Steven John Wilson's Blog, page 3

Steven Wilson – Footprints Illustrated Encyclopaedia

‘Steven Wilson – Footprints’ is an astoundingly detailed 3 volume illustrated encyclopaedia of my musical output, from my solo work to Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Bass Communion and more. The effort and work that has gone into this by Guy M Tkach, Peter M Sieker and Chip Madinger is nothing short of astounding and I’m flattered they took on such a task and mightily impressed with what they have achieved. Check out the first volume at stevenwilson-footprints.com

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New video for SELF online now!

Steven Wilson has released a mind bending video for the track SELF, taken from his just released album THE FUTURE BITES. Watch the video here.

Directed by longtime visual collaborator Miles Skarin (Crystal Spotlight), the video uses similar deep fake technology (DeepFaceLab) to that used in Channel 4’s Alternative Queen’s Speech. In the clip, Steven’s face is warped into those of a series of iconic (and occasionally infamous) celebrities including (among others) Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Zuckerberg, Brad Pitt and David Bowie (to name a few). The effect is equal parts mesmerising and disturbing, questioning the nature of identity in an age where everything is so easy to fake.

Steven Wilson: Self is about our new age of narcissism and self-obsession, one in which a human race that used to look out with curiosity at the world and the stars now spends much of its time gazing at a little screen to see themselves reflected back in the mirror of social media. In that sense everyone now can take part in the notion of celebrity, and has the potential to share their life with an invisible mass of people they will never meet. The video take things further by exploring the idea that anyone can now project a version or “self” that has no bearing on reality, and by using only well known faces the deception is made transparent.

Miles Skarin (director): In our early discussions about the Self video, we were talking about the concept of identity in the digital age, how your face is not only your key to a lot of the media you consume, it represents who you are – or who you pretend to be in your online personas. One of the most intriguing new developments in recent years have been the ability to create deepfakes, where a computer runs a machine learning algorithm to predict what one face would look like in another’s pose. Anyone with the right tools and ability can now turn themselves into anyone else, so what does that mean for identity?

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THE FUTURE BITES – OUT NOW

Today, is release day for THE FUTURE BITES, a day it seemed would never arrive! Strangely although the album was written and recorded before the pandemic, recent world events have made it somehow even more relevant to our times. So on this momentous day (for me at least) I want to send my thanks in advance to all of you who have already bought your physical copies, or listened to the album on streaming services.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank the many people involved in helping me make it. First and foremost my friend and co-producer, the wonderfully gifted David Kosten of Faultline. Also to the fantastic guest performers on the album; Richard Barbieri, Nick Beggs, Adam Holzman, Michael Spearman of Everything Everything, Jason Cooper of The Cure, Wendy Harriott, Bobbie Gordon, Crystal Williams, Rou Reynolds of Enter Shikari, Rina Mushonga, Mos Capri, JAKL, Blaine Harrison and Jack Flanagan of Mystery Jets, Guy Protheroe, Fyfe Dangerfield, and of course Sir Elton and my lovely wife and children.

For technical assistance a big thank you to Marco Pasquariello, Mo Hausler, Jake Fields, Bob Ludwig, and Cenzo Townshend. For the incredible art direction I take my hat off to Simon Moore.

I’m also lucky to have a wonderful management and label team behind me, and I thank everyone at Promusic Mangement, Caroline, Arts and Crafts, and all the promotional people around the world. They have lots more work to do of course, as do I, so for now I will just say I hope everyone loves the album as much as I am proud of it.

S x

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The Last Great American Dynasty (Taylor Swift cover)

My final TFB session track of 2020 is something a bit different. To mark the end of the year I wanted to do a cover of someone else’s song from 2020 rather than one of mine, and I’ve chosen one from Taylor Swift’s fantastic Folklore album. This is a story-telling song with brilliant lyrics, and rather a lot of them. In fact it might be the most words I’ve ever had to sing in 3 and half minutes, which is why you’ll see me reading them off a cheat-sheet!

I love how the song starts off in the past in third person but becomes first person towards the end as Taylor Swift herself enters the story. You can read all about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Great_American_Dynasty

My version is pretty faithful, maybe a bit too much, but in the spirit of the session concept it was learned and recorded quickly. Plus it just sounded so good the way she did it.

Happy New Year to you all, and best wishes for a wonderful 2021! S x

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The Future Bites Deluxe Edition Unboxing Video

Here’s a video of me unboxing the first The Future Bites deluxe edition off the production line, with a soundtrack drawn from the exclusive and copious bonus material. A couple of the items included in the box are a secret and have been blurred in video to maintain an element of surprise, but otherwise I hope this will give you an idea of the work that has gone into the set. From the spot varnished text on the front of the box to the numerous inserts, it’s all been the subject of an incredible attention to detail, and I want to thank Simon Moore at WeAreBaby for developing and collaborating with me on it.The set is limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and with only a month to go we’re now pre-selling the copies in the 4,000’s, so I don’t expect it to be available for much longer. Only available from the official TFB store, and Burning Shed.

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Half-Light – The Future Bites Sessions

Today’s session track delves back to the music I wrote for Deadwing, the movie that never was (but that may be again), a love theme between the two main characters. It was replaced on the Porcupine Tree album of the same name by a group composition, but I regret consigning it to a B-side, as I feel it’s one of my most beautiful songs.

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First reviews come in for The Future Bites

Glowing reviews are starting to come in for The Future Bites – in a full page review UK magazine MOJO awards the album 4/5 and describes it as “A great grown up pop record“, opining that “(Wilson’s) solo work has seen him embracing dance, electronica and pop, and becoming all the better for it.” Another UK review in Uncut awards the album 8/10, noting its “beautifully falsetto-iced vocal hooks” and “maverick meta pop”. In Germany, Classic Rock give the album 9/10, “Wilson has never before packed such a rollercoaster ride into a single album…Another triumph”, and Rocks comments that “Unpredictability remains Wilson’s credo,” whilst rating the album 8/10.

Meanwhile the latest single 12 THINGS I FORGOT is starting to pick up strong radio play all over the world, with a special shout out to India’s biggest national station Radio One where it has been play-listed and is currently the second most rotated song (after mainstream pop star Shawn Mendes!)

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Voyage 34 – The Future Bites Sessions

The latest Future Bites session is one of my very earliest solo recordings. Voyage 34 was released under the name Porcupine Tree way back in 1992, and at the time was one of the longest singles ever released at 30 minutes! This session version is much abbreviated, but look out for a more extended updating of Brian’s 34th LSD trip on my tour next year.

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THE FUTURE BITES TOUR SEP/OCT 2021

Steven Wilson has announced an extensive tour in support of his forthcoming sixth album, The Future Bites (due January 29th 2021). The tour begins in the UK in September 2021 before crossing Europe. Tickets for UK shows go on sale at 10am on Friday 11th December and are available here (with a fan only pre-sale on Wednesday December 9th). The dates are:

Steven Wilson played 145 dates in support of his 2017 album To The Bone including three sold out shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall. A new track from The Future Bites – 12 Things I Forgot – was released recently.

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12 THINGS I FORGOT with Gary Kemp – The Future Bites Sessions

The fifth in The Future Bites sessions series is my current single 12 THINGS I FORGOT. For this one I invited my buddy Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet and A Saucerful of Secrets over to do a fantastic and soulful job on the harmony vocals, thanks Gary! Look out for some more guests on future session tracks.

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