Steven Wilson Interview

Mar 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

           
 

THE PORCUPINE TREE GUITARIST/VOCALIST EXPRESSES HIS ECLECTIC MUSICAL VISION ON HIS SELF-RECORDED SOLO PROJECT

Were there any disadvantages to working solo?

The hard thing, of course, for the very same reason that I was liberated: I was the only person there to make decisions. It’s so easy to disappear up your own backside when you don’t have someone else there to bounce ideas off. And that was tough, because I had no one else really to turn to and say, “Hey, what do you think? Do you think it’s too loud? Do you think it’s too quiet? Do you think this track’s good enough?” I had to come to all those decisions myself through trial and error. I can see why it’s tough to be a solo artist and only be answerable to yourself. There was more stress in that sense. It was definitely good and bad, pro and con, the solo-artist-versus-band thing.

But you like to work in your own studio as much as possible, no matter the project, right?

I do, yeah. For many years, I’ve done that. I realized early on that the kind of records that I wanted to make were not records that could be made in a disciplined, pressure situation. By “pressure,” I mean you’ve got a certain amount of time, and an expensive studio, and every minute’s costing you money. I can’t do that. The kind of records I like to make are these big type of productions, like a musical journey, in a way. And it becomes more like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Very often, that process takes a long time. I love experimenting, and I hate the feeling that I don’t have time to experiment because of financial or time constriction. So for many years, I’ve been building up my ability, my expertise, in self-producing. And as a spin-off from that, I’ve taught myself how to make reasonable noise on many different instruments as well.

FIG. 3: Wilson recording guitar in his studio. Notice his Genelec 8030A, Yamaha NS-10M, and Quested S6R monitors against the far wall.
Credit: Photo: Steven Wilson

What would you consider your main instrument?

I suppose you’d say it’s guitar [see Fig. 3]. Again, I’m not a particularly accomplished guitar player; I play keyboards as much as I play guitar when I’m writing. But in Porcupine Tree, almost by default, I’ve ended up as the front man–guitar player–singer. Not by design, but that’s the way it seems to be going.

What does the album title, Insurgentes, mean?

Insurgentes Avenue is the longest street in the world. And it runs through the third-biggest city in the world, which is Mexico City—the two bigger cities are both located in India. But outside of India, Mexico City is the largest city in the world, and it’s where a lot of the album—I wouldn’t say that a lot of it was recorded there, but a lot of it was definitely inspired by my trip to Mexico City, and a lot of the photographs that you see in the book were taken in Mexico.

Tell me about the film aspect. What is it about? Is it a documentary about making the album?

No, that would have been extremely boring. Quite the contrary. I mean that is in it; there are moments in the film when you will see me working on the record. The best way I can describe it is that it’s almost like a surreal road movie. You see me traveling around. But every country we went to, we also found these incredible locations [see Fig. 4]. We’d make up weird stuff to do on the spot, surreal stuff. And we’d try to talk to as many musicians as we could, local musicians.

FIG. 4: Wilson at one of the Mexican locations used in the Insurgentes movie.
Credit: Photo: Lasse Hoile

There was a basic concept behind the film, and it is this: we wanted to explore what it was like to be a professional musician or producer, or someone who makes records in the era of download culture, and how that has affected them, the era of MP3s and the death of physical media. I don’t think anyone has stopped to document it. In the last five years, the change has been unbelievable, extraordinary. And nobody has stopped to document that process. So we talked, for instance, to Trevor Horn, the British producer, in the film. And we asked him a basic question like “What do you think of the sound quality of MP3s?” Because it’s interesting, I think, for people to hear from someone like him how much he thinks MP3s sound like s--t. A lot of people don’t even question the quality of MP3s; they think that that’s what music sounds like. Particularly the younger generation, who have grown up in the era of MP3s. To actually hear someone like Trevor Horn say, “If you listen to an MP3 and then you listen to one of my productions in high resolution, you will not believe the difference.”

[It was great] to hear people like that talking about those kind of issues. So we talked to a lot of musicians and producers and people who make records about the whole issue of the death of physical media or high-resolution media. [See Web Clip 2 for more about the film and Wilson’s views on the impact of digital audio on musicians.]