If you’ve found this article, you know who Steven Wilson is and might even be familiar with his large, varied discography. Through decades of being the creative force behind Porcupine Tree, his expansive solo catalogue, expansive remix catalogue (doing a bunch of classic albums in surround and Dolby Atmos), Wilson has been perhaps one of the most influential figures in the world of rock music, or progressive rock music, or whatever label suits your tastes. This has been felt in India as well. An entire generation grew up with his work in the late 2000s and early 2010s; if you were a part of this ‘movement’ that somehow hit all parts of the country at around the same time, the music he was involved with would be foundational to your journey as a music fan. 

Well, he is back in India (in four cities) after nine years, touring his new album ‘The Overview’, a big ol’ sweeping, conceptual release that consists of two mammoth suites either side of the twenty-minute mark (pause for applause from the ‘I loved the old stuff’ crowd) but explores those forms in a rather novel way. We spoke to Steven before his show at Santiago, Chile at length about his album, today’s concept of ‘the album’, and much more. 

This is presented as a long-form conversation to preserve flow of speech.

And- I mean, that's actually a good place to start, which is the album. I remember, I mean, I heard it on release day. It was March. And I remember reading about what the overview effect was. The whole ‘astronauts in space’, the whole feeling that they have. I was just curious, what do you think you find fascinating about taking a concept that is, in essence, quite an esoteric one- because I suspect most of us aren't going to go to space anytime soon. Most of us aren’t astronauts... What was the fascination you found with taking that, which is this strange, ineffable thing, and then expressing it through music, which is something that we can feel?

SW: Well, it's quite simple for me. I think if you look at the previous two or three records, they were very much concerned with earthly matters, with human beings, particularly how we engage with the world around us, particularly how we engage with the world in the era of cellular phones, the internet, social media.

So albums like The Future Bites, Harmony Codex were very much concerned with humanity and earth and inner space. And I think I felt like... so firstly- the first thing for me is always, what am I going to do next that's completely different to what I did last time? And that's still a motivation for me is to make every single record I make completely different; or not completely different, but have something about it that's conceptually different to the others, musically different to the others. Otherwise, what, you know, what's the point? What's the point of making another record? So for me, the motivations are always, what can I, what can I do now that I've not done what that I didn't do last time?

And to me, I thought, well, I've spent these last couple of records very much looking in, you know, inside human beings. And one of the things I feel like the age of social media and the age of these things has created is a sense of the human species being very insular, always looking at themselves, reflected back in social media, reflected back through the internet. And we, you know, you only have to walk down the streets or sit on a train or on an airplane to see that most people, 90% of the time, are doing this. (mimics someone looking down being on the phone) And I remember when I grew up, you know, long, long, long ago, I was growing up and walking down the street and kids would be looking around them and they'd be talking to each other. And sometimes they might even look up at the stars or the moon or the sky or the clouds or the birds and all the trees. And I think what's sad to me now when I walk down the street is I see very few people engaging with what's around them.

The world. Yeah.

SW: Well, not the world, the universe, the universe. So I think that was the initial starting point for me is that what have we lost in the age of social media, in the age of the internet? We've lost that curiosity about what's around us and in particular what's above us. And when you start looking at the universe, you realize the sheer size and magnitude of it, not just in terms of space, but also in terms of time; how long it's been here, how long we've been here, relatively speaking. And I think that also kind of taps into that idea of the human being- we kind of arrogantly feel like we're somehow the curators of the planet Earth. And of course, we've only been here for about five minutes, relatively speaking. The Earth has been here for four billion years. We've been here for about 300,000, which, relatively speaking, is literally the last five minutes. And yet somehow we think of ourselves as the curators of our planet, as the superior species on our planet. And I think that sometimes we need to remind ourselves in a good way – I don't mean this to be, like, a negative kind of preachy thing, but just to remind ourselves sometimes just how insignificant we really are in terms of the planet we live on, but also in terms of the universe we inhabit. The universe really doesn't care about us. We are one of a trillion planets orbiting one of a trillion stars. And I think that's reassuring.

It's scary. Yes, it's scary, I understand, But it's also reassuring to remind ourselves that life is this kind of gift, this very random gift that the universe has given us. It lasts really an instant. And we have to make the most of it. And we have to be curious about the world we live in, the planet we live on, the other species we share the planet with. As you probably know, I'm a very passionate vegan. So I'm very much of the belief that (and I know in India you have a lot of those beliefs too) the human species is no more or less important than any other species on this earth. And I think all of that kind of taps into my feeling about wanting to make this album about perspective, having some perspective on humanity and our space in the cosmos.

(credit: Kevin Westenberg)

Yeah, I was actually going to mention the word ‘perspective’ because – people give the word ‘insignificance’ quite a bad rap maybe because of the prefix -in. So people usually, like, we automatically take it to have a negative connotation. I feel that bringing oneself to terms with one’s insignificance takes a lot of the pressure off of us sometimes. It gives us more time to learn how to be good people because now we don't have to care about ‘who cares about me’, ‘Does it even matter?’... I think having a healthy dose of that actually makes us a little freer.

SW: I think so too. You know, one of the things human beings celebrate is this idea of celebrity culture and success. And it's very odd, the more you think about it, the notion of celebrity. Because this idea that human beings exist in some kind of hierarchy where there are more significant people, to use your word, more significant people and more insignificant people. One of the things I've always found very odd is this notion that people, I see this- it's very flattering, but I see this all the time; people coming up to me and they love my music and it's as if I'm some kind of god or something, you know, and they're shaking. And I think it's absurd because what do I do? I just do a job like anyone else. I make pop music, you know, and that is my talent. 

And I'm no more talented, in fact, I'm probably significantly less talented than people who work as doctors or nurses or conservationists or scientists or engineers. I just make pop music and it's bullshit, really. But I love, you know, obviously, don't get me wrong – I love music and I think it's magical. But yeah, the notion that we have of celebrity and significance and the way we somehow celebrate people and look up at them because they have... talents that are different. So, I think all of this is all part of this notion of, as you kind of said, of perspective, getting things in perspective. None of this really means anything at the end of the day. So just enjoy it. Make the most of this gift, you know.

The celebrity thing, I think, what it is, at least in my experience, because I am a huge fan of music. I have been listening since I was four, five years old-

SW: Me too.

Yeah. And I was, lucky is not the right word, but I was maybe a little fortunate, I didn't have a phone until I was 20. So I started by listening to cassettes and the radio. But so what had happened was, when a piece of music made me feel feelings- like let's take one of your songs. For example, I remember hearing Raider for the first time. The last, like, the big breakdown at the end of Raider II, the seven-minute part; I remember, that was a very powerful moment for me. And I remember thinking that, you know, you were directly responsible for the feelings that I was feeling. And I think that's a weird part of celebrity, because we are personifying our happiness through you, which is strange, which is why people are shaking when they see you, because they're...

SW: And I do understand that. And, of course, I do have that, too. I have that, too, with musicians that have made me feel profound emotions. And I think that is a wonderful thing about the artist. The artist is able somehow to create something which acts as a mirror, which kind of reflects back at the listener or the viewer or the reader or whatever art form we're talking about, something very profoundly deep within them that resonates with them. I think that's a wonderful gift that the artist has. And I think that's what creates this kind of this bond between the listener and the creator. But it's always it's always a very odd thing, because I think sometimes the artist is not even aware of having done those things. And the people that listen to the music or the people that experience the art sometimes have reactions that were never even intended by the person that created them. But that's a beautiful thing, isn't it? What a wonderful thing that everyone kind of sees or experiences things through the prism of their own experience. I mean, I've had so many people come to me and say, oh, this song got me through this and it means this and it means that. And I'm like, wow, you know, it never occurred to me that that's what the song was about. But you know what? That's amazing. That's amazing that you can interpret it that way.

It's the creativity of the listener, which is such an interesting concept.

SW: That's a very good way of putting it. The creativity of the listener, what the listener offers. The listener themselves often underestimates how much of themselves play a part in that kind of two-way transmission, if you like.

Right, so- this is also this very strange connection. I remember when we heard The Sound Of Muzak, which came out years ago. We heard it in school. I thought that you had just misspelled the word ‘music’ on purpose because I didn't know what muzak was. But when I started writing, I remember trying to research it. And then I got into the whole rabbit hole of what stimulus progression was and how they were playing it- listened to every single album. I don't know why I got so obsessed with it, but that's when I realized that that music was made to be palatable, but not encourage involvement.

SW: Correct.

Because the goal was to make people work, not to make them listen.

SW: Correct. And the irony is that a lot of that music now has become very popular. Particularly music made in the 60s and 70s- what they call library music, which was music created purely for use in the background on TV shows has become musically quite fascinating. It has a kind of exoticism to it, to our modern ears, which are so used to hearing music which sounds like it was created by artificial intelligence, that music that actually sounds like it was created by human beings, albeit meant to be very utilitarian, sounds quite exotic to us now. And I think that's a fascinating thing too.

I know you care a lot about how the show’s represented visually. I was wondering, while you're on stage, I have noticed that sometimes you're doing these motions with your hands that almost look like conducting in this strange way. Do you find that your role as a bandleader, which is a lot of the work that you're doing on stage, do you feel like that contributes to the visual part of a show? Like you cueing in other musicians, you cueing in something that's happening on screen behind you. Do you think your, you know, the movements of your body basically and how you're controlling the band- what role do you think that plays in the visuals?

SW: Yeah. I mean, I feel you use the word conductor and I feel, perhaps another analogy would be like a director, a film director. And I think- on this tour, I've been joking about this on stage every night, that pretty much every band I've been in, I've always made sure that I'm the worst musician on stage. And I'm not trying to say that I'm a bad musician or anything, but the point is this, that I always have been very fortunate to be able to work with people that are more technically, musically and visually gifted than me, but to be at the center and to be able to conduct this extravaganza going on around me. And so that applies to the music, the visuals, the lights. 

And, you know, there's a lot of humor as well. When you see the show, you'll see, particularly with this band, we have a lot of fun on stage and there's a lot of interaction. There's a lot of stuff that's very impromptu. Yes, A lot of the show is very structured. It has to be because the music is quite complex and it also is very often synced to visuals. But at the same time, there's a lot of space for improvisation, for us to have fun, to change things up each night. I feel very much like the kind of the, the master of ceremonies, the circus master, the director at the center of this big extravaganza that so many talented people, more talented than me are, are involved in. But to have been the person that had the idea in the first place, the writer, the director, what an amazing- what an amazing privileged situation that is to be in.

But I think, also, that is all part of the fact that I've always thought of music in visual terms. And I think you can hear that in the music. There is this word in English called synesthesia. I don't know where it comes from, probably a Latin word. This idea of experiencing one sense through another, essentially. So to me, music is a very visual language. And I, you know, one of the things people have asked me a lot about The Overview, for example, is, oh, what were your influences on this record? And they're expecting me to reel off a load of other bands.

Well, musically, none. Cinematically, 2001 – Kubrick, Interstellar – Nolan, Tarkovsky – Solaris. Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. All these incredible kind of cinematic... these were my influences on this record. This is what was in my head. Images. Images and the way they sound. Because all of those films have incredible soundtracks. The way that the sound and the visuals work together. That idea of synesthesia. You see something when you hear something. Or you hear something when you see something. And that is also one of the biggest kind of cornerstones, really, of The Overview, and pretty much everything I do.

(credit: Hajo Mueller)

I think this was, I remember someone interviewing you and they were asking you about guitar solos. And you had mentioned something which went along the lines of- you don't consider yourself a guitarist. You consider yourself as a writer with guitar as one of your tools. And I would venture to say that all the band members and all the visuals and stuff are also, not to de-humanize people, ‘things’ you have at your disposal to get what’s in your head across to people.

SW: Right. And I've been very fortunate to be able to attract some of the best musicians on the planet. I'm not just talking about in terms of technique; I've had incredible technical people in my band in the past. But I think my current band is my favourite of all because they are also very good at creating atmosphere. I think that will make more sense when you see the show.

To me, making music has always been about as much about creating- and this goes back to your question about music and the notion of muzak and ambient music and textural music. To me, texture is just as much a part of the fabric of music as technical musicianship. So one of the things I love about my current band, particularly with guitar player Randy, he's a brilliant, brilliant sound designer as well as a brilliant player. And I've had many brilliant guitar players in my band, but I think he's the best of all in the sense of having that balance of imagination of sound and texture as well as the ability to play. And, you know, the ability to understand when to not play as well as when to play. And that's always been so important to me. You know, I love the fact and I acknowledge the fact that I'm not a particularly great musician. But I think sometimes non-musicianship is as important as musicianship, if that kind of makes sense.

Yes, yeah, of course. And I mean, even in the structure of how music works, it's as they say, silence is a sound. So that applies literally and figuratively as well.

SW: Yeah, I mean, I can't stand shredding. I can't stand the notion of guitar shredding. To me, that's like the opposite of music. And so much rock and metal music seems to be, you know, not a lot, but some certainly seems to be about the idea of speed and technique. And I'm all about, particularly now I'm like- The Overview, let's slow things down. Let's take a more cosmic, textural kind of view.

I mean, you mentioned this thing about rattling off a list of bands when someone would ask you about your influences. I just wanted to touch on that a little bit because- so I was listening to The Album Years, which is your podcast with Tim (Bowness). And I was listening to you both discussing years in music and all that. I’m a Radiohead fan, so I was very interested to hear your takes on the age-old debate of which of the three good Radiohead albums is the best one. But I was imagining what an episode of that podcast would be about 2022, like the year 2022. Not now, but hypothetically, 15-20 years from now.

SW: Yeah, yeah.

And I was wondering, we like to have discourse about albums and music and give our opinions and stuff. But how long do you think music or an album has to exist before it justifies having a retrospective on it? You know what I mean? Because, these days, the young people have the very low attention spans, which is manufactured in a sense, and, you know, albums go out of the spotlight or the public focus in a matter of weeks, sometimes days.

SW: Hours.

Yeah, and I don't know if- like when we look back at 1969, which is famously one of the greatest years in music. When we look back on it now with so much fondness, because we managed to listen to all of that music in the years between 1969 and now. I don't know if that's a probability between now and, say, 2052. So I was wondering, in the current generation, how much time do you think would have to pass before we can put our rose-tinted glasses on?

SW: It's a very good question. It's one of the reasons myself and Tim have kind of avoided talking about- I think we did one episode in the 21st century. I forget now.

It was the year 2000.

SW: Yeah, exactly! So that's as close as we've got to the 21st century. And I think the very good reason why we called the podcast The Album Years is because there is this very clear era when albums were important, and that era has now passed. Now, I don't necessarily think we think that's a terrible thing because things change. Things change and things evolve and music has always evolved. And, you know, music existed for centuries before the album became a thing. So, the album is essentially something that was around for about 50 years, probably even a bit less than that. Let's say the album really came of age sometime in the mid 50s, those early Frank Sinatra records, concept records like ‘No One Cares’ and ‘Songs For Swinging Lovers’.That's the beginning of the notion of the album. And the album kind of pretty much finished as a creative entity, I would say, the turn of the century, the turn of the millennium. So we've had this very short period of time, really, where the album became a very important art form in itself. And that has ended. 

Okay, now that's sad for people like you and me that perhaps love the idea of the album. We love it and I still do. I love the notion of being able to take the listener on on a journey across two sides of vinyl or a 50, 60 minute CD, whatever it is- I love that, okay, but the point is this. The modern generation of young people, they don't care about that. They haven't grown up with that. They're not interested in that. Okay, fine. We have to get over that. Okay, we can we can still love the album and there will always be a few people that will discover the album, just like there will always be people that will discover vinyl. It will be a niche, but it will continue to be there. And I don't think it will ever completely go away. The album will never completely go away, just like vinyl and physical media will never completely go away. They'll become niches. I think that's already happened with the album. So The Overview, for example, is an album. Clearly, it's an album.

That's why I bring it up. Because of course- because the entire era that you're talking about where the age of the album has passed, that is the exact era where you've been making all your solo work at least...

SW: Well, yeah, I think- to clarify, I think the age of the album has passed as a mainstream thing. But the age of the album continues to exist as a cult thing. Just- I mean, you could talk about rock music in the same terms. Rock music, really, now.... and I think India is kind of an anomaly in this way. There are a few places in the world like South America, where I am now – rock music is very big with the younger generation. But I've just spent a month in the United States of America. And I can tell you, rock music is almost completely irrelevant to a younger generation, almost completely irrelevant. It's hip hop. It's urban. It's country. Rock music has become a kind of underground cult music. And that's fascinating, because if you look back at the history of music, the same thing happened time and time again with jazz. Jazz music was the dominant mainstream popular form of music in the in the first half of the 20th century. Big band music, jazz music. And then it became a cult. It was almost made a form of cult music overnight by the by the beginning of rock and roll and then rock music. And the same thing has happened to rock music now in the 21st century. Hip hop, urban pop culture has driven it.... It's now a cult music.

I just wanted to ask you about, you had brought up this thing about going to a different bunch of countries and seeing different interests happening. So about India... the funny thing about India's music scene is, it did not have a fully ‘famous’ established independent scene at all until maybe 2005 or 2006. Um, it was because film is film and film is pop music. But around the new millennium, when bands started making original stuff that wasn't tied to a movie, that's when the music listenership really kicked off, especially for Western music. So, I think one of the interesting reasons why audiences here are still into rock and all this stuff is because we're a very young country in terms of listening to rock music. 

Even between the last time you came and now, there's been a lot of stuff- we’ve become this powerhouse which went from us not having many international acts, to suddenly everyone from, I mean, Coldplay to yourself to Linkin Park and all these people coming in a matter of months. I wonder, I mean, when you come here, I think you're going to be playing to a very different India... Do you ever think of that stuff when you're planning out your travel and does it ever impact your creative process on stage? I know it doesn't matter when you're recording an album, because that's a very, to use the word you said, a very insular process. But, but, you know, when you see on your calendar, oh look, I'm coming to India, or oh look, I'm playing in Santiago tonight. I mean, do you find the differences in listening culture interesting?

SW: Very much, very much so. And I find, you know, I- it seems like a really trivial thing. But one of the things I always look at with the audience is what t-shirts, what are on their t-shirts? Absolutely, yes. It's fascinating to me. So for example, if we're playing in, I don't know, Denver, Colorado, or Phoenix, Arizona, and I look out and I see, I see lots of like Pink Floyd, Rush, Genesis, Yes t-shirts. And, and then I look out at an audience in like, for example, a couple of nights ago in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, Nine Inch Nails, ABBA, System of a Down, Emperor, Opeth, and Disco, you know, like I saw somebody with a Disco Rules t-shirt. And I like that, you know, I like- I mean, don't get me wrong. I love playing to the older generation of progressive rock fan. But I think that sense- that I've tried all my career to not be a generic artist, and listen, I completely acknowledge and I completely understand why people might think of me as this prog rock musician. And I get that, you know, I prefer to call it conceptual rock, but I get why people put me in that category. But at the same time, I've always been someone that's listened across a very wide range of music and has always felt that my music for better or worse has pop, ambient, jazz, industrial, electronica, has all of these elements to it. And when I can look out an audience and see, oh, there's someone with a Radiohead t-shirt. Oh, there's someone with a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Oh, but now there's someone with an ABBA t-shirt. Or there's someone with a Taylor Swift t-shirt or a Billie Eilish t-shirt. Thank god. 

So, you know, this is fantastic. This is exactly what I want. I want to feel like the music can and does appeal to anyone with ears that can just enjoy creative music, which is what touches them. And I think that, so coming back to our earlier discussion, I think that's the difference between places like America and India and South America, where the music is still getting out there to an audience that doesn't care about genre. Whereas in America, it's because of the way America is, because the radio stations and the internet channels and all this, a lot of the rock music seems to be directed in this idea towards this concept of nostalgia. The only people that are going to listen to rock music now are the people that always listen to rock music, the people in their 50s and 60s. And that's a shame. That's a shame. 

And so when I see an audience and when- it is trivial in a way to base your your feeling on what the t-shirts are. But to me, that's one of the most significant things is what is the range of t-shirts I can look at. And I love that. 

Yes. And look, I mean, the audience will reflect your intention.

SW: Well, it should do. Ideally. It doesn't always, no, but if it works out... The fact that there are so many people with all the different kinds of shirts and stuff means that they know that you're interested in different genres of music. So are they. And that's why they've all congregated at your show. Which is a wonderful thing to have. That's, that's what I feel. Yeah. Like, somebody standing in front of me the other night had a Boards of Canada t-shirt on, so.. Yes, I love Boards of Canada! Yes, there's elements of that also in my musical DNA. So it's almost like you're seeing your own musical personality spread out in front of you by virtue of all these different t-shirts representing all these different genres and all these things you love. And in a way, it's disappointing when you look out and all you see is Pink Floyd. Listen, I love Pink Floyd. They're my favourite band. But you know what I'm saying? All you see is this relatively narrow spectrum of what you listen to and what you like. So I think that's one of the joys for me about, about playing. And I'm fully expecting this to be the case in India too. Yeah. Fully expecting that.