Steven Wilson S/D (Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Blackfield, the mixing desk, etc.)

It is quite a lot of paperwork putting something like this together, especially when the acts/publishers involved may be a little less well-known and harder to track down, I'd imagine his wish list went through a few iterations.

There is a Cocteaus song. xp

oops, need new glasses

It's easy to pick holes in this - This Corrosion feels like a particularly jarring selection, but there is much to love here and it goes quite deep. Must have been a mammoth licensing job. Also the first time I have seen anyone pay attention to SLAB! or Perennial Divide in a long, long time, and full marks if it introduces a new audience to the wonders of The Gospel Comes To New Guinea.

get him into the caravan at watching trees! :)

You can count me among those moaners, the last two SW albums have been abysmal

I really, really didn't like the latest, but thought To The Bone was decent. Neither of them get anywhere near the amount of replay that Raven or Insurgentes do.

I think he's got a great ear, his remasters are fantastic and every album he's done has been "good", albeit in kind of a lifeless way. everything he does feels so calculated to me. I think of King Crimson's original run from In The Court to Red and they're all marked with this sense of exploration, you don't know what they're gonna do next and in some sense it doesn't feel like the band does either. SW is really good at figuring out what worked well and why but his albums don't really feel like they're taking any real risks. Even the more exploratory 90s PT stuff feels like he's just vibing off The Orb. idk I guess some people like that and I see why his stuff is all highly rated but I tried hard to get into this guy and thus far it's eluded me.

I like the pop album he did just fine for the most part, and I think TTB is pretty good; neither as strong as Hand Cannot Erase though. Anyway, I'm sure he would have put Talk Talk on here if he could have, must have been a licensing issue, he is a giant fan. This seems like an outgrowth of his podcast with Tim Bowness.

I love that he put Twelfth Night on there, that song absolutely fits. Geoff Mann was a great vocalist. That song in particular reminds me of Sitting Targets (the Peter Hammill album from about the same time)

his remix of Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears sounds amazing

get him into the caravan at watching trees! :)

100% would but probably would want too many £s. more pertinently, can we get you in there?

Haha, would totally be down for that along with fellow brighton crew

will report back then if we are doing it next year. we have a few issues we need to overcome before we'll know if it's happening again.

oh man, if you're serious, definitely count me in. might even play some slab!

:-)

Interesting counterpoint - https://superdeluxeedition.com/news/young-limbs-rise-again-the-story-of-the-batcave-nightclub-1982-1985/

I made a poll:

Best song on Intrigue: Steven Wilson presents Progressive Sounds in UK Alternative Music 1979-89

Regarding young people being into Steven Wilson - I'm in a few prog Discord servers and there are a good number of teens/twentysomethings there who love his work. Not sure if it's his music in particular or just another generation getting into prog, but the young fanbase does exist

(I suppose I count too, was born in 01 and like a lot of his stuff)

Everyone's got their own starting point! It is weird, though, thinking about how if it wasn't for that one No-Man single review back in 1990 I would always have had a much different view of his arc.

reminds me of the other, friend of mine was saying how shocked he was about mars volta london tickets being £65 last week. i said something along the lines of "teens are always gonna be into prog".

*other day

I was really into Porcupine Tree when I was a prog-obsessed teen in the 2000's. I think they have a very teenage appeal. A lot of their stuff pairs a vivid sense of drama and alienation with a sort of "I'm smarter than my peers" energy (particularly strong in Fear of a Blank Planet). Catnip for the kind of teen who loves complicated music their peers don't listen to!

this is one of the best songs he has ever done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmtyvKz8ubQ

That one is alright, but imo “Impossible Tightrope” blows it out of the water and shifted me from mildly anticipating the new one to really excited for it.

It's been several years since I've been taken by anything from his solo work but these are both terrific

holy shit that song is amazing too. I'm normally a massive fan, I don't know why I slept on these for as long as I did.

this is great. 3 for 3 so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRaspkaqR8o

yeah, this is great too!

another winner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCrACQP4AtI

Glad to see your endorsement of this one too. I've decided to hold off on more preview tracks until I can hear the whole thing.

i find this kind of gear talk offputting sometimes, but these guys are are so infectiously enthusiastic. and something deeply comforting about watching people so deeply knowledgable talking with each other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkFCxO1HBp4

Blimey Steven Wilson has aged well

Ha, seriously, he's like the Paul Rudd of pasty British prog dudes.

btw the album is excellent. a real evolution on what he started with the Future Bites. Unsurprisingly prog whiners are hating it and claiming one song is 'rap'.

yeah it's a little freaky honestly

I haven’t heard it yet, beyond the first couple of advance songs, since I was hoping to pick up a copy first. But it seems to have piss poor American distribution, none of the stores around here got a copy in any format and even Amazon is showing early November at best to get it and that’s only from third party sellers.

Oh yeah, check the Hoffman forums
For more tales of fucked distribution for this. I ordered it from his own website and no idea when Townsend are shipping it.

Unsurprisingly prog whiners are hating it

I'm a prog whiner who abhors Wilson's repudiation of prog over the last two records. Like, why make good pop when you can make great prog?

I haven't listened to the new one properly yet but from what I've heard it sounds more proggy than TTB and TFB, which is fine with me.

have you guys seen the insane video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmd-MNCt6u8

wow that's magnificent

I know I've gotten cynical in my old age because my first thought was "jesus, I wonder what this cost"

But I love the video and the song. Looking forward to this album.

yeah the videos for everything have been awesome and they do not look cheap.

I know he gets some flack for doing a lot of expensive super deluxe edition stuff (even while writing tracks aimed directly at that exact corner of consumer culture) but I truly think everything he makes goes right back into his work so I'm okay with it. I mean his records just sound expensive somehow

throwin' that Jethro Tull remaster money around

I had the super deluxe editions of all his solo albums through To the Bone but sold them off recently (except for HCE) mainly because I never really listened to those bonus tracks and I don't have a surround system. The books were very nice though. Raven has a short story for every song (which I never read, and now I guess I never will)

The Album Years podcast with Wilson and Bowness is a lot of fun. Only heard of it when the videos started uploading on youtube