{"id":323,"date":"2010-09-02T06:16:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T11:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=323"},"modified":"2016-10-26T12:16:49","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T16:16:49","slug":"interview-steven-wilson-of-porcupine-tree-do-what-you-love-and-the-fans-will-follow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/02\/interview-steven-wilson-of-porcupine-tree-do-what-you-love-and-the-fans-will-follow\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree – Do What You Love and the Fans Will Follow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat I do barely feels like work to me,\u201d says Steven Wilson<\/strong>. \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<\/p>\n

By any measure, Steven Wilson is one of the busiest musicians working today. In addition to writing, producing and performing with his band Porcupine Tree<\/strong>, he has a steady release schedule of albums by his other projects (solo work, Blackfield<\/strong><\/a>, No-man<\/a><\/strong> and others). He also produces other artists \u2013 most notably Swedish death metal band Opeth <\/strong>\u2013 and is in the midst of remixing the vast King Crimson<\/strong><\/a> back catalog. He also writes a monthly column in Electronic Musician <\/em>magazine, and wrote a succinct op-ed piece (\u201cMusic Is Not Software; Music Is Art\u201d) in May for the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Despite all that activity, Wilson\u2019s primary focus is Porcupine Tree. And Wilson\u2019s songwriting has gone through a number of stylistic phases since the first Porcupine Tree release (the cassette-only Tarquin\u2019s Seaweed Farm<\/em> in 1989). Early PT sounds leaned in a psychedelic-ambient direction. In those days, Porcupine Tree was simply Wilson recording at home. But over the course of ten-plus studio albums, the band\u2019s distinctive sound has drawn from Beach Boys<\/strong>-influenced pop, progressive rock, and most recently, heavy metal. The group\u2019s last two albums (2007\u2019s Fear of a Blank Planet<\/em> and 2009\u2019s The Incident<\/em>) cover a wide stylistic palette, but the group certainly leans in a metallic direction.<\/p>\n

The music Steven Wilson chooses to listen to often mirrors (or has an influence on; it\u2019s hard to discern which) where his songwriting will take the band next. So what\u2019s Wilson listening to these days?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything except metal,\u201d Wilson chuckles. \u201cI\u2019m so <\/em>bored with metal.\u201d He concedes that he goes through \u201cphases, immersing myself in a particular area of music.\u201d But, he says, \u201cI feel like the future [of Porcupine Tree] is going to be a long way from that. I wasn\u2019t being completely flippant: I\u2019m listening to all sorts of things these days. Except metal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson suggests that, going forward, he\u2019s most interested in creating music that is \u201cless about songwriting, and more about this idea of music as a story for the ears.\u201d He readily concedes that such a focus has always been evident to some degree in his music, but wants to pursue \u201ca musical continuum that can take the listener on a journey.\u201d He notes that everything he\u2019s currently working on \u2013 no less than two or three projects at once \u2013 shares one common characteristic. \u201cIf anything, the music\u2019s becoming more spacious and less aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson has already tipped his hand in this direction on the group\u2019s most recent album. Though it\u2019s broken into fourteen tracks on the CD, The Incident<\/em> is a single long-form piece of music. \u201cI want to take that idea further,\u201d Wilson states. He\u2019s fascinated by the idea of an album as \u201can equivalent in some ways to a novel. Although you do get short stories, or short films, most of the important examples in those media are major-length pieces that are telling a story across ninety minutes, or 400 pages.\u201d\u00a0 He muses, \u201cIt seems strange to me that music has lagged behind in terms of embracing the larger form. With,\u201d he quickly clarifies, \u201ca brief exception in the 1970s.\u201d<\/p>\n

He characterizes the early 80s rise of MTV, with its emphasis on the three-minute pop song\/video, as \u201calmost a throwback. It was as if music was afraid of its own potential.\u201d Wilson believes that there\u2019s a movement afoot to return to the idea of music that\u2019s ambitious in its goals, and he points to the success of bands like Muse <\/strong>and the Mars Volta<\/strong> to support his argument.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways the internet has liberated bands from having to think about being mainstream, from having to try and be commercial,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I like to think that people are getting away from the idea that all they want from their music is a three-minute, hummable pop song.\u201d But those unfamiliar with the music of Porcupine Tree should not take from that the idea that the group creates dense, humorless music bereft of hooks or melody. Every PT album has at least a couple of songs with \u201cSingle\u201d potential. On The Incident<\/em>, two of those songs are \u201cI Drive the Hearse\u201d and \u201cTime Flies,\u201d both tuneful, memorable numbers. On the group\u2019s spring tour, the five-piece Porcupine Tree performs The Incident<\/em> in its entirety, without breaks, and then added in a few fan favorites from their deep catalog. On the summer tour with Coheed & Cambria<\/strong>, Porcupine Tree took more of a “greatest hits” approach, giving a good overview of their music to an audience not as familiar with their body of work.<\/p>\n

Steven Wilson embraces the changes taking place in what used to be called the music industry. \u201cBands have given up the dream of being the next Led Zeppelin, and are instead focusing on what\u2019s important: the music. And it\u2019s much easier now to find a cult audience through the internet, and to survive by selling music directly to the fans.\u201d Wilson views those changes as fostering music everywhere that has \u201cgot more integrity than it did at any other time in the last twenty-five, thirty years.\u201d<\/p>\n

An edited version of this feature appeared in the August 18 2010 issue of <\/em>Mountain Xpress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat I do barely feels like work to me,\u201d says Steven Wilson. \u201cPeople ask me, \u2018Are you a workaholic?\u2019 I respond that to be a workaholic, you\u2019ve got to feel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2059],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","tag-steven-wilson","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","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=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11653,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/11653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}