Steven John Wilson (born 3 November 1967) is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
musician, best known as the founder, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of
progressive rockProgressive rock is a form of rock music that evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility."...
band
Porcupine TreePorcupine Tree is a rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Frequently associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, their music has been also influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven Wilson and Richard Barbieri's liking...
. He is involved in many other bands and musical projects both as musician and producer (including
No-ManNo-Man is a British art-pop duo formed in 1987 as No Man Is An Island by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson . The band has so far produced six studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections...
,
BlackfieldBlackfield is a collaboratory musical group between Porcupine Tree founder and lead singer Steven Wilson and Israeli rock singer Aviv Geffen.-History:Geffen, a fan of Porcupine Tree and Wilson, invited the band to play shows in Israel in 2000...
and
EphratEphrat released their debut album No One's Words in September 2008, with guest stars Daniel Gildenlow and Petronella Nettermalm .The album was mixed and mastered by Steven Wilson ....
) and also maintains a solo career.
Wilson is a
self-taughtAutodidacticism is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact is a mostly self-taught person, as opposed to learning in a school setting or from a full-time tutor or mentor....
producer, audio engineer, guitar and keyboard player, playing other instruments as and where required (including bass guitar, concert harp, hammer dulcimer and flute). He splits his living time between
Tel AvivTel Aviv-Yafo , usually called Tel Aviv, is the second largest city in Israel, with an estimated population of 391,300. The city is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, with a land area of...
,
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
and
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, UK.
Background and early years
Born in
Kingston Upon ThamesKingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in south-west London.It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross...
,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
(but brought up in
Hemel HempsteadHemel Hempstead is a town in Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom with a population of 81,143 at the United Kingdom Census 2001 . Developed after World War II as a new town, it has existed as a settlement since the 8th century...
,
HertfordshireHertfordshire , abbreviated Herts, is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford....
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from the age of 6). Wilson discovered his love for music around the age of 8. It began one Christmas when his parents bought presents for each other in the form of
LPsA gramophone record, commonly known as phonograph record, vinyl record, or simply record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the centre of the disc...
. His father and mother received
Pink FloydPink Floyd were an English rock band who, in the late 1960s, earned recognition for their psychedelic and space rock music, and in the 1970s, as they evolved, for their progressive rock music. Pink Floyd's work is marked by philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album cover art,...
's
The Dark Side of the MoonThe Dark Side of the Moon is the sixth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd. Released in March 1973, the concept built on the ideas that the band had explored in their live shows and previous recordings, but it lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their...
and
Donna SummerDonna Summer is an American singer and songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of music, earning the title "The Queen of Disco"....
's
Love to Love You BabyLove to Love You Baby is the second album by Donna Summer, and her first to be released internationally.-History:Summer's previous album had only been released in European countries where she had also had a couple of hit singles....
, respectively. The young Steven spent much of his childhood listening to these albums in "heavy rotation", as he once commented.
Both LPs would influence his future song writing. He claims "...in retrospect I can see how they are almost entirely responsible for the direction that my music has taken ever since." His interest in Pink Floyd led him towards
experimentalExperimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in North America, and whose most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
/
psychedelic Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles, genres and scenes, that may include psychedelic rock, psychedelic folk, psychedelic pop, psychedelic soul, psychedelic ambient, psychedelic trance, and others. Psychedelic rock is also commonly called acid rock...
conceptualIn popular music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical". Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs...
progressive rock (as exemplified by
Porcupine TreePorcupine Tree is a rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Frequently associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, their music has been also influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven Wilson and Richard Barbieri's liking...
and
BlackfieldBlackfield is a collaboratory musical group between Porcupine Tree founder and lead singer Steven Wilson and Israeli rock singer Aviv Geffen.-History:Geffen, a fan of Porcupine Tree and Wilson, invited the band to play shows in Israel in 2000...
), and Donna Summer's
tranceHypnosis is a mental state or set of attitudes usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a series of preliminary instructions and suggestions. Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be...
-inflected
groovesGroove is the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or sense of "swing" created by the interaction of the music played by a band's rhythm section...
inspired the initial musical approach of
No-ManNo-Man is a British art-pop duo formed in 1987 as No Man Is An Island by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson . The band has so far produced six studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections...
(Wilson's long-running collaboration with fellow musician and vocalist
Tim BownessTim Bowness is a singer/songwriter primarily known for his work as part of the band No-Man, a long-term project with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson.-Career:...
), although the band would later develop a more meditative and experimental
Talk TalkTalk Talk were a British musical group that were active from 1981 to 1991. The group had a string of international hit singles including; "Today", "Talk Talk", "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Dum Dum Girl", "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World".-Beginnings:Talk Talk began as a...
-esque approach.
As a child, Steven was forced to learn the guitar, but he did not enjoy it; his parents eventually stopped paying for lessons. However, at the age of 11 Wilson rescued a nylon string
classical guitarThe classical guitar is a plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones. It traditionally has 3 plain gut bass strings and 3 gut wound silk core treble strings and the modern adaption typically has 6 nylon strings .The basic characteristics of the shape of the...
from his attic and started to experiment with it; or in his own words, "...scraping microphones across the strings, feeding the resulting sound into overloaded reel to reel tape recorders and producing a primitive form of multi-track recording by bouncing between two cassette machines." At the age of twelve, his father, who is an electronic engineer, built him his first multi-track tape machine so he could begin experiment with the possibilities of studio recording.
Early bands
It didn't take too long before he began to form bands with his friends from school and play live. However, the activity which kept him satisfied the most was that of experimenting with sounds and producing the recordings he made. Between the years 1983 and 1986 he began to record material for release. Some of those tapes have recently resurfaced due to the increasing popularity of Porcupine Tree. Wilson describes it as "...a bit like a painter having his nursery school paint blots on display..."
One of these projects was the psychedelic duo Altamont (featuring a 15-year-old Wilson working with synth/electronics player Simon Vockings). Their one and only cassette album,
Prayer for the Soul, featured lyrics by British psychedelic scenester Alan Duffy, whose work Wilson would later use for two Porcupine Tree songs: "This Long Silence" and "It Will Rain for a Million Years".
Around the same time that Wilson was working as Altamont he was also in a teenaged progressive rock band called Karma, who played live around Hertfordshire and recorded two cassette albums,
The Joke's On You (1983) and
The Last Man To Laugh (1985). These contained early versions of "Small Fish", "Nine Cats" and "The Joke's On You", which were subsequently resurrected as Porcupine Tree songs.
Up to this point Wilson's diverse musical experiments contained
avant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and
industrialIndustrial music is an experimental music style, often including electronic music, that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s to describe Industrial Records artists...
recordings, psychedelia and progressive rock. He was, however, also becoming more interested in songwriting and pop music, something that would manifest itself in his next developments.
Breakthrough work
In 1986, Wilson launched the two projects that would make his name. The first of these was initially called
No Man Is An Island (Except The Isle Of Man), although it would later be renamed
No-ManNo-Man is a British art-pop duo formed in 1987 as No Man Is An Island by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson . The band has so far produced six studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections...
. This began life as a solo Wilson instrumental project blending progressive rock with synth pop (prior to singer/lyricist
Tim BownessTim Bowness is a singer/songwriter primarily known for his work as part of the band No-Man, a long-term project with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson.-Career:...
joining the project the following year, and a subsequent progression towards art-pop). The second project was
Porcupine TreePorcupine Tree is a rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Frequently associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, their music has been also influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven Wilson and Richard Barbieri's liking...
, which was originally a full-on pastiche of psychedelic rock (inspired by the similar Dukes of Stratosphear project by
XTCXTC were a New Wave/Alternative rock band from Swindon, England, active between 1976 and 2005. Though the band enjoyed some significant chart success, including the UK hits "Making Plans For Nigel" and "Senses Working Overtime" , they are better known for their long-standing critical success than...
) and which was carried out for the mutual entertainment of Wilson and his schoolfriend Malcolm Stocks.
Over the next three years, the projects would evolve in parallel. No Man Is An Island (Except The Isle Of Man) was the first to release a commercial single (1989’s "The Girl From Missouri", on Plastic Head Records), while Porcupine Tree built an increasing underground reputation via the release of a series of cassette-only releases via The Freak Emporium (the mail-order wing of British psychedelic label
Delerium RecordsDelerium Records was founded in 1991 by Freakbeat 'zine editor Richard Allen and Amazing Pudding founder Ivor Trueman in Buckinghamshire, England, primarily as a label to promote new psychedelic music....
).
By 1990, No Man Is An Island (Except The Isle Of Man) had fully evolved into No-Man and was a voice/violin/multi-instrument trio which had incorporated dance beats into its art-pop sound. The second No-Man single – a crooned cover of the
DonovanDonovan , is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
song "Colours" arranged in a dub-loop style anticipating trip-hop - won the Single of the Week award in
Melody MakerMelody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s-1960s:Originally the Melody...
and gained the band a recording contract with the high-profile independent label One Little Indian (at the time, famous for
The ShamenThe Shamen were an experimental electronic music band, initially formed in Aberdeen, Scotland, by Colin Angus , Derek McKenzie , Keith McKenzie and Peter Stephenson in the 1980s as a psychedelic-influenced indie rock act...
and
BjörkBjörk Guðmundsdóttir is a critically acclaimed Icelandic avant-garde singer-songwriter, composer, actress and music producer, whose work includes seven solo albums and two film soundtracks....
). Their debut One Little Indian single, "Days In The Trees", won the same Single of the Week award the following year. The single also briefly charted and, although sales were not outstanding, Wilson had now gained credibility in the record industry (as well as enough finance to fit out his home studio with the equipment he’d need to advance his music). By this time, he’d also released the official, lavishly packaged Porcupine Tree debut album,
On the Sunday of Life...On the Sunday of Life... is the debut album of English progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in July, 1991. It compiles tracks that Steven Wilson produced and recorded for two cassette-only releases, Tarquin's Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory...
(which compiled the best material from the underground tapes).
No-Man’s debut full-length release – a compilation of EP tracks called
Lovesighs – An Entertainment – followed in 1992, as did Porcupine Tree’s infamous LSD-themed maxi-single "
Voyage 34"Voyage 34" is a single by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Although it was originally thought to be a song for the album Up the Downstair, making it a double album, this idea was later rejected so it was released separately....
" which made the
NMEThe New Musical Express is a popular music magazine in the United Kingdom which has been published weekly since March 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, which first appeared in the 14 November 1952 edition. The magazine's commercial heyday was during the 1970s when it...
indieIn popular music, independent music, often generally abbreviated as "indie", is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels and an autonomous, Do-It-Yourself approach to recording and publishing....
chart for six weeks. No-Man also toured England with a six-piece band including three ex-members of the glam-pop band
JapanJapan were a British pop/rock group, formed in 1974 in Lewisham, South London. The band achieved success in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when they were often associated with the burgeoning New Romantic fashion movement .-Early years:Original members:* David Sylvian : vocals, guitar, keyboards*...
–
Mick KarnMick Karn is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and songwriter, most noted as the bassist for the art rock band Japan, from 1974 to 1982....
,
Steve JansenSteve Jansen is an English drummer, percussionist, singer and composer.He is best known as a founding member of the group Japan, along with his brother David Sylvian , Mick Karn , Richard Barbieri , and Rob Dean .After Japan broke up in 1982, Jansen...
and (most significantly)
keyboardistA keyboardist is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, requiring a more...
Richard BarbieriRichard Barbieri, , is an English synthesizer player, keyboardist and composer...
. 1993 saw Wilson consolidating his initial success with albums from both Porcupine Tree (
Up the DownstairUp the Downstair is the second studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in May 1993. It was originally intended to be a double album set including the song "Voyage 34", which was instead released as a single in 1992, and other material that ended up on the...
) and No-Man (
Loveblows And Lovecries – A Confession). At the end of 1993, Porcupine Tree was launched as a four-piece live band featuring Wilson, Barbieri, bass player
Colin EdwinColin Edwin is a member of the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, where he plays fretted and fretless bass guitar as well as Double Bass. He joined the band in December 1993...
and former No-Man live drummer
Chris MaitlandChris Maitland is a English drummer, notable for his energetic performances and fluid style.After being the drummer for No-Man on their Autumn 1993 tour , Maitland was asked by the band's Steven Wilson to join his other main project, the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree...
.
From this point onwards, Wilson would alternate between Porcupine Tree and No-Man releases. Although No-Man retired from live performance in 1994 (and would not return to the stage until 2006), the band continued to release a steady stream of albums featuring guests such as Barbieri, Steve Jansen,
Robert FrippRobert Fripp is a guitarist, composer and a record producer best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, the progressive rock band King Crimson. His work, spanning five decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles...
,
Theo TravisTheo Travis is a British saxophonist and flautist.Travis received his degree in flute and saxophone from the University of Manchester and has worked among others with Gong, Porcupine Tree, The Tangent, Bass Communion, No-Man, David Sylvian, Burnt Friedman and Dave and Richard Sinclair...
and Pat Mastellotto, and has maintained a healthy cult following as well as continued critical acclaim. Porcupine Tree, meanwhile, toured frequently (steadily gaining credibility as a consistent band) and passed through various overt phases of different musical stylings (including psychedelia, progressive rock, modern guitar rock and heavy metal) while retaining the core of Wilson’s sonic imagination and songwriting. By the mid-2000s Porcupine Tree had become a highly successful rock band with albums on major labels such as Atlantic and Roadrunner, with Wilson’s singing, songwriting and frontman skills increasing by the year. Also by this time, Wilson had become in-demand as a producer and was being cited as an influence by various up-and-coming musicians.
Diversification
During the late 90's Wilson's love of experimental, drone, and ambient music began to manifest itself in a series of new projects, notably
Bass CommunionBass Communion is a side project of Steven Wilson, best known for his lead role in the rock band Porcupine Tree and also of the bands No-Man, Blackfield, and Incredible Expanding Mindfuck ....
and
Incredible Expanding MindfuckIncredible Expanding Mindfuck, also known as IEM, is a musical side project of Porcupine Tree's leader, Steven Wilson, influenced by 1970s Krautrock...
(also known as IEM). He also began to release a series of CD singles under his own name.
Having established himself as a skilled producer with a very high standard of sound engineering, Wilson was invited to produce other artists, notably the Norwegian artist
Anja GarbarekAnja Garbarek is a Norwegian singer-songwriter. She is the daughter of the Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek and grew up around Oslo. She received the Spellemannsprisen in 2001 for her album Smiling & Waving in the open class category. She is married to John Mallison, with whom she has one...
, and Swedish progressive-metal band
OpethOpeth is a Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. While the band has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth's driving force since joining promptly after its inception....
. Though he claims to enjoy production more than anything else, with the demands of his own projects, he has mostly restricted himself to mixing for other artists in the last few years.
More recently Wilson has become known for his 5.1 Surround Sound mixes - the 2007 Porcupine Tree album
Fear of a Blank PlanetFear of a Blank Planet is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling to date, released on April 16, 2007 in the UK and Europe, April 24, 2007 in the United States, and May 1st, 2007 in Canada...
was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Mix For Surround Sound" category. The album was also voted #3 album of the year by
Sound And VisionSound & Vision is an American magazine, published by Bonnier, covering home theater, audio, video and multimedia consumer products.Founded in 1958 as Hi Fi & Music Review, it underwent several name changes: first, Hi Fi & Stereo Review in 1961, then Stereo Review in 1968...
. Wilson is currently working on several other surround sound projects, including remixing the
King CrimsonKing Crimson is a progressive rock band founded by guitarist Robert Fripp and drummer Michael Giles in 1969. They have typically been categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, although they have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation drawing from jazz, classical and...
back catalogue .
Steven Wilson has recently begun to write reviews for the Mexican edition of the
Rolling StoneRolling Stone is a United States-based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.The magazine was named after the 1948 Muddy Waters song of the same...
magazine. They're all translated to
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
. Two reviews have been published so far: one for
RadioheadRadiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their first single, "Creep", in 1992...
's
In RainbowsIn Rainbows is the seventh studio album by English alternative rock band Radiohead. It was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download, followed by a standard CD release in most countries during the last week of 2007. The album was released in North America on 1 January 2008...
and other for
MurcofMurcof is the performing and recording name of Mexican electronica artist Fernando Corona.Corona was born in 1970 in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in Ensenada. He was for a time a member of the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective of electronic musicians under the Terrestre project name...
's 2007 work,
Cosmos.
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree started out as a duo of Wilson and his schoolfriend Malcolm Stocks (with Wilson providing the majority of the instrumentation and Stocks contributing mostly ideas, additional vocals and experimental guitar sounds). Wilson began experimenting by recording music in his home until he had the hunch it could become someway marketable. The material was subsequently compiled into three demo tapes (
Tarquin's Seaweed FarmTarquin's Seaweed Farm, subtitled "Words from a Hessian Sack", is the first album to be released by Steven Wilson under the name 'Porcupine Tree'. It was originally a compiled cassette of experimental music made by Steven Wilson for his joke band he formed with his friend Malcom Stocks...
,
Love, Death & MussoliniThe Love, Death & Mussolini E.P. was a cassette released by Steven Wilson under the pseudonym of 'Porcupine Tree'. It compiles a total of nine tracks of which seven were shortly after released in The Nostalgia Factory...
and
The Nostalgia FactoryThe Nostalgia Factory, subtitled "...and other tips for amateur golfers", is the second album to be released by Steven Wilson under the name 'Porcupine Tree'. It was the second full-length cassette produced for his 'joke' project with friend Malcom Stocks...
). For the first tape, he even wrote an inlay introduction to an obscure (imaginary) band called "The Porcupine Tree", suggesting the band met in the early '70s at a rock festival, and they had been in and out of prison many times. The booklet also contained information about band's obscure members like Sir Tarquin Underspoon and Timothy Tadpole-Jones, and crew members like Linton Samuel Dawson (if put into initials forming
LSDLysergic acid diethylamide, LSD-25, LSD, formerly lysergide, commonly known as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family...
). Wilson: "It was a bit of fun. But of course like anything that starts as a joke, people started to take it all seriously!". When Wilson signed to
DeleriumDelerium Records was founded in 1991 by Freakbeat 'zine editor Richard Allen and Amazing Pudding founder Ivor Trueman in Buckinghamshire, England, primarily as a label to promote new psychedelic music....
label, he selected what he considered the best tracks from these early tapes. All those songs were mastered and made up the Porcupine Tree's first official studio album,
On the Sunday of Life...On the Sunday of Life... is the debut album of English progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in July, 1991. It compiles tracks that Steven Wilson produced and recorded for two cassette-only releases, Tarquin's Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory...
.
Quickly, Wilson would push his music towards a more contemporary area by releasing the
singleIn music, a single is a short recording of one or more separate tracks. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats.-History:...
"
Voyage 34"Voyage 34" is a single by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Although it was originally thought to be a song for the album Up the Downstair, making it a double album, this idea was later rejected so it was released separately....
", a thirty-minute long piece that could be described as a mixture of ambient, trance and psychedelia. This was done partly as an attempt to produce the longest single yet released, which it was until it was later exceeded by The Orb's "Blue Room." With non-existent
radioRadio is the transmission of signals by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
play "Voyage 34" still managed to enter the
NMEThe New Musical Express is a popular music magazine in the United Kingdom which has been published weekly since March 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, which first appeared in the 14 November 1952 edition. The magazine's commercial heyday was during the 1970s when it...
indieIn popular music, independent music, often generally abbreviated as "indie", is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels and an autonomous, Do-It-Yourself approach to recording and publishing....
chart for six weeks and became an underground
chill-outRelaxation may refer to:*Relaxation, the usual term in Hypnotism, Meditation, and Physiology*Relaxation , processes by which nuclear magnetization returns to the equilibrium distribution...
classic.
The second full-length album,
Up the DownstairUp the Downstair is the second studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in May 1993. It was originally intended to be a double album set including the song "Voyage 34", which was instead released as a single in 1992, and other material that ended up on the...
(though Wilson considers it the first 'proper' PT album since it was made as such and not simply compiled), was released in 1993 and had a very good reception, praised by
Melody MakerMelody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s-1960s:Originally the Melody...
as "a psychedelic masterpiece... one of the albums of the year". This was the first album to include ex-
JapanJapan were a British pop/rock group, formed in 1974 in Lewisham, South London. The band achieved success in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when they were often associated with the burgeoning New Romantic fashion movement .-Early years:Original members:* David Sylvian : vocals, guitar, keyboards*...
member,
keyboardistA keyboardist is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, requiring a more...
Richard BarbieriRichard Barbieri, , is an English synthesizer player, keyboardist and composer...
and Australian
bassistA bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
Colin EdwinColin Edwin is a member of the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, where he plays fretted and fretless bass guitar as well as Double Bass. He joined the band in December 1993...
. About the end of the year, Porcupine Tree became a full band for the first time with the inclusion of
Chris MaitlandChris Maitland is a English drummer, notable for his energetic performances and fluid style.After being the drummer for No-Man on their Autumn 1993 tour , Maitland was asked by the band's Steven Wilson to join his other main project, the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree...
on
drumsA drum set is a collection of drums, cymbals and sometimes other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person . The term "drum kit" first became used in the 1700s in Britain...
.
Wilson continued exploring the ambient and trance grounds and issued
The Sky Moves SidewaysThe Sky Moves Sideways is the third studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in February, 1995. It has been compared by many fans to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here because of their similar structure; both albums have extended pieces at the beginning and end,...
. It also entered the
NME,
Melody Maker, and
Music WeekMusic Week is a trade paper for the UK record industry.Founded in 1959 as Record Retailer, it was relaunched on 18 March 1972 as Music Week . On 17 January 17 1981 the title was again changed, owing to the increasing importance of sell-through videos, to Music & Video Week...
charts and many fans started hailing them as the
Pink FloydPink Floyd were an English rock band who, in the late 1960s, earned recognition for their psychedelic and space rock music, and in the 1970s, as they evolved, for their progressive rock music. Pink Floyd's work is marked by philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album cover art,...
of the nineties, something Wilson would reject: "I can't help that. It's true that during the period of 'The Sky Moves Sideways', I had done a little too much of it in the sense of satisfying, in a way, the fans of Pink Floyd who were listening to us because that group doesn't make albums any more. Moreover, I regret it".
The band's fourth work,
SignifySignify is the fourth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in September, 1996. It was the first album that frontman Steven Wilson recorded with a full group of musicians on board from the beginning. Previously he had been recording albums primarily as a...
, included the first full-band compositions and performance, which resulted in less use of drum machines and a more full-band sound. It can be considered a departure from its predecessors for a more song-oriented style. After the release of the live album
Coma DivineComa Divine - Recorded Live in Rome or just Coma Divine, is a live album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in October, 1997. It was expanded to a double album in 2003, adding the two tracks from the promotional single Coma Divine II , and two more previously unreleased...
concluded their deal with Delerium in 1997, the band moved to
SnapperSnapper Music is an independent record label founded in 1996 by former head of Castle Communications Jon Beecher, Douggie Dudgeon and funded by the deceased Mark Levinson from Palan Music Publishing, son of Paul Levinson. In 1999 Snapper broke away from its Parent company in an MBO in association...
and issued two poppier albums,
Stupid DreamStupid Dream is the fifth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in April, 1999. It became the band's best selling album up to the time of its release...
in 1999 and
Lightbulb SunLightbulb Sun is the sixth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in May 2000. There are four editions: the original release on Snapper records, a German 2-disc tour release on Snapper, with a blue flame on the cover instead of the original orange, an Israeli...
in 2000. Both were critical successes and only increased their popularity in the underground music scene.
Two years would pass until their sixth studio album, and in the meantime the band switched labels again, this time signing to
LavaLava Records is an American based record label, owned by Warner Music Group, and operates through Atlantic Records.-Company history:Lava Records was established in 1995 as a joint venture between Atlantic Records and Jason Flom, who began his career with Atlantic Records...
, and drummer
Chris MaitlandChris Maitland is a English drummer, notable for his energetic performances and fluid style.After being the drummer for No-Man on their Autumn 1993 tour , Maitland was asked by the band's Steven Wilson to join his other main project, the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree...
was replaced by
Gavin HarrisonGavin Harrison is a British drummer and percussionist. He is best-known for playing with the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree which he joined in 2002...
. Now with the support of a major label,
In AbsentiaIn Absentia is the seventh studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released on September 24, 2002. It was their first release on a major record label, Lava Records. It is Metal Storm's number 7 of the Top 20 albums of 2002 and number 48 on the Top 100 albums of all time...
saw the light of day in 2002, featuring a heavier sound than all the group's previous works. It charted in many
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
an countries and remains one of the top-selling Porcupine Tree albums by now; it was also their first record to be released in 5.1 Surround Sound, in a special edition of 2004 that shortly after won the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" award for the Surround Music Awards 2004. Another two years elapsed before its follow-up,
DeadwingDeadwing is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in March 28, 2005. It quickly became the band's best selling album to date . The album is based on a screenplay written by Steven Wilson and Mike Bennion, and is essentially a ghost story...
, an ambitious and very cohesive record inspired by a film script by Steven Wilson and his friend Mike Bennion, was released in May 2005. This became the first Porcupine Tree album to chart the
Billboard 200The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling new music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
, entering at #132. The album was prizewinning for the "Album of the Year" award on the
Classic RockClassic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing, who are also responsible for its "sister" publication Metal Hammer. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s, it also includes articles and reviews of...
magazine awards and its surround version received the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" once again.
Steven Wilson started writing Porcupine Tree's next album in early 2006 in
Tel AvivTel Aviv-Yafo , usually called Tel Aviv, is the second largest city in Israel, with an estimated population of 391,300. The city is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, with a land area of...
,
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
, alongside work on the second album for his side-project
BlackfieldBlackfield is a collaboratory musical group between Porcupine Tree founder and lead singer Steven Wilson and Israeli rock singer Aviv Geffen.-History:Geffen, a fan of Porcupine Tree and Wilson, invited the band to play shows in Israel in 2000...
. Writing sessions finished in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, UK, in June 2006, then in August of the same year, the band released their first live
DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
, titled
Arriving SomewhereArriving Somewhere... is the first live performance DVD by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Disc one is a full show from the Deadwing tour filmed by "Studio M" with nine High Def cameras at Park West, Chicago in October 11 and 12, 2005, edited by Lasse Hoile, with the soundtrack mixed...
and started a tour between September and November to promote it, during which the first half of each show was made up of all-new material. When the tour concluded the band went to studio and finished recording and mastering and added the last touches to the album. In early January 2007, the band revealed the album title was going to be
Fear of a Blank PlanetFear of a Blank Planet is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling to date, released on April 16, 2007 in the UK and Europe, April 24, 2007 in the United States, and May 1st, 2007 in Canada...
(a deliberate reference to Public Enemy's
Fear of a Black PlanetFear of a Black Planet is the Grammy Award-nominated third album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released on March 20, 1990 on Def Jam Recordings...
), and the concept was influenced by the
Bret Easton EllisBret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
novel
Lunar Park-Plot summary:The novel begins with an inflated and parodic but reasonably accurate portrayal of Ellis' early fame. It details incidents of his wild drug use and his publicly humiliating book tours to promote Glamorama...
. The album hit the shops on 16 April 2007 in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
and April 24 in USA. The lyrics revolve around common 21st Century issues such as technology alienation, teen violence, prescription drugs and attention deficit disorder.
Fear of a Blank Planet resulted in the most successful album to date in terms of market and sales, and also received the most favourable reviews of the band's whole career. It entered the Billboard 200 at #59, and charted in almost all European countries, peaking at #31 in the UK. It was nominated for a US Grammy, and won several polls as the best album of the year (e.g.
Classic RockClassic Rock is a British magazine dedicated to the radio format of classic rock, published by Future Publishing, who are also responsible for its "sister" publication Metal Hammer. Although firmly focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s, it also includes articles and reviews of...
magazine, Aardshock, The Netherlands). In July 2007 the
Nil Recurring EP was released, containing other material that hadn't made it onto the album for one reason or another.
At a European show in August 2008, Wilson said that Porcupine Tree was beginning work on material for their next album with an eye toward a release in 2009. Consisting of one long 55 minute song along with 4 shorter songs on the second disc,
The IncidentThe Incident is the tenth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. It was released on September 14, 2009 through Roadrunner Records.-History:The band started recording the album in February 2009...
and was released on September 14, 2009.
No-Man
No-Man is Wilson's long term collaboration with singer and
songwriterA songwriter is someone who writes the lyrics, as well as the musical composition or melody to songs. One who writes only lyrics is a lyricist, while one who writes only music is a composer.-History and background of songwriters:...
Tim BownessTim Bowness is a singer/songwriter primarily known for his work as part of the band No-Man, a long-term project with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson.-Career:...
. Influenced by everything from ambient music to hip-hop, their early singles and albums were a mixture of dance beats and lush orchestrations. However, after a few years the duo started to create more textural and experimental music, most comparable with later
Talk TalkTalk Talk were a British musical group that were active from 1981 to 1991. The group had a string of international hit singles including; "Today", "Talk Talk", "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Dum Dum Girl", "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World".-Beginnings:Talk Talk began as a...
. Beginning with
FlowermouthFlowermouth is the second studio album by British duo No-Man, released on April, 1994 on the One Little Indian Records label, and subsequently reissued on September, 1999 by 3rd. Stone Ltd, and in a deluxe format by Snapper Music in February 2005....
in 1994, they have worked with a very wide palette of sounds, and many guest musicians, blending balladry with both acoustic and electronic sounds. No-Man was the first Wilson project to achieve any degree of success, signing with UK independent label One Little Indian (the label of
BjörkBjörk Guðmundsdóttir is a critically acclaimed Icelandic avant-garde singer-songwriter, composer, actress and music producer, whose work includes seven solo albums and two film soundtracks....
,
The ShamenThe Shamen were an experimental electronic music band, initially formed in Aberdeen, Scotland, by Colin Angus , Derek McKenzie , Keith McKenzie and Peter Stephenson in the 1980s as a psychedelic-influenced indie rock act...
and
Skunk AnansieSkunk Anansie are a worldwide multi-platinum selling English rock band whose members include Skin , Cass , Ace and Mark Richardson .Skunk Anansie formed in March 1994, disbanded in 2001 and reformed in 2009...
among others), and releasing a string of critically acclaimed singles. However, although the band still continues to produce material, they never achieved the commercial success of Porcupine Tree.
I.E.M.
In 1996 came the first in a series of albums by I.E.M. (The Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, a name which had also been considered for Porcupine Tree in its infancy), dedicated to exploring Wilson's love of
krautrockKrautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scene that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain...
and experimental rock music. Initially Wilson had planned for the project to be anonymous, but then label Delerium Records published a song on their Pick N Mix compilation with the composition credited to "Steven Wilson" and so attempts to pass off the project in this way were abandoned. The project released 2 more albums
Arcadia Son, and
IEM Have Come For Your Children, both in 2001. Since then the project appears to be dormant.
Bass Communion
In 1998 Wilson launched another solo project Bass Communion, dedicated to recordings in an
ambientAmbient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
,
drone-Nature:The male caste of social Hymenopterans, such as a* Drone * male wasp* male antTo be tired or mad-Vehicles:A teleoperated or autonomous vehicle:* Unmanned aerial vehicles* Target drones* Remotely operated underwater vehicles...
, and/or electronic vein. The atmosphere of the music has tended towards the dark and melancholic, but expressed with an almost Zen-like beauty. More recently Wilson has also started working with a guitar and laptop configuration to create fuzzy power drones. So far there have been several full length Bass Communion CDs, vinyl LPs, and singles, many of them issued in handmade or limited editions (which sell out very quickly) in elaborate packaging. Bass Communion has collaborated with many leading experimental musicians such as
MuslimgauzeMuslimgauze was a music project of Bryn Jones , a prolific British ethnic electronica and experimental musician, influenced by conflicts in the Muslim world with an emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
,
Robert FrippRobert Fripp is a guitarist, composer and a record producer best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, the progressive rock band King Crimson. His work, spanning five decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles...
,
Vidna ObmanaVidna Obmana is the pseudonym used by Belgian composer and ambient musician Dirk Serries. His music has often been described as isolationist ambient and organic ambient...
(on the ongoing
ContinuumContinuum is a music project created by eclectic musician Steven Wilson and Dirk Serries . Continuum is a multi-layered synonym for their collective ambition and vision, motivated by their immense passion for a wide-range of musical styles...
project), Jonathan Coleclough, Colin Potter,
Andrew LilesAndrew Liles is a UK based sound artist, multi- instrumentalist and experimental musician. He has a vast output of recordings that he has released since the mid 1980's....
, and several others.
Blackfield
In 2001 Wilson met and began to collaborate with
IsraeliIsraelis , are citizens or nationals of the modern state of Israel. Israel is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds including most numerously Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Druze, Circassians, and others...
rockRock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1960s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music....
star
Aviv GeffenAviv Geffen is an Israeli rock musician, singer, songwriter, producer, keyboardist and guitarist. He is the son of writer and poet Yehonatan Geffen and Nurit Makover , brother of Shira Geffen, and a graduate of Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music.Geffen was extremely popular among Israeli...
, with whom he created the band
BlackfieldBlackfield is a collaboratory musical group between Porcupine Tree founder and lead singer Steven Wilson and Israeli rock singer Aviv Geffen.-History:Geffen, a fan of Porcupine Tree and Wilson, invited the band to play shows in Israel in 2000...
. Since then the duo have released two highly acclaimed albums of what they refer to as "melodic and melancholic rock". The albums spawned several hits, notably "Blackfield", "Pain" and "Once". The band has toured several times, and a live DVD of their show in New York was released in 2007.
Cover Versions
In 2003 Wilson started to release a series of two track CD singles under his own name, each one featuring a cover version and an original SW song. The choice of cover versions was unpredictable, with the first 5 featuring songs by Canadian singer
Alanis MorissetteAlanis Nadine Morissette is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, record producer and occasional actress. She has won 12 Juno Awards and seven Grammy Awards. Morissette began her career in Canada, and as a teenager recorded two dance-pop albums, Alanis and Now Is the Time, under MCA Records...
, Swedish pop group
AbbaABBA is the name of a former Swedish pop music group.Abba may also refer to:* ABBA , a self-titled album by the Swedish pop music group ABBA* "Abba ", a song by Christian pop and rock artist, Rebecca St...
, UK rock band
The CureThe Cure are an English alternative rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976 by Robert Smith, Lawrence Tolhurst and Michael Dempsey. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...
, Scottish songwriter
MomusNick Currie , more popularly known under the artist name Momus , is a songwriter, blogger and former journalist for Wired...
and
PrincePrince Rogers Nelson is an American singer, songwriter, musician and actor. He performs under the mononym Prince but has also been known by various other names, most notably the unpronounceable symbol which he used as his stage name between 1993 and 2000...
. He has also released some of his experiments in electronic music as a CD and 2LP set called "Unreleased Electronic Music". These are released on his own
Headphone DustHeadphone Dust is the name of a record label set up by British musician and audio engineer Steven Wilson to issue music by his solo projects. Many of them are one-off limited editions. The label primarily distributes music by Bass Communion, IEM and Wilson's "Cover Version" singles...
label.
Insurgentes
In November 2008 Wilson released his first official solo album,
InsurgentesInsurgentes is the title of the first full-length solo album released by British musician and record producer Steven Wilson, known for being the founder and frontman in psychedelic/progressive rock band Porcupine Tree...
, recorded all over the world between January-August, as a double CD plus a DVD-A (limited to 3,000 copies) and a 4 x 10 inch vinyl version (limited to 1,000 copies), both with hardback book featuring the images of acclaimed and long time collaborator Danish photographer
Lasse HoileLasse Hoile is an acclaimed artist, photographer, graphic artist writer, film-maker/director, and cinematographer. Recognized for his unique vintage style intertwined with a modern day twist, Hoile is best known for his close work with Steven Wilson and his projects Porcupine Tree and Blackfield...
. Both editions are exclusive to
insurgentes.org. A standard retail CD version (also including the 5.1 DVD-A) was released on 9 March 2009.
Current activity
Steven has also signed on to produce the next album of
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
i
progressive metalProgressive metal is a fusion genre: a mixture of progressive rock and heavy metal. Progressive metal blends the powerful, guitar-driven sound of metal with the complex compositional structures, odd time signatures, and intricate instrumental playing of progressive rock...
band,
Orphaned LandOrphaned Land is an Israeli progressive metal band that formed in 1991. Its music contains Middle-Eastern and Jewish influences.- History :In 1992, the band changed its name from the original Resurrection to Orphaned Land.Orphaned Land fuse progressive, doom, and death metal as well as...
. During the Porcupine Tree tour, in the fall of 2007, with
AnathemaAnathema is an English band from the city of Liverpool, which, together with Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, helped to develop the death/doom sound, a subgenre of doom metal...
as the support band, it was announced that Steven will mix their new album,
HorizonsHorizons is the working title of the upcoming eighth studio album by British atmospheric rock band Anathema. The album will be mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree...
. Work on this album will start "late spring/early winter 2008."
Collaborations
- He produced
In the music industry, a record producer has many roles, among them controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the musicians, organizing and scheduling production budget and resources, and supervising the recording, mixing and mastering processes...
and contributed backing vocalsA backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...
, guitarThe guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that adapts readily to a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four-, seven-, eight-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen- and eighteen-string guitars also exist. The size and shape of the neck and the base of the guitar...
and keyboardsA keyboard instrument is any musical instrument played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include various types of organs as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
for OpethOpeth is a Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. While the band has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth's driving force since joining promptly after its inception....
on the albums Blackwater ParkBlackwater Park is the fifth studio album by Swedish progressive death metal band Opeth. The album was released in February 27, 2001 on Music for Nations and Koch Records...
, Deliverance, and DamnationDamnation is Opeth's seventh full-length studio album, released in April 22, 2003, following the band's previous album Deliverance the year before. The album was a radical departure from their typical death metal sound and into the much softer, 1970s progressive rock genre...
.
- Has collaborated on many projects with Belgian experimental musician Dirk Serries of Vidna Obmana
Vidna Obmana is the pseudonym used by Belgian composer and ambient musician Dirk Serries. His music has often been described as isolationist ambient and organic ambient...
and Fear Falls Burning, most notably on their collaboration project ContinuumContinuum is a music project created by eclectic musician Steven Wilson and Dirk Serries . Continuum is a multi-layered synonym for their collective ambition and vision, motivated by their immense passion for a wide-range of musical styles...
which has so far released 2 albums.
- Has also worked with OSI
OSI is an American progressive experimental supergroup formed by Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos in 2003. The name refers to the short-lived US government agency Office of Strategic Influence which was established shortly after 9/11 to manufacture and promote pro-US propaganda in domestic and...
, MarillionMarillion are a British rock group. Formed in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England in 1979, their recorded studio output comprises fifteen albums and is generally regarded as comprising two distinct eras, delineated by the departure of original vocalist & frontman Fish in late 1988 after their first...
, JBKJBK is the name by which Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri, and Mick Karn have recorded several albums of music, all released by Medium Productions....
, PaatosPaatos is a Swedish rock band that was formed in 1999 by Reine Fiske and Stefan Dimle , Petronella Nettermalm, Ricard Nettermalm and Johan Wallen...
, Theo TravisTheo Travis is a British saxophonist and flautist.Travis received his degree in flute and saxophone from the University of Manchester and has worked among others with Gong, Porcupine Tree, The Tangent, Bass Communion, No-Man, David Sylvian, Burnt Friedman and Dave and Richard Sinclair...
, Yoko Ono, , is a Japanese-American artist and musician. She is known for her marriage to John Lennon and for her work as an avant-garde artist and musician.-Early life:...
, FishDerek William Dick, better known as Fish , is a Scottish progressive rock singer, lyricist and occasional actor.-Biography:...
, CipherIn cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...
and Anja GarbarekAnja Garbarek is a Norwegian singer-songwriter. She is the daughter of the Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek and grew up around Oslo. She received the Spellemannsprisen in 2001 for her album Smiling & Waving in the open class category. She is married to John Mallison, with whom she has one...
.
- He is featured on the latest Fovea Hex EP "Allure" (Part 3 of the "Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent" trilogy of EP's) on bass guitar. The EP was released in April 2007 through Die-Stadt Musik.
- He made a guest appearance on Dream Theater
Dream Theater are an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Myung, John Petrucci, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, before they dropped out to support the band...
's 2007 album, Systematic ChaosSystematic Chaos is the ninth studio album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater. Released on June 4, 2007 in the United Kingdom and June 5, 2007 in the United States, Systematic Chaos was the band's first release through Roadrunner Records...
on the song "Repentance", as one of several musical guests recorded apologizing to important people in their lives for wrongdoings in the past.
- Wilson did an interview with German
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
musicianA musician is a person who performs or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument.* A singer uses his or her voice as an instrument....
and composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
Klaus SchulzeKlaus Schulze is a German electronic music composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried. He was briefly a member of the electronic bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before launching a solo career consisting of more than 50 albums lasting over 3 decades.-1970s:In 1969,...
, one of the responsibles of the KrautrockKrautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scene that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain...
movement, that will be featured as bonus material in Schulze's first Live DVD, Rheingold.
- Currently, he is planning to record a collaborative album with Swedish
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
band OpethOpeth is a Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. While the band has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth's driving force since joining promptly after its inception....
's singer, guitarist and composer Mikael ÅkerfeldtLars Mikael Åkerfeldt is a Swedish musician who achieved fame as the lead vocalist/lead guitarist and songwriter of progressive death metal band Opeth as well as the lead vocalist of death metal band Bloodbath...
, which will also involve Dream TheaterDream Theater are an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Myung, John Petrucci, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, before they dropped out to support the band...
drummer Mike PortnoyMichael Stephen Portnoy is an American drummer primarily known as the drummer and backing vocalist for the progressive metal band Dream Theater. Known for his drumming prowess and technical skill, Portnoy has won 23 awards from the Modern Drummer magazine...
. According to his MySpace page this is "not looking very likely for a long time".
- He will be producing and will play keyboards on the next album of Israeli band Orphaned Land
Orphaned Land is an Israeli progressive metal band that formed in 1991. Its music contains Middle-Eastern and Jewish influences.- History :In 1992, the band changed its name from the original Resurrection to Orphaned Land.Orphaned Land fuse progressive, doom, and death metal as well as...
, titled The Never Ending Way of ORWarriOrThe Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR is the fourth full-length studio album by the Israeli metal band Orphaned Land. According to the band's official MySpace page, the album has a tentative release date of early autumn 2009, after many delays. OrWarrior means "warrior of light", representing a...
.
Recording studio
- PowerMac G5 running Logic 7
- Digidesign
Digidesign is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum machines...
MixIn professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board or soundboard, is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
TDMTime-division multiplexing is a type of digital or analog multiplexing in which two or more signals or bit streams are transferred apparently simultaneously as sub-channels in one communication channel, but are physically taking turns on the channel. The time domain is divided into several...
system
- Apple
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
EXS24 virtualThe term virtual is a concept applied in many fields with somewhat differing connotations, and also, differing denotations.The term has been defined in philosophy as "that which is not real" but may display the salient qualities of the real...
samplerA sampler is an electronic musical instrument closely related to a synthesizer. Instead of generating sounds from scratch, however, a sampler starts with multiple recordings of different sounds added by the user, and then plays each back based on how the instrument is configured...
- Apogee Trak2 Mic
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike , is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1876, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
Pre AmpA preamplifier , or control amp in some parts of the world, is an electronic amplifier which precedes another amplifier to prepare an electronic signal for further amplification or processing...
/A-D converter
- Neumann U87 microphone
- Line 6
Line 6 is a manufacturer of digital modeling guitars, amplifiers and related electronic equipment. Their product lines include electric and acoustic guitars, basses, guitar and bass amplifiers, effects processors, USB audio interfaces and guitar/bass wireless systems...
Pod + DL4 Delay
- Paul Reed Smith
PRS Guitars is an American guitar manufacturer headquartered in Stevensville, Maryland. PRS Guitars was founded by guitarist and luthier Paul Reed Smith in 1985. Paul Reed Smith Guitars is a leading manufacturer of high-end electric guitars...
guitars
- Fender Telecaster
On stage
- AlumiSonic Ultra 1100 guitar
- Paul Reed Smith
PRS Guitars is an American guitar manufacturer headquartered in Stevensville, Maryland. PRS Guitars was founded by guitarist and luthier Paul Reed Smith in 1985. Paul Reed Smith Guitars is a leading manufacturer of high-end electric guitars...
Custom 22 guitars, Singlecut and Modern Eagle
- Babicz
Babicz Guitars is a manufacturer of high-end acoustic guitars and electric guitars and a producer of innovative and licensable guitar technology...
Acoustic Guitars and Octane Acoustic/Electric
- Gibson Les Paul
The Gibson Les Paul is a solid body electric guitar originally developed in the early 1950s. The Les Paul was designed by Ted McCarty in collaboration with popular guitarist Les Paul, whom Gibson enlisted to endorse the new model.- Origins :...
- Wah-wah
Wah-wah is an imitative word for the sound of altering the resonance of musical notes to extend expressiveness, sounding much like a human voice saying the syllable wah. The wah-wah effect is a spectral glide, a "modification of the vowel quality of a tone"...
and volumeLoudness is the quality of a sound that is the primary psychological correlate of physical strength .Loudness, a subjective measure, is often confused with objective measures of sound pressure such as decibels or sound intensity. Filters such as A-weighting attempt to adjust sound measurements to...
pedals
- Bad Cat two tone distortion
- BOSS
Boss is a manufacturer of effects pedals for electric guitar and bass guitar. It is a division of the Roland Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer that specializes in musical equipment and accessories...
distortion
- Carl Martin compressor
Dynamic range compression, also called DRC or simply compression, is a process that reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal. Compression is used during sound recording, live sound reinforcement, and broadcasting to control the level of audio...
- TC G-System effects processor
Audio signal processing, sometimes referred to as audio processing, is the intentional alteration of auditory signals, or sound. As audio signals may be electronically represented in either digital or analog format, signal processing may occur in either domain...
- Bad Cat Lynx Head amplifier
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is any device that changes, usually increases, the amplitude of a signal. The relationship of the input to the output of an amplifier—usually expressed as a function of the input frequency—is called the transfer function of the amplifier, and the magnitude of...
with 4x12 matching Cabinet
- Bad Cat Hot Cat amplifier
Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is any device that changes, usually increases, the amplitude of a signal. The relationship of the input to the output of an amplifier—usually expressed as a function of the input frequency—is called the transfer function of the amplifier, and the magnitude of...
with 4x12 matching Cabinet
- ESP
, located in North Hollywood, California, is a manufacturer of electric guitars and basses.- History :In 1975, Hisatake Shibuya opened a shop called Electric Sound Products in Tokyo. It provided custom replacement parts for guitars. In 1976, ESP gained a reputation as a provider of high-quality...
Stratocaster (used onstage up until the In AbsentiaIn Absentia is the seventh studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released on September 24, 2002. It was their first release on a major record label, Lava Records. It is Metal Storm's number 7 of the Top 20 albums of 2002 and number 48 on the Top 100 albums of all time...
tour, where he switched to Paul Reed SmithPaul Reed Smith , is a luthier and the founder and owner of PRS Guitars.Smith is originally from Bowie, Maryland. He made his first guitar while at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and continued to build guitars after he finished college, making them one at a time, one a month...
guitars.)
- BOSS
Boss is a manufacturer of effects pedals for electric guitar and bass guitar. It is a division of the Roland Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer that specializes in musical equipment and accessories...
DD-20 delay and RT-20 rotary twin pedal effects
Barefoot performance
For live shows Wilson plays with bare feet. This particular custom goes back to his early childhood, where he remembers: "I always had a problem wearing shoes and I've always gone around with bare feet". He also adds that another factor on performing barefoot is the advantage it gives in operating his diverse guitar pedals.
Wilson:
"I’ve stepped on nails, screws, drawing pins, stubbed my toe, I’ve come off stage with blood just coming out… I mean, I’ve had it all mate, but to be honest, nothing’s going to stop me."
He uses a carpet on stage to keep his feet protected.
External links