{"id":15953,"date":"2019-01-22T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15953"},"modified":"2019-01-21T07:18:53","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T12:18:53","slug":"steven-wilson-expect-the-unexpected-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/22\/steven-wilson-expect-the-unexpected-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Wilson: Expect the Unexpected (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

For the title track of To the Bone<\/i>, Wilson wrote the music, leaving the lyric composition to Andy Partridge, formerly of XTC. \u201cIf I\u2019m going to go into a collaborative process, then I want it to be just that,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cCompromise is the wrong word, but you give and take, and you allow for the other person, and their style, and their preferences, and their musical personality. The beauty of collaboration is that you do get that kind of melting pot of influences, inspirations, experiences and musical personalities.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to predict where the creative restlessness that characterizes Steven Wilson\u2019s work will lead next. But in the brief interview snippet on the Home Invasion<\/i> Blu-Ray, he reveals that it\u2019s a long-held dream of his to eventually score a film. Such a project seems like a natural progression for Wilson, whose work always conveys emotional content, with or without words.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In late 2017, Wilson did provide the soundtrack to the video game Last Day of June<\/i>, but he notes that collection of songs \u201cwas almost entirely drawn from existing material.\u201d Wilson\u2019s brief included creating instrumental mixes of songs that had appeared on his solo albums, and doing some editing to tracks. He admits that director Massimo Guaraini \u201cknew he wanted the kind of music I was already making.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more straightforward film project would present a greater opportunity \u2013 and a more significant challenge \u2013 for Wilson. He\u2019s clearly up to the task, should circumstances develop in that direction. \u201cI would certainly relish the opportunity to work with a director \u2013 one who has a strong vision \u2013 on a movie,\u201d he says. And it turns out that Wilson\u2019s already staggeringly huge official catalog \u2013 40-plus studio albums, more than 15 live albums, numerous compilations and limited-edition releases plus scattered EPs, singles \u2013 doesn\u2019t even include some of his most commercially accessible work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first ten years of my career, actually, I did a lot of music for commercials,\u201d Wilson reveals. \u201cIt was one of the ways I kept myself going, because I was making records that nobody was buying in the early days.\u201d Though he says that in some ways he found the experience soul-destroying, it helped him develop his songwriting skill.<\/p>\n

Wilson also learned a lot about songwriting from picking apart and assembling classic albums. He\u2019s an in-demand remix engineer, with more than 30 projects to his credit. Wilson\u2019s work in this area breathes new life into 1970s records by Caravan, ELP, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Hawkwind, Jethro Tull, Roxy Music, Steve Hackett and Yes. His list of 5.1 Surround remixes of \u201880s albums includes Tears for Fears\u2019 Songs from the Big Chair<\/i>, XTC\u2019s Nonsuch<\/i> and Skylarking<\/i> and Simple Minds\u2019 Sparkle in the Rain<\/i>. For him, those projects represent \u201can opportunity to understand how those musicians made that music, and for that then to become a part of my toolbox, if you like, for creating my own music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if there are other back catalogs to which he\u2019d enjoy applying his remixing and remastering skills, Wilson says that as far as progressive rock, he\u2019s probably finished. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything left [to remix], really,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I think there are certain catalogs that would sound wonderful remixed into multichannel sound.\u201d He mentions some intriguing names, Prince, Bowie and Zappa among them. And Wilson would love to take a crack at Kate Bush\u2019s recordings, but says that\u2019s not likely to happen. \u201cShe\u2019s not interested in SurroundSound,\u201d he says. \u201cI have tried. But not everyone is [interested], and that\u2019s totally fair enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The To the Bone<\/i> tours began in late January 2017, and when complete will have taken Wilson and his band to North and South America, Great Britain, Europe, Russia, India, Israel, Japan, Australia and New Zealand; 140-plus dates in all. In a 2010 interview, Wilson and I discussed his prodigious output and busy schedule. \u201cWhat I do barely feels like work to me,\u201d Wilson responded. \u201cPeople ask me, \u2018Are you a workaholic?\u2019 I respond that to be a workaholic, you\u2019ve got to feel that what you\u2019re doing is work. Making records, that\u2019s not work. It\u2019s fun<\/em>, isn\u2019t it?\u201d He clearly feels similarly about playing shows; in the Home Invasion<\/i> video interview Wilson admits that while he doesn\u2019t consider himself a natural performer, he\u2019s come to truly enjoy playing onstage in front of audiences.<\/p>\n

But in an age where fans have come to expect an unprecedented level of interaction with their favorite artists, Wilson draws a sharp line. \u201cThe way the modern world is and the way the music industry is now,\u201d he observes, \u201cthere is almost required a certain amount of access to personal life, simply in order to promote your work.\u201d He says that he embraces that reality \u201ca little bit. If you don\u2019t make yourself available on social media, then to a lot of people, you simply don\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson has his own Instagram page, which he maintains himself rather than handing the task off to an assistant or label employee. \u201cBut I don\u2019t post a lot there,\u201d he admits. \u201cAnd I certainly don\u2019t post pictures of me and my family having breakfast, which some people do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson aims for a balance between accessibility and privacy. \u201cI do have a line which I won\u2019t cross in terms of my personal life,\u201d he says. \u201cSo it\u2019s been a bit of a learning curve, a bit of a try-it-and-see. I try and keep my personal life still very private, but also give the fans the sense that I am a human being and that I am \u2026 kind of \u2026 interacting with them.\u201d He concedes that there\u2019s no right or wrong way of addressing this subject, and that ultimately it\u2019s up to each artist to sort out a level of fan access that feels right.<\/p>\n

While some artists grant unprecedented access to their followers, Wilson notes that refrain from doing so. \u201cThe Radioheads and [Pink] Floyds of this world still pretty much have that mystique about them, because they don\u2019t give the fans any access at all,\u201d he says. He agrees that artists on that level of fame don\u2019t exactly need to open up. \u201cThey\u2019re massively successful,\u201d he says. \u201cBut someone like me who\u2019s not massively successful, I guess I do still need to make myself available to the fans to an extent.\u201d In the meantime, the man referred to as \u201cthe most successful British musician most people have never heard of\u201d is staying true to his musically restless spirit while writing pop songs that are earning him a larger audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… For the title track of To the Bone, Wilson wrote the music, leaving the lyric composition to Andy Partridge, formerly of XTC. \u201cIf I\u2019m going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,56,62],"tags":[2059],"class_list":["post-15953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-prog","category-rawk","tag-steven-wilson","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15953"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15958,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953\/revisions\/15958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}