Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree - listening companion suggestions.

[NancyJohnson]

Pretty certain there's some Steven Wilson hero worship going on here.

 

I've come a bit late to the Steven Wilson party; I've loved the work he's done resurrecting/elevating the Tears For Fears and XTC back catalogue to spatial audio and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Welcome To The Pleasuredome Atmos mix is an absolute delight, but (and there's always a 'but'), I find his total output somewhat overwhelming in a musical capacity.  So much content to play catch up.  No-Man, Porcupine Tree, his solo stuff, Blackfield ...and so on.

 

I own a few albums/BluRays; more recent live stuff (Home Invasion/Arriving Somewhere/Closure Continuation Live) and some solo stuff (The Future Bites/The Overview) and I dip into Spotify for short hits of audio, but just want to throw something cohesive together (Spotify) that I can just stick on in the car, at home etc.  My good lady happened to be sitting in the same room when Pariah (from To The Bone) came on - she said, 'I like this,' which was then swiftly followed by, 'I don't like this, there's too many notes,' and I can kind of see her point.

 

Gimme you favourite tracks.

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Watching this thread with interest . 
 

I heard a couple of porcupine tree tracks a few years ago ,and it wasn’t my bag . I have 2 Tangerine Dream cd Boxsets that he remastered, and he did a great job ! 
He is immensely talented both as an artist in a band situation and as a solo artist …plus as a producer ! Many hats.

 

I stumbled across 2 live tracks on my YouTube feed  over the last couple of weeks ..’Fear of A blank Planet ‘ and another track I’ve forgotten right now .

Watch that track ! A fantastic performance. 
 

I’m trying to find out anything that sounds like that, and will purchase  the right albums .

The only thing I’m concerned about , is if he / porcupines tree etc have released patchy albums and that purchasing single tracks on downloads would be better ..

 

[Hellzero]

I saw him live a few years ago, around this period of the year, with Nick Beggs on bass and Chapman stick as well as backing vocals, and it was an amazing musical show.

 

He is an impressive guitarist, composer, arranger, producer and mixer.

 

My favourite tune with Steven Wilson is this one for some reason:

 

 

 

If you add the albums with Porcupine Tree to the ones you already have (plus Hand. Cannot. Erase.), you'll have a very good representation of his talent and musical sphere.

[ezbass]

A friend of mine asked if I’d be interested in going to see SW at the RAH on the To The Bone tour. I was aware of him, but not to any great degree. Oddly, I decided not to check out the album or his other work and went to the gig cold. It was great and although I sometimes wish I’d listened to his stuff at bit first, I still think it was a good move. To The Bone is one of my favourite albums, the dynamics on tracks like Pariah and Refuge make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I have the DVD of that run of gigs (Home Invasion) and the documentary of the making of TTB is very interesting (SW is very intense). As to his remixes, I’ve listen to bits, but I’m not sure of the point, as I don’t hear a lot of difference (maybe I gave up too soon). I think, with his various works, is that it’s a case of that it’s not all gold and cherry picking is the way forward.

 

 

[Bassassin]

Best SW solo (in my view, obvs) - The Overview, Hand. Cannot. Erase, The Raven That Refused To Sing. The title track of Raven is quite possibly the most bleakly miserable piece of music I've ever heard.

 

Best Porky Tree - In Absentia, Deadwing, Fear Of A Blank Planet, The Incident. The caveat with this is that this is SW's metal phase - and while not full-on metal albums by any stretch, the excursions into the genre can sound jarring and to be quite honest, inauthentic. To me it's sort of apparent that's not really in their musical DNA.

[NancyJohnson]

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

As to his remixes, I’ve listen to bits, but I’m not sure of the point, as I don’t hear a lot of difference (maybe I gave up too soon).

 

 

I'm a huge fan of early Tears For Fears, but only really developed a love of XTC about 20 years ago.  

 

Personally I adore the 5.1/Atmos mixes of both bands that Steven Wilson has curated, they're bonkers good.  I've read enough comments from the naysayers to the contrary, but it's not as if the release of these versions erases all those that have gone beforehand.

 

 

[Skybone]

Recent convert to Mr Wilson's varied output here too. 

 

I went through a few of the recent albums on Spotify, and then bought the ones I liked to copy onto the USB stick in the car. I should trawl through Spotify again and find some other albums.

[velvetkevorkian]

This is very much a metal recommendation but he produced Opeth's Blackwater Park, which is one of my top two or three albums ever. 

[Bassassin]

4 hours ago, velvetkevorkian said:

This is very much a metal recommendation but he produced Opeth's Blackwater Park, which is one of my top two or three albums ever. 

 

In a related vein, it's definitely worth having a listen to Storm Corrosion - a 2012 collaboration between SW and Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth. And counterintuitively - it's very much not a metal recommendation!