Acclaimed for his work with Porcupine Tree, Opeth and Anja Garbarek amongst others, Steven Wilson’s debut album Insurgentes will be released on Kscope on the 9th March. Comprising 10 new tracks that range from ballads and anthems to all-out industrial noise assaults, the dark, cinematic and richly textured album represents two years’ worth of creative output and numerous recording sessions worldwide in studios from Mexico City to Japan and Israel.
While Wilson is a member of several bands including Blackfield, No-Man and Bass Communion, he explains that “when I began writing these songs, I quickly realized that they would be best suited to an album under my own name. It was an intuitive, almost unconscious writing process that resulted in a kind of ‘poetry of melancholy.” The final product inhabits a similar experimental realm as recent albums by Thom Yorke, Portishead, and Nine Inch Nails.
Wilson recruited a stellar cast of guests to work on the album including bassist Tony Levin, drummer Gavin Harrison, and keyboardist Jordan Rudess, alongside Japanese Koto player Michiyo Yagi, British guitarist Sand Snowman, and jazz flautist and saxophonist Theo Travis.
In between making the album, Steven obviously had enough time on his hands to start a hate campaign against iPods. Not content with blowing one to smithereens using a shotgun, he then gets real nasty with a blow torch. Eeeeeek! Apparently, every week until the release of the album he will be posting a new clip, showing a different method of destruction ranging from hammers to woodchippers. Steven says of the ‘experiment’: “My fear is that the current generation of kids who’re being born into this information revolution, growing up with the Internet, cell phones, iPods, this download culture, ‘American Idol,’ reality TV, prescription drugs, PlayStations — all of these things kind of distract people from what’s important about life, which is to develop a sense of curiosity about what’s out there.”
I’m against him destroying iPods to be fair. I mean, what’s the point? He’s never going to get rid of them ALL is he? Whereas, if he took a blow torch to American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest – he’d be doing the world a much more welcome favour.
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“Ex-Porcupine Tree man…”? They have split up? What?
my bad. corrected thanks :-)
This guy is so damned prolific, there’s no way to keep up!
what a silly pretentious fool.
Well he IS a prog-rock musician, so whatdya expect?
point taken. ^_^