Starlight Stories by Bill Nelson

"The tracks on ‘Starlight Stories’ were recorded during the same 2022 recording sessions that produced tracks for the ‘All The Fun Of The Fair’ album. However, ‘Starlight Stories’ has a quite different atmosphere and intent.

The inspiration for many of the songs came from my memories of a set of children’s story books, published in the 1920s, that my Mother had owned when she was a child in the early 1930s. She had kept these books and would read to me from them when I was an infant in the early 1950s. They were thick, heavy bound books with embossed covers and had titles such as ‘The Golden Wonder Book For Children’. They were brilliantly illustrated by artists who displayed a combination of Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. The books contained stories by famous authors such as HG Wells, Miguel De Cervantes, Homer, William Blake and others, plus poems by various poets, both classical and contemporary to those times. I was entranced by the wonderful stories and illustrations they contained. They had an aura of magic and mystery about them, with fairy tales and evocatively British poetry, filled with seasonal and rustic imagery. A treasure trove of fantasy and adventure, which I loved.

‘Starlight Stories’ doesn’t attempt to directly portray those old books but it does try to capture some of their atmosphere and manifest my nostalgia for them. Consequently the songs on this album have a softer, melancholic quality about them, albeit with some distressed, patina-like textures that evoke the scent and feel of those old books. They are dreamy meditations, wistful reveries fed through the filter of my contemporary musical sensibility. I hope they will, in some small way, connect you with your own lost story books, as well as with mine." - Bill Nelson 2023.

This download comes complete with printable artwork as PDF files.
For further information, please visit the album's page in the discography section of Bill's website - www.billnelson.com/starlight-stories

Tracklist

1.	A Wide Open Window (With A View Of The Stars)	4:30

2.	Sailing Through Skies Of Blue	3:30
3.	Antoria	2:09
4.	My Signal Light	3:57

5.	Goodbye Golden Sands	3:23

6.	Everything Is Ancient Now	4:20
7.	Standing In A Starlit Room	2:59
8.	Slow, Slow, Slow	4:13

9.	Meanwhile, Elsewhere	3:18
10.	Ghosts Of Ancient Houses	3:09
11.	Celestrum	3:43

12.	Starlight Stories	3:24

13.	The Land Of Lost Dreams	2:46
14.	The Doctor Was An Alchemist	5:08

15.	Ian's Radio Is On	2:42

Credits

released December 1, 2023

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