bob32116
New member
I think this man merits his own thread, and since he does not seem to have one, I'm starting one.
People may know him as the singer and frontman for the band Porcupine Tree, which now appears to be on permanent hiatus. The fact is however that PT is just one of many of his projects over the years; the band name was coined by Wilson way before it was an actual band, and in fact the first Porcupine Tree full album, "On the Sunday of Life", is really a Steven Wilson solo album with some lyrical input from Alan Duffy.
Other Steven Wilson projects include No-man, Bass Communion, Blackfield and IEM (originally known as the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck). These projects all sound very different from each other and I don't want to take up too much space describing them here. Since 2009, however, Wilson has been mostly pursuing a solo career, winding back or closing off his other projects, one by one.
Those familiar with Porcupine Tree will know that it's a band you cannot really get to know by only hearing one album. To a certain extent the same is true of his solo albums. To date he has released four:
Insurgentes
Grace For Drowning
The Raven That Refused To Sing and other stories
Hand. Cannot. Erase.
plus a later mini-album appropriately entitled "4 1/2".
My personal favourite at the moment is probably H.C.E., but every one of them deserves to become a classic. Insurgentes is probably the most experimental; Grace For Drowning is a double album, with one disc being fairly accessible melodic pieces and the other containing some very strange jazzy stuff. Raven is considered by many to be "70's retro", though I am not sure I agree with that label; it is probably applied mainly because one of the songs sounds very much like vintage Genesis. H.C.E. has polarised his fans a bit; many say he is sounding too safe and too derivative of himself and other people, but I think it is a masterpiece. It was inspired by a true news item about a young woman who was found dead in her flat in London; she had been dead for two or three years, and for various reasons no one had reported her as missing. The album explores themes of alienation and losst dreams of youth; I think of it as a companion to Porcupine Tree's "Fear of a Blank Planet."
I could go on, but I'd like to know how many other fans of Steven Wilson there are out there.
People may know him as the singer and frontman for the band Porcupine Tree, which now appears to be on permanent hiatus. The fact is however that PT is just one of many of his projects over the years; the band name was coined by Wilson way before it was an actual band, and in fact the first Porcupine Tree full album, "On the Sunday of Life", is really a Steven Wilson solo album with some lyrical input from Alan Duffy.
Other Steven Wilson projects include No-man, Bass Communion, Blackfield and IEM (originally known as the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck). These projects all sound very different from each other and I don't want to take up too much space describing them here. Since 2009, however, Wilson has been mostly pursuing a solo career, winding back or closing off his other projects, one by one.
Those familiar with Porcupine Tree will know that it's a band you cannot really get to know by only hearing one album. To a certain extent the same is true of his solo albums. To date he has released four:
Insurgentes
Grace For Drowning
The Raven That Refused To Sing and other stories
Hand. Cannot. Erase.
plus a later mini-album appropriately entitled "4 1/2".
My personal favourite at the moment is probably H.C.E., but every one of them deserves to become a classic. Insurgentes is probably the most experimental; Grace For Drowning is a double album, with one disc being fairly accessible melodic pieces and the other containing some very strange jazzy stuff. Raven is considered by many to be "70's retro", though I am not sure I agree with that label; it is probably applied mainly because one of the songs sounds very much like vintage Genesis. H.C.E. has polarised his fans a bit; many say he is sounding too safe and too derivative of himself and other people, but I think it is a masterpiece. It was inspired by a true news item about a young woman who was found dead in her flat in London; she had been dead for two or three years, and for various reasons no one had reported her as missing. The album explores themes of alienation and losst dreams of youth; I think of it as a companion to Porcupine Tree's "Fear of a Blank Planet."
I could go on, but I'd like to know how many other fans of Steven Wilson there are out there.
Last edited:
