The Incident: The Interview Pt3
The incident is Porcupine Tree’s tenth album and the band have come a long way since forming in 1987. Do you feel you have accomplished what you set out to do?
That’s a very difficult question to answer, because I believe that the playing field is changing. If you’d asked me as a 15-year-old kid what my ambition was, I’d have said I just want to make a record. I don’t care if anyone buys it, I just want to hold it in my hands! Of course, a few years later, I achieved that, at which point my ambition was revised.
It’s like you’re looking at the next horizon and once you get to that point, you’re looking at the next point on the next horizon. I think it’s the same with achievement. What I’ve wanted to achieve in music has changed, and continues to change. Album number ten is very different to album number one. It’s also very different to album number five, number seven etcetera.
There’s a sense that as the personalities in the band are changing, and new experiences and influences are coming aboard, your ambitions are also changing. The Incident is the record I wanted to make right now, but in six months’ time I’ll probably be thinking about making a completely different record.
Actually, truth be told, I’m already imagining a very different record - so it’s almost like you’re chasing your tail and you’ll never catch it. You never actually achieve what you want to achieve because the day you do you might as well give up. I haven’t got to that point yet and in a way I hope I never do. I hope I’ll always be slightly dissatisfied because it means there’s more work to be done.
The quality of your sound, both recorded and live, is vitally important, but you’re also known for being highly visual on stage. What can the fans expect from the upcoming shows?
We’re hoping to have a lot of new multimedia material. Anyone who’s seen us before will know we have the films and the projections. The idea for the moment is for the first half of the show to be a complete performance of The Incident from beginning to end, which is what we did with Blank Planet too. Then we’ll have a short interval and the second half will be a selection of older stuff.
We’ll will be concentrating most of the rehearsal time in trying to pull the first half off live, and to have some new films and illustrations to go into the multimedia experience. We’ve got a new lighting designer, so we’re looking forward to working with him. The idea is to take it to the next level from an audio-visual perspective and get that ‘wow factor’.
Porcupine Tree tour the UK in December. Steven Wilson takes over Rock Radio this Saturday, September 26, from 8pm, playing his own choice of music and discussing the band’s career in more detail.
Part 1 / Part 2
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