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LP
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KK 143LP
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On Dreams '24/'25, Scottish composer Bill Wells turns his nocturnal imagination into a sequence of delicate musical miniatures. The album brings together 24 short pieces, most of them under two minutes, unfolding in just under half an hour like a quietly drifting dream diary. The album is split into two parts. On the Dreams 2024 side, Norman Blake lends his voice to Wells' dream-born melodies. Blake, best known as a founding member of Teenage Fanclub, recorded the songs with Wells in a single afternoon at his home, capturing their fragile immediacy in direct and unadorned performances. For Dreams 2025, Aby Vulliamy -- one of Yorkshire's best kept musical secrets -- takes over vocal duties. In mid-2025, Wells sent her a batch of demos; Vulliamy recorded them at home and sent them back to him. The result is a second chapter that feels more introspective, intimate and gently surreal. The songs themselves are born directly from dreams. Wells wakes from the dream, records it on his mobile and later shapes it into a brief, lyrical composition. One piece, "Mackenzie's Return," was inspired by a dream in which Elvis Costello marched through the streets of a suburban town complaining that he had run out of song ideas, a detail that perfectly captures the album's blend of humor, strangeness and quiet melancholy. Dreams '24/'25 is not a collection of fully formed pop songs, but rather a series of fleeting emotional snapshots: soft voices, simple motifs, and melodies that appear and vanish before they can fully settle. It is an album that rewards close listening, inviting the listener into a private, half-lit space somewhere between memory and imagination. The album is accompanied by a striking cover artwork by Annabel Wright.
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CD
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BISON 006CD
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The latest chapter in the unfolding musical story of Bill Wells finds the Scottish jazz outsider's compositions played by a trio of tuba players with energetic contributions from young brass players from his adopted hometown of Glasgow. The results, The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays The Music Of Bill Wells, are alternately ruminative, playful, and profound, ranging from the cyclical opener "Fanfare For Three Tubas" to a mischievous interpretation of "The Midges", a comic tribute to the entomological scourge of the Highlands by Scottish singer Kenneth McKellar, and the doleful "Chorale 4K" before the arresting finale of "Stone Throw Dream Anthem". Throughout the variety of moods conjured by the musicians the listener is reminded of both the power and tenderness of brass instruments -- their capacity to astound and reassure, to soothe and tickle. The trio in the title -- Antony Hook, Danielle Price, and Mark Reynolds -- formed in 2018 to perform in the lee of the Glenfinnan Viaduct as part of the Loch Shiel Festival. Wells contributed three tunes for the performance, including "Fanfare For Three Tubas", and composed the remainder after being commissioned by Glasgow's underground/experimental festival Counterflows as a direct result of the Glenfinnan Viaduct performance. The trio subsequently performed Wells's tunes in Glasgow with the Gorbals Youth Brass Band, who play on three of the album's ten tracks, sharing a bill with a duo featuring Chicago composer, flautist and educator Nicole Mitchell and London-based percussionist Mark Sanders. The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays The Music Of Bill Wells represents another creative achievement for the prolific composer and multi-instrumentalist. Recorded at Castle of Doom studios in Glasgow by Tony Doogan, mixed by Bill at Loathsome Reels and mastered by Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub. Cover art by longtime collaborator Annabel Wright.
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