Progressive rock mastermind Steven Wilson is about to hit Australia after a four year absence and for the first time with his solo band. With his three solo albums to draw upon for the live show, the tour is gathering plenty of attention and anticipation among Australian prog-heads and anybody that remembers the golden age of the early 70's that is being channeled by Steven in his latest work. We took a moment of his time and discussed his experiences touring The Raven That Refused To Sing, the spirituality of jazz, what to expect on the tour, his remix work and much more.
How has touring the new album The Raven That Refused to Sing been? Has performing it live changed the music or how you feel about it at all?
Well, inevitably when you play music live things continue to evolve from night to night but the one thing about this album is that it was written already specifically for this group of musicians to play and it was actually recorded live in the studio. So it was different from previous albums I've made where I've tended to write the material and record it in a very controlled and modular way. Working with the drummer for a week, bringing in the bass player etcetera etcetera. This album was very much a live concept and recorded as a live performance from the outset.
So when we out to play it on the road, it didn't perhaps change and develop as much as previous albums have. And that's a good thing, it means that a lot more of that live chemistry and live energy is in the music right from the beginning in the recorded version and it's naturally kind of carried through to the live performance.
But with musicians that come from a jazz background, when it comes to a live performance they tend to not follow the album version as much in your experience?
That's right. A lot of the compositions have built into them sections where the solos are very open-ended. So when you have jazz musicians like Theo Travis, the flute player, or Adam Holt, the keyboard player, or Gavin Guthrie, the guitar player, these guys they're not particularly interested in repeating themselves you know. So when it comes to the solo stuff, particularly when they step and take a solo, they're pretty much in the moment and reinventing it from scratch every night. So it's a very delicate balance between structure and architecture, and the spirituality of being in the moment and improvising in that jazz tradition almost, though it's certainly not jazz music.
But I like that, I very much like that combination, that hybrid, that balance. It's kind of what I was looking for when I put the band together, because it's one thing I found with previous bands I've been in that it gets very routine, gets very repetitive when you have music that is played note for note the same every night and sometimes that's what fans want and that's what fans expect. So it was almost like I needed to start something fresh with a completely different agenda.
Like you've just said, you've described your most recent work that's drawing on jazz as spiritual and organic. What's the connection to you between those organic instrument sounds, the ideas of jazz and spirituality?
Well for me, the spirituality comes from the fact that the music is not something preconceived. And what I mean by that is that when a jazz musician is playing, most of the time he's playing directly from intuition and directly from the soul and the heart. In someways it's the antithesis of a classical musician who is reading notes off a page, that have been written by someone else perhaps 300 years before. With a jazz musician everything is of the moment. So you're very much viewing the mood, the emotional state, the inspiration, the spirituality, the soul, whatever you want to call it, of that musician at that moment and that's something I've always loved. I've loved the intensity and the 'in the moment' feeling of jazz rather than the more considered structure of traditionally composed music and I think if you can find a balance between those two things, which is what I'm trying to do, that you have the best of all worlds.
You'll be coming through Australia at the start of October and then back to Europe to tour through October and November I believe. How's the preparation going for it? And you've hinted that some new material is almost ready ...
Yeah, I've got some new material. I've got about 50 minutes written for my next record already and we're going to play something new from the work-in-progress on the European tour. Probably not in Australia, the reason for that being we haven't been to Australia, we haven't performed the existing material. So I think we'll concentrate very much on the current live show in Australia. And then when we go back to Europe, we are going to playing some of the same cities that we played in earlier this year, so I'm looking to do something new and also the opportunity to road-test and allows some of that music to develop and grow on the road. Which again is a kind of old-fashioned thing to do, it's something that in the days before the internet, in the days before people were uploading songs they've recorded at gigs, you know, bands were quite often road-testing material. I think there's a reluctance now to do that because of the internet, because of file-sharing and the moment you play something new it's up on the internet the next day and everyone's heard it. But you know, I don't see that as completely prohibitive, I still like the idea of going out and trying out new material, it makes it fun for us and it makes it interesting for the audience.
In past interviews, you've said that you prefer the role of creator and conductor that you're doing with your solo work, rather than as a hands-on musician. But is there any particular instrument you enjoy playing the most?
Not really you know. If I could give a more oblique answer to that question, the instrument I enjoy playing the most is the recording studio. For me all the other instruments, whether it's the guitar, keyboard, the drum machine , the bass guitar, the harmonium, the zither, I mean I've got all these things lying around me right now, they're all a part of my environment. And what I love about being a writer is that I can reach out to any of these instruments and create musical colour and create a musical world. So I'm not particularly attached to any one instrument.
There are certain sounds that I really love in almost any concept; Fender Rhodes, piano or acoustic guitars you know or the mellotron. Certain sounds I have a real love and affection for. But still for me, I'd rather hear somebody else play them beautifully rather than me struggling to get some good sounds out of them. But I still love to write and paint with sound, paint with many different timbres and instruments.
The one project that you always seem to return to is Bass Communion. Is there something in drone, ambient music that keeps pulling you back?
It's probably one of the styles of music that I listen to more than any other. I find myself drawn back to the idea of music as pure sound and texture at any time. For me, the analogy is filling a room with a beautiful perfume. It's not music that's necessarily massively demanding of your attention but at the same time it can create incredible feelings and response. And I suppose for me specifically, Bass Communion has become almost like a research and development project, because when I'm exploring only sound and I'm not interested in writing songs, and I'm not interested in writing lyrics, and I'm not interested in rhythm but purely interested in the quality of the sound and the kind of emotional connections that you can create with just texture in sound without harmony, without melody, without rhythm, that then becomes really beautiful to me. When I do come to make something more song-based, very often the sounds I've created in exploring Bass Communion have been recycled and reused and made appearances in other contexts. That's something that's always appealed to me, going back to pure exploration of the possibilities of sound and the beauty of nothing more but sound.
One of the important things being pushed with your tour is the Quadrophonic sound system. The technology has been around for a long time now but it's not greatly used. Why did you choose to use it and do you think it will emerge more into the future?
There's a couple of questions there. The answer to the question about why did I choose to use it, in parallel to my own work I also have this parallel career going which is pretty much involved with remixing classic albums into surround sound which is 5.1 which is actually quadrophonic; five speakers and one bass subsonic system. You have this idea of taking something recorded in some cases 40, 45 years ago and recreating the mix but in surround sound concept and really opening up the whole sound, making it more immersive. And I think I've been doing that with classic albums, I've been doing it with my own music. Pretty much every album I've made for the past five years has ended up also having a surround sound mix and I have a reputation now for being someone who specialises in multi-channel surround mixing and recording. So it seemed like a very much logical next step to try to take that into the live context. So the album's actually been recorded in surround sound, how can we bring that into a concert?
Now the other part of your question is, why are not more people doing it? I think it is difficult to pull off. It's not that expensive to do these days, we do it with just a laptop and it's not that hard but it does take a lot of thought how you're going to use surround sound and how you're going to use the quadrophonic sound. Because if you think about it, there's only one place in any room where you are getting a perfect balance between all four speakers and there's only one guy that can be in that spot on any given night. So you have to think carefully about using quadrophonic, you can't have too much going on at the back of the room. But what I've found you can use it very sparsely but very effectively, have certain keyboard sounds, have certain vocal harmonies coming out of the rear, you might have a choir coming out of the rear speakers. And all of these things, they make it very much a more immersive, more engaging experience
With your remixing work, you've now done King Crimson, Jethro Tull and now Yes as well. Any news on that latest Yes work and any further remixing work we can look forward to in the near future?
I've done an album for XTC as well, which is coming out next month. I've done other stuff I can't really talk about you know, because the thing is it's not up to... I'm being hired to do these next few so I can't really blow the gas. But there's a lot more coming out and there seems to be an increasing interest in the cases of classic albums and remixing the mix in surround sound. So I'm very grateful for this in fact because I'm getting the chance to work on some fantastic albums. There's certainly some other albums coming out next year and moving outside of that more obvious progressive era to some more what you might call more mainstream bands but still classic albums, which is fantastic.
Within your own work, you're famous for sticking to a singular music vision for each album. How does this translate over into your remixing work, where you have to work with albums and music imbued with somebody else's vision?
It's quite simple really, I don't remix albums unless I already love them. I have been approached to do some albums that I honestly couldn't say I'm a big fan of. They were great records but I don't personally feel a connection with them so I said no, because I don't think it's right that you work on something that you don't have that affinity with. So the simple answer to your question is that all of the albums that I work on, with one or two exceptions, most of them are albums that I love, perhaps from childhood I've loved them and feel like I know them as old friends and I know them perhaps better than the artists. If you think about it, the guys that made these albums they don't revisit [their albums], you know I don't revisit my own music either, the last thing you want to do is hear your own music. Some of these guys haven't listened to their albums for 40 years. On the other hand, I've been listening to them regularly for the last 20 or 25 or 30 years.
So I feel like I know these records very well and I'm very much attuned to the vision that they had for their records. But still, it's true to say that sometimes there are disagreements, I may have another perspective on the music that doesn't chime that well with the artist, so that's why it's good to have the artists involved. With [King] Crimson, Robert was very much involved, with [Jethro] Tull Ian was very much involved, with XTC Andy Partridge was very much involved. So I'm able always to consult with these guys and say “Does this feel right to you guys?” and sometimes they'll say “No, that wasn't really what I had in mind”. Although I have a strong vision and I am a bit of a control freak, I also love to collaborate. And sometimes collaboration means giving yourself up to someone else's vision and in some instances compromising.
The future of the music industry is a much talked about topic but less so the future of music as an art-form. For me, there's the use of visuals and technology, especially in terms of the live show. There's a Sydney band [Dumbsaint]who are also filmmakers , so going to their live show is half a concert and half an arthouse cinema showing. There's another concert I went to where the audience actually played a linked video game on their smartphones that was projected above the band as they played. Is it this blurring of disciplines that's the future of music?
I think it always has been, it's been in the past, the present and in the future too. For me, one of the really interesting things is about the kind of music that I play is that it's always been analogous in a way to cinema. If you're making music that's not about the three minute pop song, more about the idea of taking the listener on some kind of journey, a musical journey, telling them a story across the timespan of an album or a CD, you're already into the realms of cinema and literature in a way, parallel to both things. And it's no coincidence that my show is as much about the film and the projections and the screens and the visuals as it is about the music. And I think there's something about the combination of music and visual that is greater than either in isolation, so I think you're absolutely right to say that it's going to be the future, I think it's already the present actually.
As you say, a lot of people are already doing this and it's amazing what you can do nowdays, with relatively affordable technology. A few laptops, a few high definition cameras, and you can go out and create incredible visuals and illustrate your music. And I think you need to give people a bit more these days because there's too much music in the world. There's more music in the world now then any other time in history, it's almost become so ubiquitous, so prevalent that it's easy to ignore 99.99% of it. So I think the music that really gets noted now is music that does have something else in it and does draw upon other possibilities, whether it's computer technology or cinema, whatever it is. It gives something more than just a musical experience. But yeah absolutely, I'm not into computer games, it's not my thing at all but I've always loved the combination of visual and theatre in a way as part of an an album and live performance.
And one last questions are there any memories that stand out from your last time in Australia with Porcupine Tree in 2009?
Being tired the whole time. The thing is when you go to Australia and come from Europe, it's a very intense experience. You feel like you're going on stage at 9am in the morning and you go to sleep, get on a plane and do the whole thing again. But still absolutely loving it, the whole vibe of the place, the people. It's always awesome when you go to somewhere you've never been before and you find that people that like what you do and really respect you and admire you. That's always an incredible feeling.
Thanks very much for your time Steven, all the best on tour
Not a problem, have a great day.
Photo Credit: Lasse Hoile
Tour Dates
2nd October- Billboard, Melbourne
3rd October- Metro Theatre, Sydney
5th October- Tivoli, Brisbane
More information on the tour can be found here.