- Chicago Sun Times: recensione del concerto a Chicago

- Progression Magazine 1999

- Guitar Player 1999 - Porcupine Tree: Moonloops & Tech Tweaks

Una recensione del Chicago Sun Times sul gig dei PT a Chicago:
Porcupine Tree, English cult heroes who made a much-anticipated appearance at Martyr's on Friday night, are a band devoted to replicating Pink Floyd's brand of timeless psychedelic rock. Unfortunately a turnover at the club may mean that the gig was the last of the venue's vaunted progressive-rock showcases. Steve Wilson and his three bandmates did an admirable job of mixing and matching different eras of the Floyd's sound, pairing, say, a riff from "Another Brick In the Wall, Part 2" with the keyboard whir of "Welcome to the Machine" and the bluesy vocal of "Dogs of War." In many cases such blatant plagiarism/homage might be annoying. But the Floyd's catalog is one of the most impressive in rock history; the band itself isn't really doing it justice these days, and once Porcupine Tree turned up the volume and switched on the trippy light show, my mind was too well-blown to be bothered by anything. To be fair the members of Porcupine Tree are much better musicians than the members of the Floyd, hence their adoption by the virtuosity-loving prog-rock crowd. Floyd drummer Nick Mason has never shown the light, jazzy touch of Porcupine Tree drummer Chris Maitland, and Wilson is a better singer than either David Gilmour or Roger Waters. Where he falls short is in the lyric-writing. "Pure Narcotic" from the band's fifth album "Stupid Dream" is a beautiful-sounding song, on album and onstage. But Waters, the man who envisioned "Pigs On the Wing," would never resort to a cliche like comparing a romantic relationship to heroin addiction. [gee, what was Brian Ferry THINKING when he penned "Love is the Drug"?-Dean] Say, boys, you'd better turn off the Radiohead discs and go back to studying those Floyd records. Sadly, Friday's was the last major show at Martyr's overseen by Ray Quinn, the booker, co-founder and visionary behind the club. In one of those ugly disputes that fester and thrive in club land, Quinn lost control of the venue to a former partner, thanks to a court decision last week that ended three years of bitter legal wrangling. Jam Productions responded instantly by pulling two prime shows by Adrian Belew and Richard Thompson, relocating the gigs at Double Door. In addition to the progressive-rock showcases, Martyr's, located on Lincoln near Irving, has offered a regular slate of Irish music, local bands and special gigs by touring artists such as a multi-night stand by the Tragically Hip. On Friday night Quinn said that he will not appeal the court decision. Instead, he plans to take some time off this summer with his wife and children (including a seven-week-old) before launching plans for a "new and better" club in the fall.
Jim DeRogatis

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Un articolo apparso sui PT apparso su Porgession Magazine 1999
Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson continues to redefine progressive rock for a new generation
By MARK ANDREWS
Of all the new wave of progressive rock bands to emerge in the early 1990s, one of the most uniquely adventurous has been Porcupine Tree. A brainchild of guitarist Steven Wilson, the band released one of the most polished albums of any genre in 1996, Signify. Blending the psychedelic sounds of Meddle-era Pink Floyd with contemporary influences as diverse as trance, trip-hop and world music, Porcupine Tree crafted an album that was a listening experience to savor, and progressive in the truest sense of the word. Signify brought the band to a larger audience without radio play in Britain. They are a group whose popularity relies almost entirely on word of mouth, and articles in the specialist music press. Progression last featured Porcupine Tree in 1996 at the point Signify was released. Two years on, the band has a European tour under their belt, a very respectable following in Italy, Greece, Holland, Belgium and Poland, and a live followup album, Coma Divine, behind them. They have spent the last 12 months recording a new album, and seeking a record deal. The new album promises to take PorcupineTree in directions previously unexplored by Wilson and com- pany, featuring an orchestra on select tracks. Additionally, Wilson is recording a new album with his other band, No Man (whose career runs parallel with Porcupine Tree), and produced Sunsets On Empire for ex-Marillion frontman Fish, co-writing six out of the album's 10 tracks in the bargain. Recently, during a rare break from his hectic workload, Wilson reflected at some length on the past, present and future of Porcupine Tree and his other musical projects. Over a mug of tea, Steven recalled his original inspiration for the Porcupine Tree project. "It started off as a solo project. It was something that I started doing as soon as I had the money to buy my own studio equipment. When you've got a studio in your house you tend to do things you wouldn't do when you're paying to go into a professional studio, where you're watching the clock all the time. The one thing I wanted to do, because I had a great love of late '60s/early ' 70s psychedelic and progressive music, was to make my own slant on that. "At the time I was in a band who had been signed to quite a big record label and we were doing quite well and we were going on tour. So I suppose Porcupine Tree started as a vanity thing, really - just a way to explore ideas that were spinning around inside my head, with no expectations of even a release. I though that no one else would ever hear it." After about 18 months of amassing a large cache of material in that vein, Wilson decided to attempt marketing it, even if the pressing was limited to a modest 500 copies. To promote his "band," Steven concocted a highly imaginative and totally fictitious biography of the characters who supposedly comprised Porcupine Tree! "When I decided to let other people hear the music, the first thing I did was to put together a cassette just to send out to a few people, and also to sell through a few companies who would put you on their mailing list. At the time I was paranoid that if I was honest about the source of the music, people would think that it was just another guy in his bedroom messing about. "So to go with the first cassette I created a booklet, which related a bogus history of an imaginary band to try and give the tape a bit more weight so as to make people take it a bit more seriously. It was very tongue in cheek! It was suggested that the `band' met in the early `70s at a rock festival, they'd been in and out of prison and they'd been busted on various occasions! It was a bit of fun. But of course like anything that starts as a joke, people started to take it all seriously!" Eventually, Steven's work paid off. He was put in touch with Richard Allen, then-publisher of a magazine called Freakbeat that specialized in reviewing and writing about more esoteric modern psychedelic music. Porcupine Tree appealed to Allen because most of Wilson's early work leaned more toward psychedelic, as opposed to what most might identify as "progressive." At the time Wilson's tape received a rave review in Freakbeat, Allen was launching a psych-oriented label called Delerium Records. He planned to wind down the magazine and concentrate more on producing music as opposed to writing about it, and Wilson was Delerium's first signing. Steven went on to recall how the first Porcupine Tree release was created: He pieced together a double album of favorite cuts from all the tapes he had, which contained enough material for about five discs. Wilson envisaged that the Porcupine Tree project would just about pay for itself and become a self-financing indulgence. He was forced to rethink this approach when the album proved more successful than he had thought possible. "Delerium pressed 500 copies and I thought, `Hmm, it would be nice if they all sold,' and it went berserk from there! A few music journalists who were sent copies picked up on it and the 500 copies went immedi- ately. We pressed about three or four times more copies than we ever intended to, and we sold them all. A CD issue followed. "It got to the point where it was doing better than my other project, my day job - or as well as - with very little effort. I thought that it could be an ongoing thing. I really enjoyed doing it and I suppose it just carried on from there." Porcupine Tree was not Wilson's first experience of writing and recording progressive psychedelic music. In the 1980s Steven was responsible for an album called Exposure reaching fruition. This featured an ex-guitarist from a rather well-known progressive rock outfit. He explains, "I did Exposure when I was 16 and still at school. I was in a progressive rock band called Karma at the time. In the '80s it was much more difficult to finance a release of your own material than it is today. There was no infrastructure to enable you to sell do-it-yourself albums like today. As we didn't have the money to finance an album full of our own material, I thought that it would be a good idea to get other bands involved and produce a compilation album. "By default, I became the person who put the album together as no one else seemed motivated enough to do it. By the time everything was ready for release, Karma had split up and so I put a track by my first proper band, No Man, on it instead. We did a followup album a year later called Double Exposure, which had more famous people on it, like Anthony Phillips of Genesis." Porcupine Tree first received major attention on the Mark Radcliffe evening show on BBC Radio One, where they were granted a session appearance. Soon afterward, the British magazine Mojo featured them in their "Mojo Rising" column, citing them as one of the most promising and creative bands of the mid-'90s, bringing them to a wider audience. It has taken eight years for Porcupine Tree to reach the status of a leading progressive band of the `90s. But Steven is undaunted by the time it has taken to get his musical vision to a wider audience. "It's always been a slow process of building, and it's never shown any signs of going down in terms of sales, ir's always been climbing steadily. That encourages me to keep on going. The first album sold quite well, we did another one which got better reviews and sold more, and then I decided to get a proper band together so I could play the material live. "That happened around the time of the third album. I had such a good response to the albums that I couldn't avoid not playing the material live anymore. At that point it became essential that the material was performed live so we could keep growing. The band was just a temporary thing to do a few shows and see how it went. Again, by default, the band became a band as opposed to three guys I was paying to play my music." Porcupine Tree's breakout album from 1995, The Sky Moves Sideways, was Wilson's first legitimately group-oriented effort. Its studio followup, Signify, took the democratically band-oriented approach a step further: Everyone in the band was involved from the first stages of writing through to the end. Wilson considers Signify "a good prototype," and said he expects the next disc to be a much better and even more definitive "group" statement. Does Steven consider Signify to be a crucial turning point in the fortunes of Porcupine Tree? "I would agree that it is the best album out of the first four releases, but I would say that the forthcoming album is the best one. As for being the most adventurous, I would say it was more adventurous than the album that preceded it. "The earlier albums were adventurous, although not necessarily good. They were almost wilfully indulgent. But in terms of a cohesive band sound and an original, modern `progressive' sound, Signify would be year zero for us." Signify, in this writer's humble estimation, was probably the most important CD release by any modern progressive artist in the '90s. The deft combination of musical influences led to a stunningly cohesive work, ominous in tone and loaded with powerfully shifting textures and dynamics. Was it a deliberate decision to fuse so many different styles when it came to recording albums? Steven paused and pondered the question before replying. "To answer `yes' would suggest it was contrived to be that way. It's simply that the music is a genuine reflection of the stuff I listen to. To say that I sat down and decided I was going to have a bit of this and a bit of that and fuse it all together isn't true. "It's literally what the sum of the influences become when we get together. When a band has been together for a while, you gradually transcend your influences and you develop a sound." There can be no doubt that earlier albums were a huge nod in the direction of Pink Floyd as far as influences were concerned. But with Signify, Wilson broke away from those influences and created a style that can only be described as his own. Steven said he is most gratified when people refer to the Porcupine Tree "sound" without reference to Pink Floyd. To him, that shows the band has finally done something right. "I now see reviews of other bands where the comparison is being made with Porcupine Tree! That, I think, shows that we now have a sound of our own. As I said, it was never contrived." The innovations found on earlier albums by Porcupine Tree were marred by constant critical comparisons with Pink Floyd. Perhaps unfairly so, as by the time of The Sky Moves Sideways, Steven had certainly begun to fuse his influences and found his own musical identity. In the final analysis, he has mixed feelings about the Floyd comparisons. "It was nice to begin with as they are a fantastic band, and they were very important to me when I was younger. I thought they were fabulous. I put it down to two things, really: Firstly, there weren't many bands who sounded like Pink Floyd before us, where there are many more who have sounded like the Beatles or Genesis. For me it's not an obvious sound. It's just a certain approach to making records, the fact that our tracks were designed to segue, the fact that we used dynamics. There are a lot of ambient sections juxtaposed with loud, progressive sections, combined with our use of sound effects. "Yes, that's the sort of thing that Floyd do. But if you analyze the material and the songs themselves, taking them out of context, the only thing that really is like Floyd is my guitar style occasionally veers towards the epic, Glimour-esque sound. I can't deny that I was very influenced by him, although I think I was just as much influenced by Robert Fripp. "I think it's very easy to copy the Pink Floyd blueprint, because there was nothing obviously different about the way they played their instruments, with the possible exception of David Gilmour. They were all limited musically, as indeed am I. Bands like Genesis or Yes have a very technical and obvious approach to constructing their songs. "You could analyze what they did and copy it. With Pink Floyd they wrote very simple blues-based songs most of the time, but it was the sound and their state of mind. It was the way that their albums were constructed. I think that Porcupine Tree adopted a similar approach by default, as I had listened to so much of their music. Where Porcupine Tree are now doesn't really compare to Floyd." While on the subject of influences, Steven has very strong views on the work and stylistic approach of other, modern progressive rock acts. Other new bands in the progressive rock genre, he said, sound as through they've listened to perhaps two or three albums in musical history. Wilson holds that ultimately, every band is the sum of its influences - it's just a question of how interesting those influences are. "I think in Porcupine Tree, our influences are slightly more eclectic than most. Maybe that's a bad thing. I don't think it is, but perhaps other people may just want to hear bands who copy the Beatles!" "Well, I've got a CD collection which ranges from jazz to avant garde to classical, from folk music to country, to psychedelic to minimalist synthesiser music. The point is that with Porcupine Tree, a lot has gone into the melting pot. We are perceived in certain circles to be a progressive rock band, whatever that means. I receive loads of CDs and demos by bands at gigs, and they basically make that kind of music that is in the early Genesis and Yes vein. "I hate that new wave ['70s-styled prog-rock] kind of music. They obviously assume that I must love that approach, and I hate it! I don't quite understand why, as we don't make any music like that, as far as I can hear. I don't like that kind of thing at all, but I have a great love of the original wave of progressive bands. What I like about the original bands is that they were all so completely different. "Jethro Tull were influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and Roland Kirk-style jazz. A band like Pink Floyd came from a blues background. Genesis came from a much more pastoral English folk background. They were all so different. For me, if you could call that whole genre 'progressive' music, then that's great. That is wide and eclectic. "For me, an equivalent band in the `90s playing `progressive' music would therefore be taking on influences from trip-hop, trance, world music and should bring anything that's going on now into play. The original bands like King Crimson and Floyd did that. They fused all these styles together to make progressive, or art-rock. "Sampling has revolutionized music, and there's a lot of sampling in Porcupine Tree. I'd say that there is as much an influence from technology as there is from other bands. I love good music of any style. I like a lot of weird shit, basically!" As noted earlier, by the time they came to record The Sky Moves Sideways in 1995, Porcupine Tree had become a real band. Colin Edwin (an old school friend of Wilson's) and Richard Barbieri (of '80s band Japan, which also featured vocalist David Sylvian), were present on bass guitar and keyboards, respectively, on the 1993 release Up The Downstair. For The Sky Moves Sideways, Wilson enlisted the services of drummer Chris Maitland to complete the lineup, deeming use of programmed drums too limiting. Steven explained how he chose the musicians who gave Porcupine Tree a new dimension. "They were all people I knew already. I'd worked with every- one in various projects over the years. It was really a case of reaching the point where I had to play live, and picking the people I thought would be most sympathetic to what I was doing. I wouldn't have chosen anybody to play in the band who wasn't at least as interested as me in creating a `classic rock' sound. "I've been involved in lots of other things that had a much more contemporary style, but this was something that I knew any musicians had to have an appreciation of timeless rock music. I specifically chose people who I knew would be interested in that approach, but who also would want to transcend it in some way. I think it was the easiest band I've ever had to put together!" Was the transition from a studio-based, mainly solo project to a real live band a difficult one to make? Wilson said it was surprisingly easy. He anticipated it would be difficult, but credits the skill and professionalism of his hand-picked bandmates for easing the transition from studio to stage. The Coma Divine album (recorded live in Rome in March, 1997), features new versions of songs from Porcupine Tree's earlier days. Songs Wilson recorded on his own, such as "Radioactive Toy," were seen and heard in a new and improved light. He attributed this to the contributions of Edwin, Barbieri and Maitland. Steven explained that the band had a very mixed following in Europe. It enjoyed unexpected success in Italy and Greece, but had a more muted reception in other territories. It's very odd that in certain countries, for whatever reason, our sound seems to appeal. In other places, like Germany for example, we've done absolutely nothing. We just cannot get in there at all. People keep saying to me that in Germany, classic rock does really well, and you'd do well. But we've done nothing! "In Italy, Greece and Poland and even in certain European towns, we're successful, but it can be regional. In the U.K. our popularity is regional. In the Midlands we're playing clubs and selling them out every night, then we would go down to the South Coast and we couldn't get arrested! It's very odd!" Wilson assumed that the hot and cold spots reflect local radio support - or a lack thereof. Porcupine Tree's warm response in Rome can be traced to a large radio station that "played our music all the time from day one." When the band finally arrived there in concert, it had a sizeable following and easily sold out 2,000-seat theatres. In Britain, where the group gets little if no radio support, its had to build up by word of mouth. The lack of radio airplay is a situation that Steven finds frustrating. "I't's only natural that any musician who loves and believes in what they're doing wants people to hear it. It's not about fame, and I think that is a mistake a lot of people make. They make records because they want to be rich and famous. It's only natural to feel that you want lots of people to hear something you think is great. That's why so many bands get ripped off; they're so desperate to make records. But it is frustrating not to get the radio support in your own country." Despite the lack of airplay, Porcupine Tree's support continues to grow - something Wilson finds encouraging. "Our following has always been growing, but its been painfully slow. I'm about to release the fifth studio album under the name of Porcupine Tree, the second as a fully-fledged band. That is quite a long time to still be building your following. We're in an industry where nowadays, bands are expected to peak on their second or third album. I think i'ts a very bad thing that the industry conditions bands to peak after two or three albums, but that's the way it is. "We haven't done that, and I think in the long term that will be a positive thing. A good example of that is REM, who didn't peak until their sixth or seventh album. Once they had broken through there was a massive back catalogue for people to explore and there was a history there to latch onto. "The people in Porcupine Tree are more experienced, they're more mature and they've been through some shitty periods, but they're healthily cynical. I like to think that we're all a bit older and wiser!" The ever-increasing success of Porcupine Tree has meant the band has had to look elsewhere for a record company to release and promote their new album. The sheer size of Signify stretched the indepen- dent Delerium's resources to the limit. The bottom line, Wilson said, is that reaching a larger audience requires full-page ads in the music press, poster campaigns, videos and the capacity to produce and release singles. "It's all bullshit, but it has to be done. I would love to think that I could release an album into the world and that it would sell a million copies, just because people liked it. It's very naive of course, because basically it's about building up your profile. "With the new album we sat down and said, `We want to go to the next level again,' and Delerium said they couldn't afford to do it. There were other things too, like I wanted a full orchestra on the new album, and all those things combined meant it was unavoidable and I had to go to another label." As mentioned earlier, Wilson's other band, No Man, also remains active. Does Steven feel that No Man, which is very different stylistically, comfortably run hand in hand with Porcupine Tree? "No Man have very much complimented Porcupine Tree, because it is much more contemporary and at the same time it's more epic. It started out as basically a pop band. We were signed to a very 'hip' independent label and we were making quite commercial pop music with an edge. That didn't go too well and we moved more and more into experimental territory. "The last album we made, Wild Opera, was pretty much a trip- hop effort, because we got really into things like Portishead and Tricky. We've just done another album, which is completely different again. It's very orchestral and organic. People have been comparing it to Blue Nile and stuff like that. No Man have always been very mellow, whereas Porcupine Tree have always been a rock band with extreme rock tendencies. No Man make very understated and subtle music. No Man are also about to do bigger deal for the next album." No Man also has featured the sound and presence of a legendary figure in the progressive rock world. On the Flowermouth album, a certain Mr. Robert Fripp of Dorset, England guested as guitarist. How did Steven get Fripp to participate? "We asked him!" laughs Steven. "We used a sample of his playing and we sent him a tape to clear the sample, and he liked it. He suggested playing it for real, rather than use a sample." The experience of working with Fripp was obviously a special one for Steven, who lauded the elder prog statesman's dedication. "He's still obviously very much exploring his art and still very much excited by music. That's so unusual for a musician at that stage in their career to be excited by moving on. I only wish that Dave Gilmour was still as excited about the prospect of making new music. Robert is, and you can hear it in his art. You can tell he's still interested in giving his all." For most musicians two ongoing projects would be more than enough, but not for Steven Wilson. He has yet another vehicle in development called Bass Communion, which is purely textural and ambient music. Wilson said he always has questioned musicians who commit all their musical resources to one project. "For me, that would be so unsatisfactory. That's probably because I listen to so many types of music. You can't really put every- thing into one project, because it would be so ludicrously confusing and eclectic. I suppose Frank Zappa managed it, though! I like to work with different people, and for me that seems to be the healthiest way to approach being a musician. It's cost effective, too! If you've got enough going on you don't have to make any one thing obvious and commercial to make a living out of it." Back to Porcupine Tree: Steven spoke of his plans for the band to tour after the new album's release. Dates are already being confirmed for what promises to be the band's biggest tour ever. Stops include the U.K.; probably five or six shows in small theaters. They'll play Greece, Poland, Belgium and Holland again. Also on the itinerary is a handful of American dates capped by a headline performance at the prestigious Progfest festival in San Francisco on May 30. "The reaction in America was really good. I think we only did one showcase in New York, which was full of media people and journalists, and that went well. The only show we did for a paying public was in Baltimore and it was a progressive rock festival [Progscape '96]. We played with some of the old-school progressives and the audience were quite partisan. It would be interesting to do a more coast-to-coast thing next time." Porcupine Tree's new album will be called Stupid Dream, and should be out in the U.K. by the time you read this. An American distribution deal was not set at press time. The album will be followed by release of "Piano Lessons" as a single, with "Ambu- lance Chasing" and "Wake as Gun" as additional tracks on the CD single. "Piano Lessons" is, said Steven, "The most psychedelic Porcupine Tree recording since the early days. The band will be shooting a suitably bizarre promotional film to accompany this warped pop song." The new album will carry the banner of the band's own Kaleidoscope Records label. Kaleidoscope is financed by Snapper Music, a British label which has done much to promote old and new progressive rock bands. Recent releases include the Ozric Tentacles back catalogue, a PFM double-CD set of previously unissued live recordings from the 1970s, and a limited-edition album of The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow concept recorded live at Abbey Road Studios, with contributions from David Gilmour and Arthur Brown. Wilson finalized the deal with Snapper only a few days before Christmas.

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Un Articolo da Guitar Player
Porcupine Tree: Moonloops & Tech Tweaks
"The beauty of producing records is taking the listener on a journey" says Steven Wilson, guitarist, singer and auteur behind British tech- no-rock band Porcupine Tree. "The idea is to move through different moods, textures and sounds, always investing whatever you do with your own personality" Wilson's epic space rock sojourns-finally released in the States on The Sky Moves Sideways [CNS]-wander a varied compositional landscape of programmed drums, sampled beats, digitally edited band im- provisations and '60s-tinged acoustic balladeer- ing. Though Porcupine Tree's loping cadences, astral-plane lyrics and tasteful overdriven leads strongly recall Dark Side of the Moon-era David Gilmour, it's a comparison Wilson has heard just about enough of. "It really pisses me off," huffs the normally soft-spoken studio fiend. "I'm a massive fan of Robert Fripp, but I don't think there's much of that influence in my playing at all. I'm also in- fluenced by Gilmour, and I suppose there's much more of him in my playing. The British press usually just says we're a Pink Floyd copy" Floyd, however, never built a piece of music on a super-funky sample of "Aida" from Miles Davis's The Man With the Horn like Wilson did on "Dislocated Day" "That groove was crying out to be looped and sampled," Wilson says, "but I don't suppose we are the kind of project you'd imagine doing that. If Portishead had used that beat, you'd immediately assume that it was a loop, but because we're supposed to be a rock band, it's perhaps a bit less obvious." A loyal Stratocasterite, Wilson punishes the signal from his Fenix Strat copy in various ways For the warbling Eastern violin-like solo tone on "Wire the Drum," he first overdrove the signal through a mixing board to give it "fizz," then transferred it to 2-track tape, where fragments were spliced and respliced backward for a bizarre aural patchwork. Graceful use of wah- wah and volume pedal in conjunction with digital delays and savvy equalization produced the gently billowing clean-toned droplets on "The Colour of Air." But though his technical smarts extend to digital editing and sampling, Wilson is careful to keep his guitar playing where he feels it belongs: in his hands. "I avoid having a piece of music that's built entirely on samples or synthetics," he notes. "I try to keep the scrappiness of the guitar on top, because that's what gives it the human element".

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