Produced at the tail end of Bill Nelson's worst years, the songs making up Confessions of a Hyperdreamer were recorded fairly quickly on aging home studio equipment. Unlike the 1995 My Secret Studio, Vol. 1, Confessions is the product of a single location ("tape-recorder cottage"), which benefits it as much as the narrowing of focus -- while it's a matter, once again, of getting a small piece of the iceberg, that piece has a concentrated quality to it. Two discs, versus four, with the promise of further jewels to be had, are here. Confessions of a Hyperdreamer moves away from My Secret Studio is another way as well, with a focus on the instrumental side of Nelson's work. There are songs here, but not too many. Instead, the listener is walked through a variety of moods and odd ideas, sound shapes that range from the evoked (as with the sampled voices of "Bird Ornaments") to the simply luminous. Overall, Nelson may not command the sort of attention he used to as a guitar hero, but he has entered (and remained in, through the millennium) an area where music becomes confection, or delicacy. There is something rare and wonderful about that.