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Porcupine Tree

Pushing Musical Boundaries

By Tara Callahan

If you haven’t seen or heard Porcupine Tree, then you are missing out on one of today’s hottest acts. Roland recently caught up with Steven Wilson, founding member of Porcupine Tree, and he shed some light on the history and sound of the band and just what makes their psychedelic, experimental, and progressive music tick.

How long has porcupine tree existed?

Porcupine Tree started off as a sort of solo project of mine. Kind of bedroom-based — just overdubbing a lot of the instruments myself. Round about the late ’80s early ’90s. I was still in school and the first band lineup came together around the end of ’93, and that’s actually the same lineup that we have today with one exception which is that the drummer changed. Chris Maiden, our original drummer left in 2002 and Gavin Harrison came aboard. And that’s been the only lineup change in nearly 15 years now.

Where did the name “Porcupine Tree” come from?

I never answer this question, sorry. Even the band doesn’t know the answer to this. It’s a secret for now. Maybe it will go to the grave with me, who knows.

Can you describe how the band has developed and changed over time?

The style of the band has developed a massive, massive amount. It’s very hard to trace a line between the first album and the current album, without knowing all the steps in between. It would be very hard to conceive of it as being the same band even. But having said that, lots of other elements have come into the musical vocabulary — for instance, metal has come in recently in the last 2 or 3 albums — a lot stronger kind of presence with heavy riffs and heavy metal. Some of the elements that were there earlier on from Psychadelia and Space Rock are no longer really so prevalent in the music. But the one thing that has really kind of stayed consistent is the overall philosophy and ideology of the band, which is to make albums as opposed to singles — to make an album that has a kind of quality of being like a musical journey. That has been important to me right from the beginning. Through light and shade, through hard and soft, through everything from ambient music to death metal riffs, thoughtful lyrics and interesting instrumental passages. And that’s something that I think people could recognize from any Porcupine Tree Record.

How would you categorize the music of Porcupine Tree?

As regards to defining what kind of music the band plays, I think any artist that really feels strongly about what they do, would resist any categorization — any classification. Because in a way it kind of trivializes what you do. I don’t believe that what we do is generic. I think we do something which is quite unique. We make a style of music that is uniquely Porcupine Tree-esque. I understand that there is certainly something about the band that is very much in the tradition of what people people associate with Progressive Rock. Which is this idea that we’re making albums that have a kind of conceptual continuity to them. But within that there are many moments on Porcupine Tree records that have nothing to do with the genre or aesthetics of progressive rock.

What was the concept of Fear of a Blank Planet?

The concept to Fear of a Blank Planet is really focusing on the whole idea of life in the 21st century, particularly as seen through the eyes of someone who is born into this era — a teenager or even younger. We kind of all tend to live now vicariously through our gadgets. Through laptops, through iPods, through cell phones, through Playstations, X-Boxes, through the Internet, information technology download culture, we have hundreds and hundreds of channels on TV. We have American Idol, we have Big Brother, we have MTV, we have Paris Hilton. There are many, many things about modern life that make me quite depressed. I don’t see cell phones and iPods as inherently bad things, but I see them as all kind of further evidence that people get lazier and lazier about how they make the most of their life, or not make the most of their life. And there are various words that I could come up with, like you know, what is it for example that is going to instill in young people today a sense of motivation, or to use a more romantic word, what is it that is going to instill in young people today, a sense of soul?

Anyway that’s a very short answer to — what I could talk for hours about this. The album is kind in its own way trying to encapsulate the whole issue of life as we know it in the 21st century, which is not a small subject.

Any plans for your next album?

I don’t have an idea for the next album at the moment. To be honest, I tend to work a lot better and feel a lot more inspired when I’m not on the road. And it’s a funny thing because some people actually find that being on the road is the perfect time to write. And a lot of musicians and songwriters write albums when they’re on tour. I can’t do that. I don’t find it a very inspiring place to come up with new ideas and lyrics and songs. So I have to really wait until I get through this album cycle and we come off the road. Then I can sit down and start to think about the next record. So right now I’m focused purely on promoting this one.

What’s in your schedule for the future?

I’m going to try to take as much time as I can from being on the road, and I have a lot of other projects that I want to do, which I’ve been kind of putting on ice because I’m too busy with Porcupine Tree.

A lot of bands ask me to produce them these days, and it’s something that I really love to do. I really love working with other bands in the studio, and I’ve had to turn down pretty much everything for the last few years. So next year I’m hoping to have the opportunity to go and help some other bands make records, because that’s really my greatest pleasure in doing what I do. It’s being in the studio and kind of producing and painting with sound.