There are no guest musicians on this album…

There are no guest musicians on this record, you’re right. I only realised this myself when I was putting the credits together. It wasn’t planned. We do have some orchestrations written for the record but we decided in the end we didn’t need them. So it certainly wasn’t by planning, it was just one of those things. In a way I kinda like it, it’s the first time there’s been a record by Porcupine Tree that has not guest involvement at all for well over ten years. It’s kinda nice in a way that it’s just the four guys making this record. It was just one of those things. I mean I will be perfectly honest, if a musician I really admired had come along at just the right time, as happened with the last record when Alex Larsen just happened to come along. And if I met Jeff Beck in a bar sometime and he said ‘I want to be on your record,’ I wasn’t going to say no, obviously. But it just didn’t happen this time.

Tell me about your other projects…

I’m always doing lots of different things. It’s been very important to me to be working in many different musical styles simultaneously. That’s kind of a reflection really of my musical listening tastes. I mean love everything from jazz to death metal to Abba to Frank Zappa, to ambient music to to progressive music, and anything in between. I love all these kinds of music and being a musician I like to have the opportunity to express all that and the different aspects. Last year I did a solo record, my first solo record, and that was a really liberating experience because it was the first time in a way… perhaps it was the early days of Porcupine Tree which started as a solo project, but even more so now because I think I have a much wider palette of influences and sounds that I like to explore. And I made this solo record which was very liberating because I literally had different styles within the same song in a way I had never done before, even with Porcupine Tree. Mixing noise music with orchestral music, with trip-hop music with shoe-gazing music - all sometimes within the same 5 minute song. I’m not sure how easy it is to listen to that kind of music, but I’m certainly very proud of that record. There’s definitely a sense of the Porcupine Tree sound and there are certain things I know I couldn’t put forward for Porcupine Tree, but I definitely do think of THE INCIDENT as being a kind of post-solo record in the sense there are some elements of sounds design that I took from that album, some darker corners perhaps come from that sound. More electronic aspects in some cases. But you know what? I always rely on friends to tell me what kind of album we’ve made. It’s funny because they all say ‘what’s the new Porcupine Tree album like?’ And I always say, ‘I have no idea, you tell me.’ You can’t see the changes in your personality over the years because you’re for you you’re living with it the whole time and it’s kind of incremental. I’m sure I a very different person to teh one who made FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET two years ago, but I can’t see the change. But if you hadn’t seen me from the time I released that record, you would see the change immediately in my personality, and it’s the same with music. I’m sure people wills ay, ‘oh, it’s very different, I can hear this from the solo record. I can see see Steve been listening to this or that or whatever…’ But I’m sure that that I’ve taken some of my solo experience into the record too…

How important is 5.1 mixing (Surround Sound) for you, and why?

5.1 mixing for me personally is very important. I mean commercially, it’s not important at all because it’s a very small market. But I do say that this is the definitive way to hear music. Because the music is quite produced and quite dense and there’s a lot of layers to the production. Sometimes it’s very difficult to hear all that in a stereo spectrum. But the 5.1 spectrum gives you the opportunity to hear all of those subtleties in the music, some of the sound designs, keyboard textures or extra guitar parts or harmony vocals. You can kind of completely immerse yourself in this musical adventure. I mean I would like everyone to hear the album in surround sound but realistically only a very small percentage will hear it in surround sound. But, you know what? As long as there is one person who will listen to it in surround sound I would keep on doing the surround sound mixes. There’s probably a few thousand people who will get to hear it in surround sound and for me that’s the definitive way to hear Porcupine Tree, or any of my music…

How does accomplishment and ambition sit with you?

The question about accomplishment is a very difficult one to answer because I believe the playing thing is always changing. What I mean by that is is that if you’d asked me when I was 15-year-old kid what my ambition was I’d have said ‘I just wanna make a record. I don’t care if nobody wants to buy it, I just wanna hold it in my hands.’ Of course later I achieved that ambition at which point my ambition is revised. It’s almost as if you’re looking over the next horizon, and as soon as you get to that point on the horizon, you’re looking at the next point on the next horizon. And I think it’s the same thing with achievement. What I’ve wanted to achieve in music has always been changing and continues to change. This record, album number 10 is very difefrent to album number 1. It’s also very different to album number 5 which is also very different to album number 7, etc. etc.. So, there’s a sense that as the personalities in the band are changing, and new experiences and influences are are coming on board, your ambitions or what you want to achieve also changes. THE INCIDENT is the record I wanted to make right now, but in six months time probably I’ll be thinking about making some very different. If truth be told, I’m already imagining a different record. So, it’s almost like you’re chasing your tail and you’ll never catch it. You’ll never actually reach your ambition, you’ll never actually achieve what you wanted to achieve, because the day you do is the day you may as well give up… I’ve never got to that point, yet, and in a way I hope I never do. I hope I will always be slightly dissatisfied because it means there’s more work to be done.

Tell me about the first single, ‘Time Flies’…

‘Time Flies’ is actually one of the only happy songs I’ve written. In the context of the album, it’s it works really well because it comes right in the middle of a fairly dark record, as is typical of Porcupine Tree. It’s kind of a nostalgic song, its sentiment is very simple and almost a cliché, but it’s expressed perfectly in the title. There’s this idea that when you’re young time seems to go on forever and years when you’re a kid seem to last forever. At least it did for me. I remember when I was very young thinking ‘how old am I going to be in the year 2000?’
And ‘oh my God, that an eternity away!’ And this idea that summers seem to last forever when I was a kid, you know when you had school holidays which seemed to go on forever… And now, for some reason, time seems to just pass so quickly. The last ten years has just gone in a flash for me, and yet the first ten years of my life seemed to last forever. And when I look back on them they seem to be an eternity ago. So it’s that idea I guess of trying to crystalise or encapsulate the idea that the older you get, the more time seems to speed up. Of course, it’s an illusion but I know I’m not the only one to have this feeling. Everyone I speak to seems to think the same way, that their childhoods seemed to last forever adulthood seems to have passed in a flash. We’re speeding towards the grave as we speak… So it’s about that but it’s a kind of sentimental, nostalgic, look back in a way at those summers that seemed to last a lifetime when I was a kid.

Your live shows are very visual. What can expect form your UK shows in October and November? 

We’re hoping to have a lot of new multi-media material. Anyone who has seen us before knows we have the films, the projections… The idea at the moment is the first half of the show to be a complete performance of THE INCIDENT, from beginning to end (which was what we did with FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET too). There’ll be a short interval and then the second half the show will be a selection of older stuff. For the first half of the show as well, we’ll be concentrating most of the rehearsal time in trying to pull that off live and to have some new films and illustrations to go along with the multi-media experience. We’ve got a new lighting designer so we’re looking forward to working with him. I think the idea is to take it to the next level from a kind of audio/visual perspective. To give it that wow factor…

 Photos By Diana Nitschke