Steven Wilson Q&A

 

After the premiere for tour film slash road movie Insurgentes, Steven Wilson stuck around to answer questions from the audience. I was there, so, for the curious, here’s a snippet of the more interesting bits (I should add, I’ve paraphrased the questions, as some were quite rambling):

Audience Member: Do you have plans to tour the album?

Steven Wilson: The simple answer is yes. The original plan was to do some shows to promote it, but I always said that after the second record there’d be enough of a repertoire, and that record is already well underway…

AM: In the film you touched upon the pros and cons of the internet age- you’ve been active on Facebook and Twitter in the last few days to promote this, so has your view changed since the film, or is this just the new model for promotion?

SW: Most people start making music to share it with as many people as possible… [which makes] these things necessary. To a certain extent I’ve embraced these things over the last few months… [but] the internet removes the enigma around an artist… reality is not what pop and rock music is about, at least not the great bands… most people wouldn’t recognise Radiohead or Tool if they walked down the street, but you could find out about their personal lives… it’s difficult, for example, to think of Ozzy Osbourne as anything other than a cuddly buffoon.

He then went on to warn of the danger of listening to press in the internet age, saying that a negative review on a blog could just be “some kid listening to Metallica in a basement in Colorado”.

AM: How did the movie come about?

SW: It grew fairly organically, as I’ve worked with Laisse [Hoile, the director] since about 2002… he wanted to make a film, and if you think the music industry is hard to break into then the film industry is a hundred times harder… I decided to take a road trip to record the album, and asked Laisse to come along.

When asked about his reverence for what he calls the ‘Golden Age’ of recorded music, he responds “I think I would have sold more records in the 70s” with a smile, before continuing,  “that was the last generation where it was possible to make music in the old-fashioned way.” He admits, “I wouldn’t have the faintest clue about how to get started in today’s industry”.

AM: Why would you do this project right now when it might be seen as self-aggrandizing?

SW: It just seemed like a whole lot of fun using the medium of film…. The thing is I talk a lot about music, and I’m very passionate about it, which I think can make me seem arrogant… I’m not rich, I’m not a celebrity- I’ve just carved out my own little corner… there aren’t any films about musicians working at my level- working musicians.

AM: How do you see your future career? I heard that you want to move to engineering and mixing as your prime focus.

SW: I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to stop making records. The idea of the album is unfashionable now, what with iPods and shuffle, but it’s what I like doing… maybe I’ll stop touring though.

AM: Why is Mexico featured so prominently in the film?

SW: It’s just darker. I’ve never really connected with the US, but I really connected with Mexico… the island of the dolls- that place is fucked up. If it’d have been in the UK or Us, every death metal band would have filmed a video there, but I think we were the first to film it… obviously, Lasse’s camera loved it.

AM: There are artists or musicians trying anything to get people to buy a physical album (for example Katy Perry scenting her records); what techniques would you use to stop downloading?

SW: How low would I go? [laughs] You can’t stop people. What I do is try and raise the debate. The problem is the youngest generation who’ve only heard MP3s… they don’t even know what a CD sounds like.

Steven is quick to point out the current vinyl resurgence though; “with human beings, every action has an opposite reaction”, before extolling the virtues of surround sound:

“MP3s are a victory of convenience over quality. Surround sound is very inconvenient, but it makes the sound three-dimensional; of course you have to have the equipment and sit in the right place, and not all rooms can accommodate it, but…”

He also accepted that most would not be bothered with the new technology, let alone the existing physical medium; “I once had a girlfriend who put the speakers for her stereo on top of each other because it ‘looked better’.”

AM: Do you see CDs or Vinyl as better placed to survive in today’s market? Surely, as an engineer you must concede that CDs are a higher quality delivery medium? Or does the ‘organic’ ascetic of the LP trump the CD?

SW: It has everything to do with mastering. There’s good mastering and there’s bad mastering. A lot of people think they know about it, but… purely from an ascetic point of view, you can’t beat a beautiful vinyl. CDs are halfway between art and technology… with the more recent Porcupine Tree releases, we’ve been focusing on packaging, which seems to work in terms of CD sales.

That last one was mine. I should have seen the ‘mastering’ point and pre-empted it, if I wanted to get a straight answer. Better still, I should have asked ‘what do you love about music?’ but then again if I had we’d probably still be there.

Steven Wilson

Insurgentes

Kscope Records

Out Now

Rating: 4.5/5

Now, I wouldn't say that Porcupine Tree's most recent offering, the 55-minute Incident, was a disaster, but it was no Deadwing either. Its central conceit was that the album contained only one fifty-five minute cut; however, those of us excitedly waiting to see what this would entail found that it was actually subdivided into about 13-or-so (off the top of my head) passages. I have a name for passages of music that feature as part of a larger body of work- songs. Indeed, whilst at times tracks did flawlessly flow into one another, and there was an effort to riff on concepts or motifs to link the disparate passages, it simply was not a one hour song as we were promised.

Anyway, enough bitching, for Mr. Wilson has made good with this, his solo effort. Once again, he reminds the listener why he's such an ever-present and prolific force within modern progressive rock; when he's on form he is the best in the world at what he does.

The album kicks off with the soaring early- PT monster 'Harmony Korine' before moving into Bass Communion territory with 'Abandoner'. There follow a number of atmospherics-led post-rock numbers, sparsely constructed of distant piano lines, guitar slides and washes of his inimitable vocal harmonies before 'No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun' shudders into view. It's essentially a melange of dissonant noodling over virtuosic drums that shift through patterns while the guitar tangles itself up, chases its own tail, and finally crashes and burns into a chorus so brilliant that it remains the best break on the record.

Closely followed by 'Significant Other', marked by transcendant operatic guest vocals from Clodagh Simonds, the album peaks before a mood change back to more drone-based space rock on 'Only Child', 'Get All You Deserve' and the title track.

The key to this record is that while Steve is clearly free to experiment as he sees fit, he's always drawn back in to occasional sharp focus by the supporting musicians (the regular cast of Porcupine Tree, as well as Theo Travis, amongst others), making this album as eclectic and exciting as any Porcupine Tree release; indeed, it's probably more experimental and fresh than anything his main project has done in a decade.

In fact, it's scarcely not a PT record (looking at the musicians' credits in the sleevenotes). By the side project moniker Wilson simply bought himself the ability to forego using his bandmates, even if he didn't in practice. With this, he was able to end up with 'Harmony Korine' next to 'Abandoner', and a fantastic LP into the bargain.

The Pineapple Thief

Someone Here is Missing

Kscope Records

Rating: 4.5/5

Having only recently discovered The Pineapple Thief through the (excellent) Kscope podcasts, I had no idea what to expect from their new LP. With only ‘Nothing at Best’, the opener, to go by, I was expecting an album of Vex Red electronica with touches of Porcupine Tree- progressive, shades of Radiohead or Muse and a few long instrumental sections.

Of course, it doesn’t sound like that. In fact, it kind of sounds like what I imagine Porcupine Tree would sound like if they’d started in 1999 instead of 1989 (or thereabouts)- and that isn’t just because Bruce Soord’s voice bears some resemblance to Steven Wilson’s. The reason Porcupine Tree have finally (rightly) taken the mantle of kings of modern progressive is because they spent ten years absorbing and synthesising contemporary music influences- the music of the 90s, in other words, with their original influences- psych and prog, presumably.

The Pineapple Thief sound like they’ve grown up with Pink Floyd and Nirvana rather than Pink Floyd and King Crimson- rather than sounding like they’ve absorbed from their surroundings, they sound like they were already kind of there, and have simply taken some time to hone their big ideas into the right package. Sure, there are some octave chords and post-2000 Massive Attack moments; I would be surprised if one of them didn’t own a copy of Team Sleep, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that by being more urgent, aggressive, and perhaps a handful of years more contemporary, they sound like that most rare of musical entities- a young progressive rock band. More than that, they are really talented too. And accessible. Progressive? Accessible? “Surely not!” I hear you cry, but believe me, if you can’t get into Someone Here is Missing, you are never going to get leftfield guitar music.

So a quick look at the tracks then: ‘Nothing at Best’ is hands down the best song on display here. It’s so good I could talk about it all day, so go and find it and have a listen. ‘Wake Up the Dead’, from a ponderous bit of strange percussion and synth bass suddenly explodes into a maelstrom of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ mid-career frantic Muse chord-work, while ‘Preparation for Meltdown’ effortlessly moves from post-rock breakdown to Vex industrial grunge crescendo and back again, before closing with a Now Here is Nowhere-era TSM outro. After the intensity of the opening four tracks, the acoustic ballad ‘Barely Breathing’ seems ill-placed, but soon TPT are playing to their strengths again with ‘Show a Little Love’, ‘Someone Here is Missing’, and ‘3000 Days’, the second best cut on the album. Oddly enough, the ‘chorus’ (I suppose) figure reminds me of a similar repeated section in label-mates North Atlantic Oscillation’s ‘Alexanderplatz’. Who cares. It’s bloody cool, and the swooping descent is a rush not unlike the timeless chorus of the Pumpkins’ ‘Tonight, Tonight’; breathlessly exciting and cinematically epic.

The album closes on an acoustic reworking of ‘Nothing at Best’. When I first saw this, I couldn’t believe it- album consistency gone! Why didn’t they end it on obligatory 9-minute workout ‘So We Row’? Why did I buy the Limited Edition? (Etc.) When I actually got around to it however, I discovered a tasteful version of the track that works to bookend the album much in the same way as ‘Emergency Contraception Blues’ and acoustic version ‘The Giantess’ do on the first Bombay Bicycle Club album. Fantastic.

At its best, this is music to fall in love to; dramatic, evocative and emotive. At its worst (very occasionally, I might add), it’s plodding and repetitive, blighted by trappings of modern prog; lacking clear melody and either verging on metal or sub-Sonic Youth atonal musings. Between the two extremes, it’s still an album to fall in love with.