the forward-motion giddiness of the new wave pop radio era. (New wavers like Nelson wore their Motown-mania on their sleeves. Listen, let sit, then see how “Acceleration” reminds you of the Temptations’ “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”)