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Steven John Wilson (b. November 3, 1967 in London) is a name thrown about less often than it should. A friend of mine claimed that he’s one of the hardest-working musicians and writers operating today, to which I would expand and state that Steven Wilson is the single most-productive musician of the last thirty-five years. A tall claim to be sure, but over the years Steven has been an instrumental part of nine different bands: Altamont, Karma, No-Man, Porcupine Tree, Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, Bass Communion, Blackfield, a solo project, and Storm Corrosion. On top of that, he operates as the record producer for all of them in addition to the albums of Opeth, the band spearheaded by his Storm Corrosion bandmate Mikael Akerfeldt. On top of that, Steven has remixed the master tapes of albums by several of the bands he grew up listening to: Marillion, Gentle Giant, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, XTC, Hawkwind, ELP, Tears for Fears, and Chicago.
This retrospective series has several goals, but one of which is to showcase the extent of Steven Wilson’s sound. The psychedelia of early projects such as Altamont, the songwriting-based approach to progressive metal in Porcupine Tree, the taut prog-pop of Blackfield, the dirge-like ambient folk of Storm Corrosion, the experimental Krautrock of Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, the drone-heavy ambient experimentality of Bass Communion, and the art-pop of No-Man. The last of which has been called “conceivably the most important English group since The Smiths” by Melody Maker and (by Drowned in Sound) “probably the most underrated band of the last 25 years.” Given that range of sounds and the lyrical depth which Steven Wilson has employed throughout his career, there is a strong case that he is one of the greatest British songwriters of the past thirty years. Yet he is also the most low-profile artist I’ll cover for quite some time.
In tracing the development of his career, there are some astute observations to be made. One of which is that the move from psychedelia to prog brings a sense of order to Steven Wilson’s music. Related to that is a growing sense of using different musical projects to express different aspects of Wilson’s personality, a facet particularly relevant in a year such as 2011, where albums from the solo project, Blackfield, and Bass Communion were released.
As a final note, I will not be counting EP’s, live albums, compilations (with a couple exceptions). If you feel intimidated, you’re not alone—aside from Porcupine Tree and the solo albums, this will be new territory for me, too.
As a refresher, the albums that will covered in this retrospective series will be in chronological order. So the reviews will be in the following order (release dates are the most specific that I could find them):
Altamont - "Prayer for the Soul" (9/83) (Review Published 6/18/2018)
Karma - "The Joke's on You" (10/83)
Karma - "The Last Man to Laugh" (1985)
Porcupine Tree - "On The Sunday of Life" (1991)
Porcupine Tree - "Voyage 34: The Complete Trip" (1992/3)
No-Man - "Loveblows & Lovecries- A Confession" (5/93)
Porcupine Tree - "Up The Downstair" (6/7/93)
No-Man - "Flowermouth" (6/27/94)
Porcupine Tree - "The Sky Moves Sideways" (2/95)
No-Man - "Wild Opera" (9/96)
Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "IEM" (1996)
Porcupine Tree - "Signify" (9/96)
Bass Communion - "I" (4/98)
Porcupine Tree - "Stupid Dream" (3/99)
Bass Communion - "II" (7/99)
Porcupine Tree - "Lightbulb Sun" (5/22/00)
Bass Communion - "III" (3/01)
No-Man - "Returning Jesus" (3/27/01)
Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "Arcadia Son" (5/01)
Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "IEM Have Come for Your Children" (9/01)
Porcupine Tree - "In Absentia" (9/24/02)
Altamont - "Untitled" (9/02)
No-Man - "Together We're Stranger" (9/2/03)
Blackfield - "Blackfield" (1/04)
Bass Communion - "Ghosts on Magnetic Tape" (2/04)
Continuum - "Continuum I" (3/05)
Porcupine Tree - "Deadwing" (3/28/05)
Bass Communion - "Indicates Void" (10/05)
Bass Communion - "Loss" (1/06)
Continuum - "The Continuum Recyclings, Volume One" (7/11/06)
Blackfield - "Blackfield II" (2/13/07)
Porcupine Tree - "Fear of a Blank Planet" (4/16/07)
Continuum - "Continuum II" (7/07)
Bass Communion - "Pacific Codex" (2/08)
No-Man - "Schoolyard Ghosts" (5/12/08)
Bass Communion - "Molotov and Haze" (7/22/08)
Steven Wilson - "Insurgentes" (11/26/08)
Bass Communion - "Chiaroscuro" (7/09)
Porcupine Tree - "The Incident" (9/14/09)
Continuum - "The Continuum Recyclings, Volume Two" (6/10)
Blackfield - "Welcome To My DNA" (3/28/11)
Steven Wilson - "Grace For Drowning" (9/28/11)
Bass Communion - "Cenotaph" (11/10/2011)
Storm Corrosion - "Storm Corrosion" (5/8/12)
Steven Wilson - "The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories)" (2/25/13)
Blackfield - "Blackfield IV" (8/26/13)
Steven Wilson - "Hand. Cannot. Erase." (2/27/15)
Blackfield - "Blackfield V" (2/10/17)
Steven Wilson - "To The Bone" (8/18/17)
To put all of those releases into perspective, that is a total of 49 albums across a span of 35 years—an average of 1.4 albums released every year. For the sake of comparison, the next-most prolific artist in my sights for a discography review is Bob Dylan, who has released 36 albums over a span of 56 years. Whether one prefers Steven Wilson over Bob Dylan is a matter of taste, but number-crunching connotes that Steven is an unusually prolific specimen that will take a considerably longer period of time to pin down than Dylan. For all of Bob Dylan’s musical and lyrical gifts, Steven operates on a wider palate of musical tapestry than anything that His Bobness has ever used.