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".
Steven John Wilson 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 6 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. 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".
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.
John Wesley Dearth III is an American guitarist and singer.
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.
No-Man are an English art pop duo, formed in 1987 as No Man Is an Island (Except the Isle of Man) by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. The band has so far produced seven studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections (most notably, 2006's career retrospective, All the Blue Changes). The band was once lauded as "conceivably the most important English group since The Smiths" by Melody Maker music newspaper, and a 2017 article of Drowned in Sound described them as "probably the most underrated band of the last 25 years".
Rockpalast is a live album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, named after the eponymous music festival and TV show, it was recorded at on 19 November 2005 at the Live Music Hall in Cologne, Germany. It was also filmed for a Rockpalast TV special, but not all songs made the broadcast. It is only available to download on the band's official website, and cannot be purchased in stores. The performance relies almost entirely on Deadwing and In Absentia material, with only one older song making the set list. The performances of "Futile" and "Radioactive Toy" were later included as bonus material on the Arriving Somewhere... DVD.
Arriving Somewhere... is the first live performance DVD by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. Disc one is a full show from the Deadwing tour filmed by "Studio M" with nine High Def cameras at Park West, Chicago on 11 and 12 October 2005, edited by Lasse Hoile, with the soundtrack mixed in stereo and 5.1 surround sound by Steven Wilson, and mastered by Darcy Proper. Disc two includes live performances on the German television show Rockpalast, a promotional video for "Lazarus", the live films used as the backdrop for three songs, Gavin Harrison's "Cymbal Song", and a photo gallery with over 100 images. The soundtrack to the DVD is available in FLAC and MP3 formats from the band's download store since April 2007. This audio edition is in the top 10 of the "Top Albums of 2007" chart of Rate Your Music website. The DVD was re-released under Kscope record label on 21 April 2008 the same day of the regular release for the DVD-A edition of Lightbulb Sun. In March 2018, Blu-ray and 2CD set was released.
Blackfield is a collaborative music project by the English musician and founder of Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, and Israeli rock singer 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.
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".
"Fear of a Blank Planet" is a Porcupine Tree song released in 2007. It appears as the first track on the album of the same name.
Nil Recurring is an EP by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released on 17 September 2007 through the band's online store. The standard version of the mini-album is composed of four tracks written during the Fear of a Blank Planet recording sessions and was completed over the summer of 2007. The EP's title, which stems from the opening instrumental track on the EP, was actually derived from an unreleased demo written during the Fear of a Blank Planet recording sessions, called "Always Recurring". Although the band never formally released the song, lyrical and melodic elements of the track were reused in the closing piece of the EP, "What Happens Now?".
We Lost the Skyline is a live recording by Porcupine Tree, recorded during an in-store performance at Park Avenue CDs in Orlando, Florida on 4 October 2007, with 200 fans in attendance. Although it was originally planned that the full band would play, lack of space dictated that only the two guitarists/singers Steven Wilson and John Wesley did. This one-off performance was captured by a remote recording facility and the complete 8 song, 33 minute show is now being released in a mail order only CD, but the band are currently negotiating a low-key release for the CD through a number of independent stores in the USA that have supported Porcupine Tree over the last few years. However, the CD was released in Poland in small quantity.
Ilosaarirock is a live album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released in March 2009. It was sent out only to members of the "Residents of a Blank Planet" ticketing club and is not commercially available. It was recorded at the Ilosaarirock Festival in Finland on 14 July 2007, and is considered by the band to be one of the best concerts from the "Tour of a Blank Planet". It includes the band's complete performance remixed from the multitrack recording made by national Finnish radio. Although it contains a few familiar favorites, most of the concert consists of tracks from Fear of a Blank Planet. This was the first time that live versions of the Fear of a Blank Planet songs have been officially released. Due to a fault with the mastering on the first manufacturing run, a corrected replacement CD was also included inside the package.
The Incident is the tenth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. It was released as a double album on 14 September 2009 by Roadrunner Records. The record was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album and reached the Top 25 on both the US and UK album charts. It was the final release to feature Colin Edwin on bass as well as the last one from the band before an extended hiatus that lasted until 2021.
Anesthetize is the second live concert film by progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released on 20 May 2010. The Blu-ray edition was released on 15 June. It is filmed in high definition and taken from two concerts given by Porcupine Tree at Tilburg, Netherlands on 15 and 16 October, at the end of the Fear of a Blank Planet tour in 2008. The film is directed and edited by Lasse Hoile and the audio track is mixed in stereo and 5.1 Surround by Steven Wilson.
Atlanta is a download only double-live album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree recorded at the Roxy Theatre, Atlanta, United States on 29 October 2007. The show recording was initially intended for a prospective Porcupine Tree live album, but this decision was later turned down as development of the Anesthetize DVD project began. In the wake of the news regarding Mick Karn's advanced-stage cancer, the band decided to put it out as a downloadable item from the Burning Shed online store at a very cheap cost, as a .RAR file split in two parts, all in MP3 format at 320kbit/s with completely printable artwork designed by Carl Glover. The profits from the Atlanta downloads are intended to help Mick pay for his treatment. A 44.1 kHz/24-bit FLAC version was released in August 2010; profits from this version go to the Teenage Cancer Trust. Since the album's artwork and mix is set up for two CDs it is widely considered to be a double album. The album has a somewhat similar track listing to the Anesthetize DVD but includes the first official live recording of the track "A Smart Kid" and some of the songs that were performed at the shows for the Anesthetize shoot, but left out as they were already available on previous live releases.
Octane Twisted is a live album released by Porcupine Tree on 5 November 2012. The album contains a live performance of the band's 2009 album The Incident in its entirety recorded at the Riviera Theater in Chicago on 30 April 2010. The second CD contains other tracks also recorded in Chicago, along with 3 songs from the band's (then) final show at Royal Albert Hall in London on 14 October 2010. The initial pressing also included a DVD containing a video of the Incident set.
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 completely finish the record in September 2021. Towards the end of the year, the band's reformation was publicly 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".
