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!

Well, yes, no doubt about it (laughs). I'm glad to find you back together and to be able to talk with you about a new album under the Porcupine Tree name. What kind of album 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 a record that sounded the same as our work from 12 or 13 years ago. So there are elements that have definitely pushed our music into different territory, but at the same time there's something that recalls what we did as a trio, and that 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, since it gives the band a unique identity. I think this record proves that, even when we move away from the sound of previous works, we always manage to sound like Porcupine Tree, if that makes any sense.

What pushed you 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 everything's already decided, isn't it? And at that point we saw that a great piece of work was coming out, so the enthusiasm pushed us to keep going and finish the album. It was also easier to make it happen 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 this is a one-shot project. But then again, we never officially broke up: Porcupine Tree will keep 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 are you planning to keep the band going in the coming years too?

Steven Wilson: As you can probably guess from the title, we don't know right now. 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 keep existing in the future too, regardless of whether a new album comes out or we decide to tour: it'll depend solely 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 satisfy the record label's demands, feeling obliged to release music just because people expect it. Sure, plenty of bands get caught up in those dynamics, but it's a vicious, uncreative circle that we don't want any part of. 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'll 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 all been busy with plenty of other side projects: what did you bring from all that into this new chapter of Porcupine Tree?

Richard Barbieri: We've all changed over these years. We've done a lot 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 all those guitars, and that's a change, a huge change for the sound of the record.

Steven Wilson: For me, I think there's been one new thing above all: ten years of experience as the frontman of my own band, 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 claim ten years' worth of experience as a frontman, as a solo singer, and I feel much more suited to that role. This greater confidence also lets me try out different things with my voice and not feel like just a guitarist anymore: sometimes I can just be a singer, and that's a nice shift for me compared to the last times we played together as a band. I feel capable of enjoying myself dragging Porcupine Tree onto the stage, playing some rock'n'roll!

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

(Steven Wilson)

Steven, can you tell us something about the lyrics? Is there some minimal common thread running through the stories in 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 end up 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 lived through in that period, my interests, my feelings, a certain mood that defined those days, and pour all of that into the songs. This, instead, is a record 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 and in many ways: from my interests to what I listen 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” side of science fiction: how did all this affect 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 impression of finding ourselves living 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 found ourselves living in this sort of surreal, dystopian reality that you could hardly believe could ever happen. Brexit, Trump, Covid, and now we're in the middle of another international global crisis: certainly the lyrics reference all of that too, but not directly, it was all inside me while I was writing.

Either way, there's also a song on the album 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 classic Porcupine Tree style. That is, until you notice that the bar lengths keep shifting, 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 producer. I really enjoyed the one for the latest Tears for Fears record, and working 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 new Tears for Fears album, the one that came out in February - it sounds amazing in Dolby, and I'm really proud of that work. Another job I loved was the one on the Xtc catalogue: they're a hugely underrated band, and it was great to be involved in that project. There are a few other things I've done recently that I can't talk about yet, though, since 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 get to handle records of real class and work with people of real talent, it's truly wonderful.

Speaking of new wave bands from the '80s, Richard, I'm also a huge fan of Japan and I've always admired your work. Do you feel your approach to keyboards has evolved over the years?

Richard Barbieri: I don't think I've changed - my musical approach isn't any different today than it was back then. What changes is the context, the genre I'm dealing with, the people I work with, the amount of space available in the tracks: that's what shifts, but I don't think my approach has ever really changed, it's stayed more or less the same. I always try to work a kind of abstract sound into the songs, to turn sound design into a pop song or a rock song, and the conceptual side remains the most interesting part 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: True, that's something extraordinary I've always appreciated too. Maybe that's why I love sampling!

What's your favourite Japan album?

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

Mine is "Gentlemen Take Polaroid"...

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

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

(Richard Barbieri)

What kind of experience was it for you to play 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, not unlike Porcupine Tree in a way. David was the one who brought together all the elements we each contributed to the group 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, besides of course Gavin Harrison's great drumming work. Can you explain how guitars, keyboards and drumming factor into your songwriting process?

Steven Wilson: It's difficult, because it's like trying to explain something inexplicable. I often can't even understand my own way of working, this kind of magical alchemy that's been created within Porcupine Tree's working method. In a sense, Richard and Gavin are the two extremes of the band: Gavin is more oriented towards the technical side, he's very interested in complexity and has a very 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 the two of them, I understand and appreciate both approaches and try in some way to blend them together 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 the two albums we consider our strongest 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 throw in a song or two we've never played before. It'll simply be "an evening with Porcupine Tree", with the best of the band. But there won't be any elaborate visual setup, we think people want to see us, not our avatars.

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

Steven Wilson: Yes, they're our three favourite albums, most of the shows will be built around these works, and I'm optimistic that in the end it'll turn out to be our fans' favourite tour. We haven't played live in twelve years, and a lot of people have probably never seen us perform live before, while in the meantime a lot of younger fans have discovered us. So we've placed the emphasis above all on the band, on our performance, and I say that because in my solo shows I sometimes tend to underplay the band and give more weight to the visuals 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, maybe in a way we've never seen before, except at the very start, when we used to play small clubs. It's always a challenge to create a sense of intimacy with the audience when you're playing a very big venue, so we'll try to break down 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, at a time when the boundaries between genres are much more blurred and uncertain?

Steven Wilson: We've never 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 taken it into account, 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 electronic music, 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... In short, I know we belong to that tradition, but I really don't care about holding on to a genre label. Especially at this stage in our evolution, we think we've earned 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 rock music that's free and unbound by rules?

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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