Steven John Wilson (born 3 November 1967) is an English musician. He is the founder, guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Porcupine Tree, as well as being a member of several other bands, including Blackfield, Storm Corrosion and No-Man. He is also a solo artist, having released seven solo albums since his solo debut Insurgentes in 2008. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Wilson has made music prolifically and earned critical acclaim.[4] His honours include six nominations for Grammy Awards: twice with Porcupine Tree, once with his collaborative band Storm Corrosion and three times as a solo artist. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph described him as "a resolutely independent artist" and "probably the most successful British artist you've never heard of".[5]
Wilson is currently working on his forthcoming eighth studio album, The Overview, scheduled for release in early 2025.[10]
Biography
Early years
Born in Kingston upon Thames,[11] London, Wilson was raised from age six in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, where he discovered his interest in music around the age of eight. According to Wilson, his life was changed one Christmas when his parents bought presents for each other in the form of LPs. His father and mother received Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and Donna Summer's Love to Love You Baby, respectively. It was Wilson's affinity for these albums that helped craft his guitar and songwriting abilities.[12] He said, "In retrospect I can see how they are almost entirely responsible for the direction that my music has taken ever since."[citation needed] His interest in Pink Floyd led him towards experimental/psychedelicconceptual progressive rock (as exemplified by Porcupine Tree and Blackfield), and Donna Summer's trance-inflected grooves inspired the initial musical approach of No-Man (Wilson's long-running collaboration with fellow musician and vocalist Tim Bowness).
As a child, Wilson was forced to learn the guitar, but he did not enjoy it; his parents eventually stopped paying for lessons. When he was eleven, he found a nylon string classical guitar from his attic and started to experiment with it; 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". A year later, his father, who was an electronic engineer, built him his first multi-track tape machine and a vocoder so he could begin experimenting with the possibilities of studio recording.[13]
Early bands
Wilson in 1997
Wilson said his taste in music diverged from his peers in the 1980s:
I grew up in the 80s, and it was a pretty bad decade for music. There were some interesting things developing, but everyone I knew wanted to be in Level 42, Simple Minds or U2. I wasn't interested in any of that, so I found solace in the 60s and 70s music that my parents were listening to. And I began to discover this wonderful era, what you'd call the great album era, from 1967 to 1977, from Sgt Pepper through to punk.[14]
One of Wilson's earliest musical 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 English psychedelic scenester Alan Duffy, whose work Wilson would later use on the first two Porcupine Tree albums. Around the same time that Wilson was part of Altamont, he was also in a progressive rock band called Karma, which 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.[citation needed]
Wilson went on to join the New Wave/AOR band Pride of Passion as keyboard player, replacing former Marillion keyboard player Brian Jelliman (another former Marillion member, Diz Minnitt, also played in the band). Pride of Passion would later change their name to Blazing Apostles and alter their lineup and approach, finally coming to an end in 1987.[15][16]
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-Man." This began life as a solo Wilson instrumental project blending progressive rock with synth pop, subsequently moving towards art-pop when singer/lyricist Tim Bowness joined the project the following year. The second project was "Porcupine Tree", which was originally intended to be a full-on pastiche of psychedelic rock (inspired by the similar Dukes of Stratosphear project by XTC) carried out for the mutual entertainment of Wilson and his childhood friend Malcolm Stocks.
Over the next three years, the projects would evolve in parallel. Of his two efforts, 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 Records).
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 Donovan song "Colours" arranged in a dub-loop style anticipating trip hop - won the Single of the Week award in Melody Maker and gained the band a recording contract with the high-profile independent label One Little Indian (at the time, famous for the Shamen and Björk). 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 would need to advance his music).
By this time, Wilson had also released the official Porcupine Tree debut album, On the Sunday of Life... (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" which made the NMEindiechart for six weeks.[17] No-Man also toured England with a six-piece band including three ex-members of the art-pop band Japan – Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and (most significantly) keyboardist Richard Barbieri. 1993 saw Wilson consolidating his initial success with albums from both Porcupine Tree (Up the Downstair) and No-Man (Loveblows And Lovecries – A Confession).
Porcupine Tree, meanwhile, toured frequently 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 well known rock band with albums on major labels such as Atlantic and Roadrunner.
Diversification and collaborations
Wilson in 1999
During the late 1990s, Wilson's love of experimental, drone and ambient music led to a series of new projects, notably Bass Communion and Incredible Expanding Mindfuck (also known as IEM). He also began to release a series of CD singles under his own name.
Having established himself as a producer, Wilson was invited to produce other artists, notably the Norwegian artist Anja Garbarek and Swedish progressive-metal band Opeth. 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.[18]
Wilson has written reviews for the Mexican edition of the Rolling Stone magazine. They are all translated into Spanish. Two reviews have been published so far: one for Radiohead's In Rainbows and another for Murcof's 2007 work, Cosmos.[19] He has also contributed to US magazine Electronic Musician.[20][21] Wilson wrote the foreword for 2010 book Mean Deviation.[22]
Wilson produced and contributed backing vocals, guitar and keyboards for Opeth on the albums Blackwater Park, Deliverance, and Damnation, also contributing lyrics for one song (Death Whispered a Lullaby) in Damnation. In addition to this, he has collaborated on many projects with Belgian experimental musician Dirk Serries of Vidna Obmana and Fear Falls Burning, most notably on their collaboration project Continuum which has so far produced two albums. Wilson is also featured on a Fovea Hex EP Allure (Part3 of the "Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent" trilogy of EP's) on bass guitar. This EP was released in April 2007 through Die-Stadt Musik.
Wilson has also worked with a range of other artists, including OSI, JBK, Orphaned Land, Paatos, Theo Travis, Yoko Ono, Fish, Cipher and Anja Garbarek, by performing songwriting duties as well as performing musically. Wilson is featured on the Pendulum album Immersion, with his vocals featuring on "The Fountain".[23] He made a guest appearance on Dream Theater's 2007 album, Systematic Chaos 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 musician and composerKlaus Schulze. Schulze was an important figure of the Krautrock movement. This interview is featured as bonus material in Schulze's Live DVD, Rheingold.[24]
Between 2003 and 2010, Wilson released a series of six two-track CD singles under his own name. Each single featured a cover version and an original song - or, in one case, a Wilson arrangement of a traditional song. It featured songs by Canadian singer Alanis Morissette, Swedish pop group ABBA, English rock band the Cure, Scottish songwriter Momus, American musician Prince, and Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan.
In November 2008, Wilson released his first official solo album, Insurgentes, recorded between January–August 2008. The album was first released as two limited edition versions, both with hardback book featuring the images of longtime collaborator Danish photographer Lasse Hoile. A standard retail version was released on 9March 2009.[44]
Lasse Hoile's full-length feature version of the film based on the recording of the album was premiered at the CPH:DOX international film festival in Copenhagen in November 2009. The film was also screened at film festivals in Canada, Germany, Mexico, Sweden and United States. The film is described as part documentary, part surreal road movie. Hoile also directed a video for the song "Harmony Korine" from the album. The video was a homage to European art house films, and has been nominated for "Best Cinematography Award" and "Best Music Video Award" at Camerimage.[45]
Wilson's second solo album, Grace for Drowning, was released in September 2011 in CD, vinyl and Blu-ray formats.[47] It is a double album, with the individual parts named Deform to Form a Star and Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye.[48] Wilson also announced his first solo tour in Europe and North America to promote his solo albums. The tour took place in October and November 2011 and contained songs from both Insurgentes and Grace for Drowning.[49] A live video performance recorded in Mexico titled Get All You Deserve was released on 25 September 2012.[50]
On 16 December 2011, Wilson announced new European tour dates for the second leg of his Grace for Drowning tour, running in April and May 2012. South American dates were later added and announced on 21 February 2012.[51] He also won the "Guiding Light" title at the Progressive Music Awards in 2012.[52]
2013–2014: The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories)
Wilson's third solo studio album, recorded with most of the members of the touring band for Grace for Drowning[53] was released on 25 February 2013. Alan Parsons engineered the sessions in Los Angeles. The album reached the top 30 in the UK, and number3 in the German album charts. In October 2012, Wilson announced the first leg of the supporting tour, consisting of 18 shows across Europe and 17 shows across North America between March–May 2013.[54] For these shows, Chad Wackerman (best known for his work with Frank Zappa)[55] replaced Marco Minnemann on drums due to conflicting schedules.[55] The second leg of the tour from October–November 2013 covered Australia and Europe, and included a sold-out show at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The song "The Raven That Refused to Sing" was featured in the trailer for the 2014 film Pompeii. The album finished top of several critics and readers polls, including UK Prog magazine and German magazine Eclipsed. The album was voted album of the year at the 2013 Progressive Music Awards. On 13 July 2015 The Prog Report ranked the album as #2 on their top prog albums of the last 25 years.[56]
Wilson's fourth solo album, Hand. Cannot. Erase., was released on 27 February 2015. It was inspired by a documentary about Joyce Carol Vincent, a young British woman who lay dead in her apartment for nearly three years before being discovered.[57][58]Hand. Cannot. Erase. received critical acclaim from music critics. The Guardian rated the album five stars and called it "a smart, soulful and immersive work of art".[58]Eclipsed magazine described the album as "one more shining jewel in the discography of Steven Wilson" and Metal Hammer awarded Hand. Cannot. Erase. 6/7 and described it as "another masterpiece".[59] US website FDRMX rated the album 4.8/5 and stated "Hand. Cannot. Erase. grabs your full attention from the beginning to the very final note, and that's the sign of a great album".[60] The supporting tour spanned from March to June 2015 and consisted of 31 shows in Europe and a total of 34 shows in North and South America.[61] In September, two special shows took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London.[61] Due to the Aristocrats' tour, for the American shows Guthrie Govan and Marco Minnemann were replaced by Dave Kilminster and Craig Blundell, respectively.[62]
On 12 December 2016, Wilson began recording his fifth solo studio album[63] with engineer Paul Stacey in London.[64] With the departure of most of the members of his solo band from the prior two albums, Wilson handled most of the guitar on the album, with Craig Blundell and Jeremy Stacey both contributing drums. Ninet Tayeb was featured on additional vocals and had a bigger role than she did on Hand. Cannot. Erase.[65]Andy Partridge of XTC revealed that he co-wrote two songs for the album.[63] On 5January 2017, Wilson posted a teaser clip of himself and Ninet Tayeb recording a new song titled "Pariah".[66] In April 2017, Wilson announced that he had switched record labels for the release, with the album to be released on Caroline International.[67][68] Wilson also mentioned that harmonica player Mark Feltham is going to be playing on the next record and released a clip of him contributing to a song titled "To the Bone".[69] Slovak musician David Kollar featured on three songs of the new record.[70]
On 9 May 2017, the album was officially unveiled as To the Bone and released on 18 August 2017. Wilson embarked on major tours of the UK, Europe and North America in 2018 and 2019 to promote the album.[71] For the tour, Alex Hutchings was introduced to replace Dave Kilminster as the guitarist of the live band,[72] as the latter would go on to work in Roger Waters' band.
On 26 May 2019, Wilson confirmed on his Instagram account that the writing and recording process on his sixth studio album was underway.[75] It was expected to be released in 2020.[76] The album was produced by David Kosten,[77] who is also known as Faultline, making the upcoming album Wilson's second to not be produced by him alone. On 21 October 2019, Wilson announced 'The Future Bites Tour', his largest and most ambitious show to date.[78] The Future Bites Tour was planned to be performed in large arenas in the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Poland in September 2020. On 24 December 2019, Wilson announced that his as yet untitled sixth studio album was close to completion and promised further news in early 2020.[79]
On 5 March 2020, Wilson began a teaser campaign across his online channels, centering on modern themes of consumerism, product branding and manipulative social media.[80] A few days later, artwork for "Personal Shopper" was unveiled with a release date of 12 March 2020 at 9am GMT.[81] On 12 March 2020, Wilson announced that his sixth solo album The Future Bites would be released on 12 June 2020.[82] The first single to be taken from the album, "Personal Shopper" (featuring a spoken word appearance by Elton John), was released the same day.[83]
On 22 April 2020, Wilson announced that the release date of The Future Bites would be pushed back to 29 January 2021, due to logistical/creative challenges facing the music industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.[84]
In May 2020, Wilson launched "The Album Years", an audio-only podcast with his partner in No-Man, Tim Bowness. It was very successful upon release, charting highly all around the world on Apple Podcasts.[85] Starting in March 2024 new video episodes of the podcast were recorded and released.
On 22 September 2020, Wilson relaunched The Future Bites with a revised album tracklist and the release of a new single, "Eminent Sleaze", along with the release of a video produced by Crystal Spotlight.[86] On 29 October 2020, Wilson released a video for "King Ghost", the third single to be taken from The Future Bites. This was directed by Wilson's longtime video collaborator Jess Cope.[87]
On 24 November 2020, Wilson released "12 Things I Forgot", the fourth single from The Future Bites. The release of "12 Things I Forgot" was accompanied with an announcement that a completely unique, one of one limited edition of The Future Bites would be sold on 27 November 2020 for £10,000, with all proceeds going to Music Venue Trust to help save UK music venues affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.[88] This edition of the album sold immediately after going on sale.[89]
On 22 March 2021, Wilson announced that due to uncertainty surrounding live performances amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, The Future Bites Tour (scheduled to begin in September 2021) would be cancelled.[90] Wilson stated that he will now concentrate on upcoming music projects, including his seventh studio album, a conceptual work entitled The Harmony Codex[91] that is planned for release in mid-2023. Wilson also revealed an autobiography, Limited Edition of One, which was published by Little, Brown and Company on 7 April 2022.[92] In his 2023 new year's message, Wilson stated that The Harmony Codex is to be released on the Virgin Music label and will be 65 minutes long.[93] The album was released on 29 September 2023.[94]
2024–present: The Overview
Wilson is currently working on his forthcoming eighth studio album called The Overview, tentatively scheduled for release in early 2025. When asked when the new album might be released, Wilson stated,
Beginning of 2025. I work very quickly and I'm still excited by making music. This is just two 20-minute long tracks. So it's a very conceptual, and I think that'll be finished and ready to come out early next year.[10]
On 24 June 2024, Wilson announced The Overview Tour with dates scheduled for May–June 2025 in the UK and Europe. It is his first solo tour since the To the Bone Tour in 2018–2019.[95]
Porcupine Tree started out as a duo of Wilson and his school friend 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 Farm, Love, Death & Mussolini and The Nostalgia Factory). 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 LSD). 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 Delerium label, he selected what he considered the best tracks from these early tapes. All those songs were mastered and made up Porcupine Tree's first official studio album, On the Sunday of Life....
Quickly after, Wilson would release the single "Voyage 34", 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 radio play "Voyage 34" still managed to enter the NMEindiechart for six weeks and became an underground chill-out classic.[17]
The second full-length album, Up the Downstair (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 Maker as "a psychedelic masterpiece... one of the albums of the year".[96] This was the first album to include ex-Japan member, keyboardist Richard Barbieri and Australian-born bassistColin Edwin. About the end of the year, Porcupine Tree became a full band for the first time with the inclusion of Chris Maitland on drums.
Wilson continued exploring the ambient and trance grounds and issued The Sky Moves Sideways. It also entered the NME, Melody Maker, and Music Week charts[17] and many fans started hailing them as the Pink Floyd 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 anymore. Moreover, I regret it."
The band's fourth work, Signify, 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.[97] After the release of the live album Coma Divine concluded their deal with Delerium in 1997, the band moved to Snapper and issued two poppier albums, Stupid Dream in 1999 and Lightbulb Sun in 2000.
Two years would pass until their seventh studio album, and in the meantime the band switched labels again, this time signing to the major label Lava. Drummer Chris Maitland was also replaced by Gavin Harrison. In Absentia was released in 2002, featuring a heavier sound than all the group's previous works. It charted in many European countries and remains one of the top-selling Porcupine Tree albums to date. The 2004 special edition was also their first record to be released in 5.1 Surround Sound, winning the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" award from the Surround Music Awards 2004 shortly afterwards.
In 2005, Porcupine Tree released Deadwing, a record inspired by a film script written by Steven Wilson and his friend Mike Bennion. This became the first Porcupine Tree album to chart on the Billboard 200, entering at #132. The album won Classic Rock magazine's "album of the year" award[98] and its surround version received the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" once again.[99]
Wilson with Porcupine Tree at Arena, Poznań, Poland, November 2007
Wilson started writing Porcupine Tree's next album in early 2006 in Tel Aviv, Israel, alongside work on the second album for his side-project Blackfield. Writing sessions finished in London, UK, in June 2006. In August of the same year the band released their first live DVD, titled Arriving Somewhere..., and started a tour between September and November to promote it; the first half of each show was made up of all-new material. When the tour concluded the band went into the studio and finished recording and mastering the album. In early January 2007, the band revealed the album title was going to be Fear of a Blank Planet (a deliberate reference to Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet) and the concept was influenced by the Bret Easton Ellis novel Lunar Park. The album hit the shops on 16 April 2007 in Europe and 24 April in USA. The lyrics revolve around common 21st Century issues such as technology alienation, teen violence, prescription drugs, attention deficit disorder and bipolar 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 Rock magazine, Aardshock, The Netherlands). In July 2007, the Nil Recurring EP was released, containing material that had been left off the album.
At a European show in August 2008, Wilson said Porcupine Tree was beginning work on material for their next album with an eye toward a release in 2009.[100] This album was later revealed to be titled The Incident. The Incident is a double CD set containing "The Incident", a 55-minute "song cycle", on the first disc and four shorter songs on the second. It has received significant attention and media coverage and the band achieved their highest chart positions to date, reaching 5in The Netherlands, 9in Germany, 23 in the UK and 25 on the Billboard 200 in the USA. The subsequent tour of the US and Europe highlighted a large increase in the band's following, with many shows sold out. The single from The Incident, "Time Flies" was available as a free download from iTunes for one week in October 2009.[101] In 2010 after this tour, the band became inactive as Wilson committed himself to his solo work and other members began working on their own separate projects.
The band reformed in 2021 after a 12 year hiatus. The band is now made up of a trio line-up of Wilson, Barbieri and Harrison. The band's former bassist, Colin Edwin, did not return. The reformation was formally revealed on 1 November 2021, with the simultaneous release of the "Harridan" single and the announcement of a new studio album, Closure/Continuation, released on 24 June 2022.[102]
No-Man is Wilson's long-term collaboration with singer and songwriter Tim Bowness. Influenced by styles from ambient music to hip-hop, their early singles and albums were a mixture of dance beats and lush orchestrations. After a few years the duo started to create more textural and experimental music. Beginning with Flowermouth 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 Björk, the Shamen and Skunk Anansie among others).
On 22 November 2019, the band released their seventh album, Love You to Bits, their first original recording in 11 years.
In 1996, 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) was released, dedicated to exploring Wilson's love of krautrock 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.[103] The project released two more albums Arcadia Son, and IEM Have Come For Your Children, in 2001. A box set of four CDs, consisting of everything Wilson recorded under the name - billed as "an homage and a final farewell to I.E.M." - was released in June 2010.
In 1998, Wilson launched Bass Communion, a project dedicated to recordings in an industrial, ambient, drone, and/or electronic vein. So far there have been several full length Bass Communion CDs, vinyl LPs, and singles, many of them issued in handmade or limited editions.
Wilson during a Blackfield performance at New York, in 2005
In 2001, Wilson met and began to collaborate with Israelirock musician Aviv Geffen, with whom he created the band Blackfield. Since then the duo have released three acclaimed albums of what they refer to as "melodic and melancholic rock." The albums spawned several singles, notably "Blackfield," "Pain" and "Once." A live DVD from a show in New York was released in 2007. A third album, Welcome to My DNA, came in March 2011. Later that year Wilson decided to take a secondary role in the band, feeling that with so much of his time and attention devoted to his solo career, there was not enough left for him to properly fill the role of co-leader of Blackfield as well. He still contributed to the band's fourth album in 2013 as singer and producer. Wilson left the band after a short European tour in February 2014[104] and a final date in New York City on 1May 2014,[105] due to his increasingly tight schedule with his solo career and upcoming projects. In June 2015[106] and June 2016,[107] Wilson was seen in recording sessions with Geffen and Alan Parsons. In August 2016, Blackfield announced that their new album, Blackfield V, would mark the return of Wilson to the band in "full partnership".[108] On 13 May 2019, Geffen uploaded a picture to his official Instagram account, revealing that both musicians are currently working on their sixth record.
In March 2010, Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt, the front man of Opeth, decided to work on a new project as a collaboration under the name of Storm Corrosion. The self-titled album was released in May 2012 on Roadrunner Records. It has been described as being "the final part in the odd trilogy of records completed by (Opeth's) Heritage and Steven Wilson's second solo album Grace for Drowning."[109][110] They did not tour or play any live shows in support of the album,[111] and while the two have expressed interest in working together again, nothing definite has emerged from this.[112][113]
Performance style
For live shows, Wilson plays barefoot, a habit that goes back to his early childhood. He said, "I always had a problem wearing shoes and I've always gone around with bare feet."[114] He said that another factor in performing barefoot is the advantage it gives in operating his diverse guitar pedals. He has injured his feet as a result: in one of his early shows, he ended up with a syringe inserted in his foot and had to get a tetanus vaccine. He said, "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."[114] He later started using a carpet, which reduced the frequency of such incidents.[6]
Wilson prefers to keep a low profile, following the example of musicians like Radiohead, Pink Floyd and Tool,[136][137] but he shares snapshots of his life on Instagram.[138] He shared the news that he married his girlfriend Rotem in September 2019, subsequently sharing the news and a wedding picture on his Instagram page.[139] His wife has two girls from her previous marriage. His family has also set up an Instagram account for their dog Bowie Wilson, named after David Bowie.
Wilson is a vegan[140] and an atheist, and although fascinated by the subject of religion, he is a strong critic of organised religion.[111] He believes in not imposing his views, but to express them through stories and characters, saying, "I think that is all you can do as an artist. Not preach to your audience but just reflect the world with all its flaws and joys." He does not smoke and does not use recreational drugs, except for an occasional drink.[141][142] In a 2016 article he expressed his admiration for Israel and was critical of musicians such as Roger Waters who have boycotted Israel.[143]
In 2016, Wilson was named one of the 15 best progressive rock guitarists through the years by Guitar World magazine.[154] He was also ranked the seventh best prog guitarist of 2016 by a MusicRadar readers' poll.[155]
Wilson was awarded the UK band/artist of the year by Prog in 2018.[156]
Bibliography
2014 Travis, Theo. Twice Around The World: Steven Wilson Tour Blogs 2012-2013 (includes entries previously published on Travis' Facebook page, here re-edited and self-published).
2022 Wilson, Steven. Limited Edition of One (Little, Brown Book Group) ISBN0349135088
Camel are an English progressive rock band formed in Guildford, Surrey, in 1971. Led by guitarist Andrew Latimer, they have released fourteen studio albums and fourteen singles, plus numerous live albums and DVDs. Without achieving mass popularity, the band gained a cult following in the 1970s with albums such as Mirage (1974) and The Snow Goose (1975). They moved into a jazzier, more commercial direction in the early 1980s, but then went on an extended hiatus. Since 1991 the band has been independent, releasing albums on their own label.
Porcupine Tree are an English rock band formed by musician Steven Wilson in 1987. During an initial career spanning more than twenty years, they earned critical acclaim from critics and fellow musicians, developed a cult following, and became an influence for new artists. The group carved out a career at a certain distance away from mainstream music, being described by publications such as Classic Rock and PopMatters as "the most important band you'd never heard of".
Aviv Geffen is an Israeli rock musician, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, Geffen is a founding member of the band Blackfield, he was also the global music director for WeWork.
Deadwing is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released in Japan on 24 March 2005, in Europe on 28 March, and in the US on 26 April. It quickly became the band's best selling album, although it was later surpassed by Fear of a Blank Planet. The album is based on a screenplay written by Steven Wilson and Mike Bennion, and is a ghost story. Wilson has stated that the songs "Deadwing", "Lazarus", "Arriving Somewhere but Not Here", "Open Car", and "Mellotron Scratch" were originally intended for the film soundtrack, but when the project failed to find funding they were instead recorded for the next Porcupine Tree album. The album versions of "Lazarus" and "Open Car" essentially remain Wilson solo tracks onto which Gavin Harrison overdubbed drums.
Signify is the fourth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. It was released in September 1996 and later re-released in 2003 with a second disc of demos, which had previously been released on the b-side cassette tape Insignificance, and a third time, on vinyl, on 9 May 2011. It was the first album that frontman Steven Wilson recorded with the band on board from the beginning; previous albums had been essentially solo efforts with occasional help from other musicians.
In Absentia is the seventh studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released on 24 September 2002. The album marked several changes for the band, with it being the first with new drummer Gavin Harrison and the first to move into a more progressive metal direction, contrary to past albums' psychedelic and alternative rock sounds. Additionally, it was their first release on a major record label, Lava Records. It was very well received critically and commercially, with it often being considered the band's crowning achievement, and selling three times as many copies as any of the band's earlier albums.
Lightbulb Sun is the sixth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in May 2000, and later reissued in 2008 on CD, DVD-A surround sound, and vinyl.
Up the Downstair is the second studio album by English progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in June 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 Staircase Infinities EP (1994). In 2005, it was partially re-recorded, fully re-mixed, remastered and re-released along with the Staircase Infinities EP as a double album. The re-release contains a re-mix by Steven Wilson incorporating newly recorded drums by Gavin Harrison that replace the electronic drums of the original version. Another re-release on double vinyl was pressed on 14 August 2008 on Kscope records. This is identical to the 2005 release, except it is printed on coloured vinyl and the Staircase Infinities disc contains the song "Phantoms".
Colin Edwin Balch is an Australian musician, specialising in fretted and fretless bass guitar, double bass and guimbri.
Gavin Richard Harrison is an English musician. He is best known for playing with the progressive rock bands Porcupine Tree, King Crimson and The Pineapple Thief (2016–present). Harrison's drumming has received many awards from music publications and earned praise from other musicians.
Blackfield is a collaborative music project by the English musician and founder of Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, and Israeli rock musician Aviv Geffen. Together, six albums have been released under the moniker. The first two records, Blackfield and Blackfield II, saw Geffen and Wilson working together as equal partners, while the third and fourth, Welcome to my DNA and Blackfield IV, saw Geffen take on a leading role, writing all but one track across both albums and providing a significantly increased share of lead vocals. Despite initially announcing his intention to leave the project in 2014, Wilson instead worked again as an equal partner on a fifth album, Blackfield V, which was released on 10 February 2017. A sixth record, For the Music, was released on 4 December 2020, with Geffen again taking a leading role.
Lasse Hoile is a Danish artist, photographer and filmmaker. He has collaborated with musician Steven Wilson and his projects Porcupine Tree and Blackfield. He has also designed live visuals for US progressive metal band Dream Theater. In the mid-1990s he was the vocalist for Danish death metal band Panzerchrist.
Fear of a Blank Planet is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling before 2009's The Incident. It was released on 16 April 2007 in the UK and the rest of Europe by Roadrunner, 24 April 2007 in the United States by Atlantic, 25 April 2007 in Japan by WHD, and 1 May 2007 in Canada by WEA. Steven Wilson has mentioned that the album's title is a direct reference to the 1990 Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet; while the former tackled race issues, the latter is about the fear of losing the current generation of youth to various common threats to their mental and social wellbeing, including broken homes, excessive "screen time", and narcotic overuse to the point of mental and spiritual "blankness".
Kscope is an independent record label that is part of Snapper Music, and a sister-label of Peaceville. It is dedicated to artists in the progressive rock genre. The label has released albums by Steven Wilson and his projects Porcupine Tree, No-Man and Blackfield. In 2008 it branched out and has since signed the post-progressive artists Anathema, Lunatic Soul and Ulver, and progressive rock stalwart Ian Anderson to their roster. In 2013, the Steven Wilson release The Raven That Refused to Sing received the Album of the Year award at the Progressive Music Awards.
Welcome to My DNA is the third studio album by Blackfield, a musical collaboration between Steven Wilson and Aviv Geffen. It was released in Europe on 28 March 2011, and released in the US on 19 April 2011, as a digi-book CD and heavyweight vinyl limited to 2000 individually numbered copies.
Storm Corrosion was a musical collaboration between Swedish musician Mikael Åkerfeldt of progressive metal band Opeth and English musician Steven Wilson of the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Åkerfeldt and Wilson began a longstanding musical partnership in 2001 when Wilson produced Opeth's fifth studio album Blackwater Park. The two began writing together for a new project in 2010, releasing their self-titled only studio album in 2012 through Roadrunner Records.
The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) is the third solo album by British musician Steven Wilson, released by Kscope Music Records on 25 February 2013. Each track on the album is based on a story of the supernatural. Alan Parsons, who had previously been involved in the creation of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, was responsible for engineering the album.
Blackfield IV is the fourth studio album by Blackfield, the musical collaboration by Aviv Geffen and Steven Wilson. Similar to their third album, Welcome to My DNA, Geffen has taken over more active duties on the album while Wilson focuses on his solo career. The album was released on 26 August 2013.
Blackfield V is the fifth studio album by art rock band Blackfield. Recorded over a year and a half period across 2015 and 2016, the album, initially intended for release on 18 November 2016, was later delayed to 10 February 2017. The album, the fifth between the musical partnership between Steven Wilson and Aviv Geffen, is the third released as an even collaboration between the two; while Blackfield and Blackfield II were even collaborations, Welcome to My DNA and Blackfield IV saw increased writing and musicianship from Geffen while Wilson focused on his solo albums Grace for Drowning and The Raven that Refused to Sing.
Closure/Continuation is the eleventh studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. It is their first since 2009's The Incident. Despite public uncertainty of the band's future after frontman Steven Wilson's focus on a solo career in 2010, the album was recorded intermittently in complete secrecy among Wilson, Gavin Harrison, and Richard Barbieri across the course of the following decade, without longtime bassist Colin Edwin. With the COVID-19 pandemic putting members' separate plans on hold, the band found time to finish the record in September 2021. Towards the end of the year, the band's reformation was announced, alongside the album's release date of 24 June 2022. Four singles were released ahead of the record—"Harridan", "Of the New Day", "Herd Culling", and "Rats Return".
↑ Häberle, Uwe; Ritcher, Claudia (13 November 2007). "No Fear of a Blank Planet"(PDF). Stuttgart: Voyage PT. Archived(PDF) from the original on 30 May 2008. Retrieved 24 April 2008.
↑ Holmes, Mark (12 February 2011). "Interview with Anathema". Metal-Discovery.com. Nottingham, UK. Archived from the original on 27 October 2015. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
↑ Morten Okkerholm; Robert Bergstein Larsen (29 October 2015). "Interview med Caligula's Horse". rockzeit.dk. Copenhagen, Denmark (published 6 November 2015). Archived from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
↑ Lion, Brian (24 July 2012). "UTG INTERVIEW: The Contortionist". underthegunreview.net. Archived from the original on 27 May 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2017. [...] vocalists that influence me would be Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree [...]
↑ "Alex Lifeson Talks Hendrix, Zeppelin, and a Favorite Rush Solo". musicaficionado.com. Toronto, Canada. 2 March 2016. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2017. Steve is a guy whose work I greatly respect. I went to see him perform recently here in Toronto, and I've always loved his work with Porcupine Tree, and played on one of their albums. Last night was a performance of Steve's solo work, and they were so good, and sounded so great! He has great, great musicians with him, and it was so inspiring to see. It gave me hope that there are still people [who] really care about how they put music together and what it means to really work hard to be the best musician you can be. A lot of that is lost today—pop music has taken over and it's often more about the presentation than about the substance of the music or being a great musician. For me, Steve is one of the strongest artists out there today.
↑ "My Prog Hero: Rob Trujillo". Prog. April 2014. I've waved the flag in Metallica for Steven Wilson. I think when they see him live they'll be impressed. [...] To me Steven ranks with Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails or The Beach Boys; he's capable of anything.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
↑ Prasad, Anil (2005). "The Bears - Collective prowl". Innerviews. Archived from the original on 16 May 2017. Retrieved 16 February 2017. Adrian Belew: [...] Steven Wilson has a real strong vision of what he wants to do and his music has a certain kind of power that's really great. His voice is also very fetching. It's unique and fits in very well with what he's doing. [...]
↑ Julien (4 October 2000). "INTERVIEW STEVEN WILSON / MIKE PORTNOY". porcupinetree.free.fr. Archived from the original on 5 March 2001. Retrieved 8 February 2017. [...] j'adore la production de Steve, notamment sur les derniers Porcupine Tree, et également sur les derniers albums de Fish. (I love the production of Steve, especially on the last Porcupine Tree, and also on the last Fish albums.)
↑ Machell, Ben (22 May 2010). "Pendulum's frontman talks Top Gear and Twitter". The Times. Camden, London. Retrieved 4 February 2017. Porcupine Tree. Have you heard of them? It's such a shame more people don't know them. They're a British band who have been around since the late Eighties. They're fronted by this guy called Steve Wilson and I'm convinced he's one of the best songwriters in the UK.
↑ Tordjman, Dan; Canepa, Florent (28 April 2016). "De retour en orbite". chromatique.net (in French) (published 29 May 2016). Archived from the original on 23 June 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
↑ Sigma; Diggler, Durf (11 February 2013). "THE MONOLITH INTERVIEWS: DAN BRIGGS OF BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME". themonolith.com. Chicago, United States. Archived from the original on 18 March 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2017. It comes out in a couple weeks, but I just got the new Steven Wilson album [The Raven That Refused to Sing (and other stories)] which is so good. I cannot get over it man, it's like... even his last record, Grace For Drowning I liked a lot. You could listen to it and tell that it was a Steven Wilson record; it was a bit more out there than Porcupine Tree, but this one is something totally new and I think it's great.
↑ "Chantel McGregor Interview". Chadwick Media. 29 January 2016. Archived from the original on 16 February 2017. Retrieved 16 February 2017. [...] I'd also love to work with the progressive artist Steven Wilson, as he is probably my current favorite artist. I find his songwriting and production really interesting and his shows are fantastic with visual art and concept videos.
↑ Elliott, Paul (December 2012). "Steven Wilson on chaos theory and rumours". Classic Rock Magazine (Heavy Load). No.178. United Kingdom. p.146.
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