Porcupine Tree - The Porcupine's new day

First of all, I should warn you that if my phone rings, you'll be hearing one of your own tracks, “Synesthesia”: it's my ringtone!

Steven Wilson: You're crazy!

Oh yes, absolutely (laughs). I'm glad to see you back together and to be able to talk with you about a new album under the Porcupine Tree name. What kind of record is "Closure/Continuation"? Steven, I read that you called it the quintessence of your sound…

Steven Wilson: Yes, it's a typically Porcupine Tree record, but it also sounds like something fresh, and that's the key to it. We didn't want to come back with an album that sounded the same as our work from 12 or 13 years ago. So there are elements that have definitely taken our music into different territory, but at the same time there's something that recalls what we did as a trio, and it will always sound like "Porcupine Tree", whatever that is. It's something that comes from the combination of our different approaches. There's Gavin's (Harrison, ed.) emphasis on rhythmic complexity and polyrhythms. Richard, on the other hand, has a particular gift for sound design, for creating keyboard textures and atmospheres. And then there's the sensibility of my songwriting. Put those things together, and the result will always sound like Porcupine Tree, which is a good thing, and it gives the band a unique identity. I think this album proves that, even when we move away from the sound of other previous records, we still manage to always sound like Porcupine Tree, if that makes sense.

What made you want to get back together after this long break?

Richard Barbieri: There wasn't a defined plan. The intention was to try writing something together and see how it turned out — it was a gradual process, but in the end, when you sit down and listen to all the tracks together, somehow it's all already decided, isn't it? And at that point we saw that a great piece of work was coming out of it, so the excitement pushed us to carry on and finish the album. It was also easier to make thanks to the lockdown: it let us focus more on the work — if it hadn't been for the lockdown, we probably wouldn't have managed to release it now. Instead, the circumstances, the long ten-year span, the chance to record in a different way — just the three of us, with Steve on bass — without the pressure of a fixed deadline, pushed us to bring a new sound to life on the record.

We don't know if it's a one-shot project. But then again, we never officially broke up: Porcupine Tree will go on existing in the future too, regardless of whether a new album comes out or we decide to tour

(Steven Wilson)

Is this a "one-shot" project, or do you plan to carry on with the band in the coming years as well?

Steven Wilson: As you can probably tell from the title, right now we don't know. We don't have a plan, we still don't know how this album will be received. Then again, we never said we wanted to break up. Sure, it took us 12 years to make this new record, but we never officially said the band was stopping. So Porcupine Tree will go on existing in the future too, regardless of whether a new album comes out or we decide to tour: it will depend entirely on whether we have something fresh to say. The one thing we never want to happen is feeling obliged to put something out just to please the fans or the record label's demands, feeling obliged to release music just because people expect it. Sure, there are plenty of bands caught up in those dynamics, but it's a vicious, uncreative circle, and we don't want any part of it. So, to answer your question, we'll only make new records if we have something fresh to say within the context of Porcupine Tree. If we go on tour, I think it will be to showcase something new, like what's happening right now. We're excited about the new album and can't wait to play it live.

Over these twelve years you've worked on a lot of other side projects: what did you bring from all of that into this new chapter of Porcupine Tree?

Richard Barbieri: We've all changed over these years. We've done a ton of things and picked up new influences, while essentially remaining the same group of musicians. That's helped shape a sound. Steve is probably more interested in electronic music now, after so much guitar, and that's a change, a huge change for the sound of the record.

Steven Wilson: For me, I think there's been one thing above all that's new: ten years of experience as the frontman of my own band, of a project under my own name. And that makes a big difference for me, because I'd never felt completely at ease with the idea of being "the frontman of Porcupine Tree". I often felt uncomfortable in that role, but now I can boast ten years' experience as a frontman, as a solo singer, and I feel much more suited to that role. That greater confidence also lets me try different things with my voice and no longer feel like just a guitarist: I can also just be a singer sometimes, and that's a nice shift for me compared to the last times we played together as a band. I feel ready to enjoy dragging Porcupine Tree onto the stage, to play some rock'n'roll!

Reality has gone beyond dystopian science-fiction tales: Trump, the age of fake news, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the war… All of this is reflected in the album's lyrics, but not in an indirect way, not in an obvious way

(Steven Wilson)

Steven, can you tell us something about the lyrics? Is there some minimal common thread running through the stories of the seven songs?

Steven Wilson: No, and there's a simple reason for that, a very practical reason: the album was written over a long span of time. Normally, I work on a record and write a bunch of songs meant to go on it within a fairly tight timeframe: 12 months, 18 at most. And, like a lot of people do, I tend to draw on what I've experienced during that period, my interests, my feelings, a certain mood that defined those days, pouring all of that into the songs. This, on the other hand, is an album where some of the lyrics were written twelve years ago, well, ten years ago, and others just last year. In that span of time, my life has completely changed many times over, in so many ways: from my interests to what music I've been listening to, from what I see to my personal affairs. I got married three years ago, so my life has changed completely. So, the simple answer to your question is no.

The album comes out after a very difficult and dramatic period, marked first by the pandemic and now by the war in Ukraine. After all, your lyrics have always been influenced by the most "dystopian" science fiction anyway: how has all this affected the stories you tell?

Steven Wilson: Yes, not in an obvious way, but certainly the feeling of living through these difficult times has influenced our lyrics, as has the sense of finding ourselves in a kind of dystopian era of Donald Trump, of fake news. Even before the pandemic, in England we went through Brexit, which was something like... good grief, nothing like that had ever been seen before! So we ended up living in this sort of surreal, dystopian reality that you could hardly believe would ever happen. Brexit, Trump, Covid, and now we're in the middle of another international global crisis: certainly the lyrics reference all of this too, but not directly, it was all inside me while I was writing.

In any case, the album also has a song that opens up to hope: the single "Of The New Day".

Steven Wilson: It's a song about rebirth, emerging from darkness. It seems almost simple, a typical ballad in full Porcupine Tree style. That is, until you notice that the bar lengths keep changing constantly, from the traditional 4/4 to 3/4, from 5/4 to 6/4, 11/4, so the track never settles into a fixed rhythm.

I'm happy with my work as a remix author. I really enjoyed the one for the latest Tears for Fears album and the work on the Xtc catalogue. As for Ultravox, after 'Vienna', I'll be remixing 'Rage In Eden'

(Steven Wilson)

Steven, you've also built a parallel career remixing classic albums across various genres. Which of these works are you most proud of?

Steven Wilson: I mixed the latest Tears for Fears album, the one that came out in February, it sounds amazing in Dolby, I'm very proud of that work. Another job I loved was the one on the Xtc catalogue: they're a very underrated band and it was great to be involved in that project. Then there are other things I've done recently that I can't talk about yet, because they haven't been officially announced.

As an Ultravox fan, I really appreciated your work on "Vienna"...

Steven Wilson: Yes, I also remixed another great Ultravox album, "Rage In Eden", which is coming out in September. I finished the work last year. I'm very lucky, I got into this line of work almost by chance: I find myself handling records of great class and working with very talented people, it's truly wonderful.

Speaking of new wave bands from the 80s, Richard, I'm also a huge fan of Japan and have always admired you. Do you think your approach to keyboards has evolved in any way over all these years?

Richard Barbieri: I don't think I've changed, my musical approach isn't any different today than it was back then, only the context changes, the genre I'm dealing with, the people I work with, the space available within the tracks: it's all of this that shifts, but I don't think my approach has ever changed, it's stayed more or less the same. I always try to incorporate a kind of abstract sound into the tracks, to convert sound design into a pop song or a rock song, and the conceptual side remains the most interesting thing for me. As a kid, I used to listen to music on the radio, and the thing I found most interesting was when the radio was badly tuned and two different things were playing at the same time: it often worked.

Steven Wilson: It's true, an extraordinary thing that I've always appreciated too. Maybe that's why I love sampling!

What's your favourite Japan album?

Richard Barbieri: I think the best album is "Tin Drum", but my favourite is "Quiet Life".

Mine is "Gentlemen Take Polaroids"...

Richard Barbieri: Ah, ok, a lot of people pick that one, it would probably win in a poll!

Japan were a group of friends, very dynamic, just like Porcupine Tree. David Sylvian was the one who brought all the elements together and skilfully shaped them into songs, creating the right arrangement that gave meaning to everything, on top of the conceptual side of the lyrics

(Richard Barbieri)

What kind of experience was it for you playing in Japan, with extraordinary musicians like David Sylvian and Mick Karn?

Richard Barbieri: What I can tell you is that we were all friends, we were a group that managed to be very dynamic, in a way not too different from Porcupine Tree. David was the one who brought together all the elements we each contributed to the band and skilfully shaped them into songs, creating the right arrangement that made sense of everything, as well as the conceptual side of the lyrics, always through the same process.

Porcupine Tree's music seems very "guitar-oriented", but it also includes a lot of keyboards and synths in its structures, not to mention Gavin Harrison's remarkable drumming. Can you explain how guitars, keyboards and drumming come into your songwriting process?

Steven Wilson: It's hard, because it's like trying to explain something inexplicable. Often I can't even understand my own way of working, this kind of magical alchemy that has developed within Porcupine Tree's working method. In a sense, Richard and Gavin are the two extremes of the band: Gavin is more technically oriented, very interested in complexity, and has a highly intellectual approach to composing music; Richard, on the other hand, has a completely intuitive approach, based on textures and atmospheres in an almost "non-musical" sense; I'm somewhere in between, I understand and appreciate both approaches and try in some way to blend them and fill them with my songwriting, and what comes out of that sounds like Porcupine Tree.

Richard Barbieri: On this album, in particular, there's less emphasis on guitars, there's more room for the other instruments.

Steven Wilson: That's true, and I think Richard in particular has benefited a great deal from that. But it also reflects a shift in my own interests: over the last ten years, I've gradually moved away from guitars towards synthesizers. My studio today is full of synthesizers, and you can hear that evolution in my solo records too. So I think I can say that all of this has worked in Richard's favour, giving more strength to his work: the keyboard textures, the rarefied sounds, the sound design... about as good as it gets from that point of view.

You've always had a lot of fans in Italy. However, you're only playing one date, in Milan on 24 October at the Mediolanum Forum in Assago. What kind of show will it be?

Steven Wilson: We'll be playing the album in full, plus a good selection from our back catalogue. Besides "Closure/Continuation", we'll focus in particular on what we consider our two strongest albums from the past, "In Absentia" and "Fear Of A Blank Planet", but there will definitely be a track from "Stupid Dream" plus one from "Lightbulb Sun". We might also play a song or two we've never performed before. It'll simply be "an evening with Porcupine Tree", with the best of the band. But there won't be any particular visual setup, we think people want to see us, not our avatars.

So are "In Absentia", "Fear Of A Blank Planet" and "Closure/Continuation" your favourite records?

Steven Wilson: Yes, they're our three favourite albums, most of the shows will be centred on these works, and I optimistically believe it'll end up being our fans' favourite tour. We haven't played live for twelve years, and a lot of people probably never got to see us perform live before, while in the meantime many younger listeners have discovered us. So we've placed the emphasis mainly on the band, on our performance, and I say that because in my solo shows I sometimes tend to undersell the band and give more weight to the visual side and the production. With Porcupine Tree, I think the balance will shift more towards the musicians on stage. So hopefully there'll be a strong sense of connection between the band and the audience, perhaps in a way we've never seen before, except in the early days, when we played small clubs. It's always a challenge to create a sense of intimacy with the audience when you're playing a very large venue, so we'll try to overcome those barriers and create a very intimate, personal experience, maybe for the last time, who knows...

We know we belong to the prog tradition, but our music can no longer be reduced to a single genre. We do electronic music, funk, ambient, avant-garde, even soul and jazz, even industrial. After all, that's exactly what prog should mean: music without boundaries. But people still identify it with the sound of 1972!

(Steven Wilson)

Critics have always described you as a prog or new prog band. Do you think that label still makes sense today, in an era of much more blurred and uncertain genre boundaries?

Steven Wilson: We've never really talked about this, about the possibility that our music belongs to a particular genre. I've never really understood the very notion of genre anyway, or if I have understood it, I've never paid it any attention, and that's exactly what led to Porcupine Tree's music... I couldn't care less what genre we'd supposedly be playing. It's clearly demonstrable that our music contains electronica, funk, ambient, avant-garde, even soul and jazz, even industrial music. All of these things. But I think that's very much in the nature of progressive rock itself, which has always created hybrids between different musical styles: classical with rock, jazz with rock... So, I know we belong to that tradition, but I don't really care about keeping any genre affiliation. Especially at this stage of our evolution, we think we have the right to be seen as a band that creates its own musical universe without having anything to do with a genre. I like to think of it that way.

Can we simply conclude that "progressive rock" has always been synonymous with a free, unconstrained kind of rock?

Steven Wilson: That's always been its meaning. But a lot of people don't see it that way and still believe it's something that always sounds like 1972!

(June 25, 2022)

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