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In the end, I
convinced a reluctant Richard Allen (head honcho of Delerium Records) to
write the article for us. I have no problem with the fact that, as he is
writing about an artist on his own label, he might be accused of bias:
I’ve always been a great believer that the person most suited to any
particular job should be the person to see it through, and few people
care as passionately about Porcupine Tree, or indeed any of the bands on
his roster, as Richard does. I’ve also been a great fan of Richard’s
writing for quite a while and have mourned the loss of his main outlet,
‘Freakbeat’ magazine, ever since it gave way to the full-time occupation
that is the Delerium empire (and emporium) today. This then is as much a
celebration of the writer as much as it’s a tribute to the artist. Over
to you, Richard:
Being involved as I am
with the Delerium label and the band in question does not really give me the
qualifications required to conduct an unbiased interview with Steven Wilson
of Porcupine Tree, however Mr. McMullen being the admirably persistent
bugger that he is finally persuaded me to put pen to paper and microphone
to mouth to construct the required information. I had thought of using a
false name, but after deciding that this would be a rather pathetic way of
evading the truth I decided to come clean. OK, so I have everything to gain
by saying how great Porcupine Tree are and that you should all go out and
spend your money on their CD's now, but I can put my hand on my heart and
say that this is a band that are truly excellent and they have spent a great
deal of time slogging around the live circuit, fighting the ever aloof UK
music press and releasing expensively packaged albums with little commercial
potential. I should know since I have been there, and that fact at least
gives me some authority with regards to the necessary historical
information, which also brings me rather neatly, to the end of this first
paragraph of waffle.
Porcupine Tree began
almost as a bit of fun in the mid 1980's. Hemel Hempstead resident Steven
Wilson, with the help of some school chums, came up with the idea of a fake
psychedelic progressive band that had a stupid name, a string of
imaginary albums and a line up that consisted of numerous psychedelic
pseudonyms. Steve had already recorded with a few local bands (efforts he
would now rather forget) and some of these even released demo's and
commercially available cassettes, one of which was available as part of
Alan Duffy's ‘Acid Tapes’ series. Song titles and lyrics that would later
become Porcupine Tree classics such as ‘The Joke’s On You’, ‘Third Eye
Surfer’, ‘Small Fish’ and ‘Nine Cats’ germinated as lyrical images during
this period. Due to a shared interest in all things Syd Barrett Steve linked
up with Alan Duffy (who later ran Imaginary records) and it was Alan who
provided Steve with a wealth of positively luminous psychedelic lyrics that
he had written over the years. These lyrics became the core of Porcupine
Tree's first project, the cassette release ‘Tarquins Seaweed Farm’.
Recorded in the mid to late '80's, ‘Tarquins...’ was released in 1990
accompanied with a booklet that related the almost entirely fictional
history of Porcupine Tree and the legendary (but sadly fictional)
Incredible Expanding Mindfuck. The tape contained a stunning array of
progressive / psychedelic sounds and textures that was obviously produced
using some very up-to-date equipment. Songs included on the tape were the
epic Floyd like ‘Radioactive toy’ (still a live favourite today), the high
speed heavily effected psych-pop of ‘Jupiter Island’ and the cosmic prog
classic ‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’. It was this tape that Steve sent to a
number of fanzines and small labels including Mr. Bevis at Woronzow,
Encylopaedia Psychedelica, Freakbeat and Ptolemaic Terrascope. Ptolemaic
Terrascope was actually the first publication to review a Porcupine Tree
tape, describing ‘Tarquins...’ as “arrangements that teeter on the brink
of psych meets progressive pomp” with “a maelstrom of snarling psychedelic
sequences” whilst to my eternal embarrassment I wrote a review in Freakbeat
of ‘Tarquins...’ and the short-lived ‘Love Death and Mussolini’ tape that
praised the general contents but not the “long calculated prog jams”.
Anyhow, Ivor Trueman and myself obviously liked the tapes enough to include
‘Linton Samuel Dawson’ on the debut Delerium release, the ‘Psychedelic
Psauna’ compilation album which came out in 1991. By the time of the album’s
release Steve had withdrawn the short ‘Love Death and Mussolini’ tape and
lengthened it to become ‘The Nostalgia Factory’. This also came with a
booklet of white lies and mayhem (some of which is still believed today!),
and together with ‘Tarquins Seaweed Farm’ was issued on Delerium in
individual cassette issues of a couple of hundred copies. These tapes sold
so well that it soon became obvious that a full length album would go down
extremely well, so Steve began work on a compilation of the two cassettes,
remixing and re-recording some of the material and sequencing it to become a
smooth running whole. This was released in June 1992 as a CD and a double
vinyl album. The CD and gatefold LP cover featured a female figure diving
out of the sky and stretched Delerium's finances to the limit. However the
album did extremely well and was subsequently favourably reviewed all over
Europe and the USA. However, it was the next release that really made an
impact. ‘Voyage 34' was a lunatic release combining rave beats with
progressive space rock, clocking in at over 30 minutes in length. The
distributor was puzzled, the press laughed and the single became an
underground classic selling like hot cakes and capturing the mood of the
festi-rave generation perfectly (It was later remixed by cult ravers
Astralasia). The next album ‘Up The Downstair’ was a logical combination of
the first album and ‘Voyage 34’. Combining more electronic based rhythms
with sound effects, samples, and melodic songs it also features
instrumental space rock jams filled with searing electric guitar work and
remains a firm favourite amongst Porc Heads (!) ‘Up The Downstair’ was an
album that marked the debut Porcupine Tree appearance of Richard Barbieri
and Colin Edwin. Richard had been in the well-known ‘80's band Japan before
pursuing a solo career that had made him an acknowledged expert on playing
the Prophet V synth. Steve had come to know him as a fan and also through
his work with No Man, another project of Steve’s that has a more avant garde
pop leaning. Colin was an old school friend who was an extremely able bass
player and by late 1993 Porcupine Tree had recruited Chris Maitland, an
amazing drummer who added the percussion power house required in a live
environment. On December the 4th the band made their live debut at The Nags
Head in High Wycombe and the event sold out, drawing people from all over
the country. This was just the start of many live performances and tours,
complete with Fruit Salad Lights, leading up to the last album ‘The Sky
Moves sideways’, which was the first album to involve the whole band and
real drums. It's surreal landscape was populated with Floyd-like guitar
licks, melancholic vocals, electronic synth and sample mind warps and the
trade mark fusions of dance and progressive structures. The ‘Moonloop’ EP
single which featured the beautiful non-album ‘Stars Die’ attracted a great
deal of radio airplay and it wasn’t long before a US release of the album
which included ‘Stars Die’ appeared. Between January 1995 and July 1996
Porcupine Tree played in Belgium, Holland, Italy, Greece and the USA and in
addition to numerous headline gigs supported Hawkwind, Gong, Ozric
Tentacles and Marillion. It's almost as if the crazy psychedelic tales in
the booklets that came with the first tapes were manifesting themselves into
reality. Porcupine Tree had mutated from an idea into a physical being,
and it certainly amazed all involved as much as it pleased the audiences.
And so, here we are in
1996 looking back over the strange development of Porcupine Tree and a
number of burning questions are still begging to be answered. Being the
biased git that I am I insisted that Mr. McMullen provide me with some
pointed questions to give to Mr. Tree. He obliged and armed with these
deadly weapons I cornered Steve....
PT: Around the time
of the first Porcupine Tree cassette there was talk, in rather hushed tones,
that the man behind Porcupine Tree was a "pop star" doing this
uncommercial-sounding stuff for the sheer love of it. Since then,
particularly with the release of the same material on ‘Yellow Hedgerow
Dreamscape’, the enigma has been dropped and Porcupine Tree itself has
arguably become a commercial success, earning itself mainstream reviews and
radio air play. Did you in fact have an alter-ego before Porcupine Tree and
how much do you think success, at least beyond circulating cassettes, has
changed the band's sound and early vision?
PT: As you know, the ‘On
the Sunday Of Life’ and ‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’ albums were compiled
from the two cassettes that were released in 1990 and 1991. However, this
in itself is slightly misleading since the cassettes themselves were
compiled from a mighty reservoir of recordings I had built up over a period
of about five years. Most of the music was recorded for my own and my
friends’ own amusement and most of it was quite frankly awful and will
remain in my archives under lock and key! When I came to compile the ‘On The
Sunday Of Life’ album I was in the fortunate position of being able to
release an album which was not only the best of that material but also
richly varied, since over a five year period many different styles and
approaches were tried and abused. This eclecticism is probably why the
album remains some people’s favourite - mine included. Following this
generally well received release, I was in a position to explore any number
of the possible future directions suggested by the album. But the next
release was ‘Voyage 34’ which didn’t really relate to anything on the album.
It was still psychedelic/progressive but it also had elements of modern
ambient trance music. So, it was after recording this that I realised that
there was the potential to do something quite new with progressive music, by
combining it with far more contemporary technology and sounds. But that
wasn’t the only reason I went further in to a specific direction; I also
wanted the albums to hang together more and therefore certain styles had to
be set aside in favour of others, for reasons of context. So the last two
albums have been a development of some of the more spacious song writing of
the first album with a more conscious attempt to use modern technology. I
didn't want to make albums which could be dismissed as nostalgia trips, of
which the first album could be accused, but the last album ‘The Sky Moves
Sideways’ really closed one chapter of Porcupine Tree and there is no reason
to suppose that future Porcupine Tree music will not develop some of the
other styles explored early on - in fact the forthcoming album ‘Signify’
may include a track which is a direct descendant of the space pop on the
first album, for example, ‘Jupiter Island’ or ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’.
Does that mean you're
heading in a more commercial direction?
I don’t know what your
perception of what is commercial and what is uncommercial but the first
album had more air play than anything else, with the exception of the ‘Stars
Die’ single - tracks like ‘Nine Cats’, ‘The Nostalgia Factory’ and ‘Linton
Samuel Dawson’ are regarded as some of the most commercial things I have
done - possibly coming down to the simple fact that they are short songs as
opposed to long instrumentals. But my own perception of my releases since
the early stuff has been of increasingly uncommercial gestures such as
releasing a single containing a 30 minute instrumental about LSD and making
the main focus of the last album a 37 minute mostly instrumental suite!
These recordings have not received any air play and I would suggest that the
reason that the following and the profile has built is because of the
uncompromising nature of the catalogue, not because it has become more
commercial, as the opposite is true. However, I think I know what you are
getting at - a certain tastefulness crept in to the production which wasn't
there before, which has made the music more palatable for certain people - I
do like my albums to sound well produced and at times this has made parts of
them a little overcooked and ponderous... I'm well aware of this and the
next album will in many ways break with the tradition of ‘Up the Downstair’
and ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’ by being much less spacious and textural - it's
got more songs, but it's also harder and stranger. Things that sound too
close to the Porcupine Tree of old are being relegated to B-sides.
On the early records,
the Imaginary Mr. Alan Duffy wrote lyrics for Porcupine Tree's music. How
did that come about, as he wasn't previously known as a lyricist, at least
not to my knowledge. When and why did the collaboration cease and what, if
any, difference has it made?
Alan sent the lyrics to
me sometime around 1982 - 1985, before he started his record label. I was
still at school but recording stuff on a home made 4 track and sending the
odd cassette out to the wide world. One of the more peculiar cassettes I
made received a favourable review in Sounds and Alan sent for a copy and
liked it and began to correspond with me, sending me lyrics. At the time I
couldn't really do justice to the kind of psychedelic soundscapes that I
think he imagined, which is why I pulled the lyrics out again when I
started writing stuff like ‘Jupiter Island’ in the late eighties. They were
just too perfect. I used up my stock of Alan’s lyrics about half way through
‘Up the Downstair’ and as far as I know Alan hasn't written any since.
How much of a band is
Porcupine Tree and, how much of it is your singular vision and can you tell
us bit about some of the other musicians that have passed through or
contributed to Porcupine Tree’s music?
For the first two albums
and the ‘Voyage 34' single, Porcupine Tree was Steven Wilson and Steven
Wilson was Porcupine Tree. My friend Malcolm Stocks appeared on certain
tracks on the first album, and on the ‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’
collection. He can't really play that well - he won't mind me saying so! -
but he adds a certain bizarre flavour to whatever he contributes to.
Malcolm has been important to Porcupine Tree in other ways, particularly
early on, because a lot of the early tracks were recorded for his amusement
only - he also helped me invent the fictional history printed with the
cassette releases. In fact at one stage we were going to make the
Incredible Expanding Mindfuck his project and record some albums under that
name with him on vocals and guitar.
Is the current
line-up permanent and is this the band that plays live?
Colin Edwin, Richard
Barbieri and his wife Suzanne all made contributions to one track each on
‘Up the Downstair’. Colin and Richard, along with Chris Maitland, became the
live band for performance shortly afterwards. Things went well and they all
made much greater contributions to ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’, such that I
decided to bill Porcupine Tree as a band on the sleeve for the first time,
thus dropping my own anonymity in the process. For the new album, ‘Signify’,
Porcupine Tree has become a band in the true sense, with all four members
performing on all tracks, as well as contributing ideas relating to all
other creative aspects of the band, although I will probably continue to
write most of the material as well as producing the album.
Back in the ‘70's,
6th formers would gather in darkened bedrooms and dorms to enjoy trenchant
discussions about the portents contained in the grooves of ‘Dark Side of
The Moon’ whilst stoned hippies with pixie fixations would talk reverently
about Syd's Floyd of yore. Twenty years on, the stoned hippies with pixie
fixations are still stoned hippies with pixie fixations and the 6th formers
have gone on to become accountants and city analysts. Porcupine Tree's
music, for me, veers more towards Side Floyd than Syd Floyd, so what I am
getting at is what kind of audience is Porcupine Tree aimed at? Ravers,
dancers, hippies, techno-freaks... those of a progressive bent?
I think music in the
mid-Nineties is more open than it has been for a long time. Regardless of
your opinion of bands such as Oasis, Portishead and Nirvana, they have all
appealed to a massively diverse audience whilst essentially playing what
was once considered genre oriented music. It's possible that a band playing
a high quality album based progressive/experimental music will cross over
to an audience that includes all of the types of music lovers you mentioned,
in much the same way that ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ did. In the Nineties this
doesn't seem to require any compromise. It probably won't be Porcupine
Tree, but as long as we are making albums that we like, we will want as many
people as possible to at least have the opportunity to hear the music. Quite
honestly we, and Delerium, all lose too much money on Porcupine Tree to do
it for any other reason than because we like doing it. Besides, for me the
expectation of existing fans has always been a more important motivation
than appealing to new ones.
There's been some
interesting names credited on the album sleeves. We've had dedicated to
the spirit of Orson Wells, Nick Drake, Miles Davis - and probably others
too. Can you explain the reasons for all or each?
All three of the
dedications have been to individuals who tried to work within the system to
produce something different that might change the system, with varying
degrees of success. I have always admired these people more than those who
choose the easier paths of adapting to the system or operating outside of
the system completely. Of course, this is less true of Nick Drake, but his
work has a similar honesty and beauty that I aspire to.
I've also noticed
that the albums are usually shown as having been "Programmed, produced and
performed..." or sometimes "produced, recorded and mixed". I suppose I'm
old fashioned and I like to think that one of the most important elements of
rock music is its performance, and yet these words suggest that the actual
performance is either relegated to third place or dispensed with
altogether. What percentage of Porcupine Tree's music is "performed" and
what percentage is sampled or artificially produced in some way - ignoring
for now the fact that mixing can itself be considered a performance?
Well, we're trifling
with words here - maybe I just thought one combination sounded more poetic
than another! Everything on Porcupine Tree’s albums are performed by live
musicians - even samples have to be programmed or triggered by someone with
a musical sense. It really depends what you mean by artificially produced.
Are keyboards artificial sounds? The guitars, bass and vocals are always
performed. That really only leaves the drums, which were programmed on early
albums out of necessity, but are now played live by Chris. The occasional
use of samples such as voice-overs, exotic instruments such as tambour,
flute etc. and the odd breakbeat are all pretty easy to spot I would think.
In what way do the
live shows differ from the albums? Should audiences expect to hear the album
tracks reproduced note for note or improvised upon, and are they going to
want to sit down and listen to the music or wiggle their bums and wig out?
The music live does
incorporate a lot of improvisation - tracks like ‘Radioactive Toy’ and
‘Moonloop’ can drastically vary in length from night to night. Also, some
tracks have been partly rewritten and/or rearranged to work in a live
context and therefore differ substantially from the recorded versions. But
our audiences tend to vary. In some places they go bananas, jump up and down
and cheer every solo - Glasgow, Rome and Athens spring to mind - while other
audiences just sit and listen. Generally as well the live performance is
much heavier than on the albums and in some cases our fans prefer us live
than on record.
Are Porcupine Tree
happiest playing in an intimate environment, in a large hall, at a festival
or are they ultimately aiming for the stadium?
Well we’ve had great
gigs and shit gigs in all of the environments you mention - except stadiums
which we haven't done just yet! Some people say that our music suits larger
settings, particularly from a visual point of view since we often use a
large light-show which looks a bit pathetic in a pub! But I personally
prefer to see live music in an intimate setting. Watching a band play in a
stadium just bores me to death.
How satisfied are you
with the way Delerium has marketed, promoted and distributed Porcupine Tree
to date and how closely do Porcupine Tree work with Delerium to market their
music.? Are you involved from the album design stage upwards or do you leave
it to them, knowing you can trust them to do a decent job of it?
I’ve worked very closely
with Delerium on all aspects of Porcupine Tree - ideas have come from both
sides really. It has worked very well since Delerium have grown in size and
experience at roughly the same rate as the band have increased in profile,
so we've both been learning together at each stage.
Finally, are
Porcupine Tree going to stay with Delerium for the foreseeable future or
fall prey to a major corporation? (I can't believe
I'm asking this stuff! - R.)
We have talked with
Delerium about the prospect of a major label, since it’s becoming an issue
now, particularly as the band are losing money in direct proportion to the
sales - ie more promotion, more gigs, chartered helicopters and bags of
cocaine. Joke! But, we have agreed that we will only consider an offer
seriously if Delerium could still be in control of the day to day running
of the band. In other words, if a major label want to spend some money on
the band that’s fine, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else to make the right
artistic or financial decisions.
Well, on that worrying
note I think that just about completes the story to date, odd as it may
seem. The new album ‘Signify’ is in the can, following from the recently
released single ‘Waiting’, and you should be able to find corresponding
reviews in this or the next Ptolemaic Terrascope. The band will be on tour
later in 1996 in Europe and if things go well will release more experimental
sounds in 1997 and develop the full band sound further, which promises to be
pretty exciting prospect. Strange but true....
Written, produced and
directed by Richard Allen
Thanks to Phil
McMullen for supplying the large trumpet.
Editor’s endpiece:
There was some blurring of Richard’s handwriting at the end there - the
word he used might actually have been “crumpet”, but on the eve of his
wedding I thought it best to use some discretion. Anyway, to the threatened
reviews. ‘Waiting’ runs to 19 minutes and consists of three tracks, or
two given that the first two “phases” are parts of the same title track. The
first is a guitar-led tab of psycho candy with voice-over by Steve, the
second a cosmic percussive instrumental with some superb guitar work. Both
appear on ‘Signify’, the latter indeed being one of the stronger cuts on
the whole album - it’s unsurprising therefore that it was chosen for a
representative single. The non-album track ‘The Sound of No-One
Listening’ is a classic soundscape complete with huge washes of
keyboards and sampled radio broadcasts - excellent stuff. ‘Signify’
itself is, as Steve mentioned above, less of a “spacious” album than we’ve
come to expect from earlier works, and all credit to the band for
concentrating on the songwriting - it certainly pays dividends here with
several of the shorter numbers just begging for radio airplay, the
echoing acoustics of ‘Every Home is Wired’, a song with a superb
instrumental closing passage which will probably get faded out by DJs on
the wireless and therefore demands to be heard in the comfort of your own
CD player (or “cup holder”, as the latest in-joke in computer circles has
it); anyway, that and the riff-laden title track itself being two of the
strongest. Ironically however it’s two of the extended pieces on the
album which immediately grabbed my attention: ‘Intermediate Jesus’ is a
sprightly piece of cosmic debris which features some high octane guitar work
and imaginative piano filigrees layered underneath it, and the closing
‘Dark Matter’ is a brilliant combination of everything Porcupine Tree are
lauded for: melodic close harmony work, effective guitar work, clever
electronic effects and a genuinely progressive song construction which
nods gently in the Pink Floyd direction but never threatens to become
overblown. It’s my favourite Porcupine Tree cut since ‘The Sky Moves
Sideways (Phase One)’, for whatever that’s worth. On the negative side,
‘Idiot Prayer’ features a tiresome drum beat and excessive use of the
voice-over and ‘“Light Mass Prayer”’ is a failed attempt at an electronic
‘Gaudete’ for the ‘90s. But for all that, ‘Signify’ remains arguably the
strongest Porcupine Tree album to date and one which should win them the
mainstream attention they’ve been deserving for so long.
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