Steven Wilson Retrospective Part 11: Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "I.E.M." (1996)
- Andrew J. Harper
- Jun 30, 2018
- 8 min read
No, your eyes aren’t fooling you…that’s actually the name of the project—Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, just another one of Steven Wilson’s many projects. For a bit of a light introduction to this project, it picks up where the psychedelic rock sounds of older Porcupine Tree (which reached an apex with Voyage 34) left off. Which is understandable—starting with The Sky Moves Sideways, those influences were stripped out of Porcupine Tree’s sound. But Steven didn’t get rid of that sound—he just put it elsewhere. Wilson himself would also cite “the cosmic jazz of artists like Sun Ra” as influential towards the type of music created as Incredible Expanding Mindfuck.
As for the project’s name, “Incredible Expanding Mindfuck” was an in-joke that’d been used to describe the more out-there material of early Porcupine Tree promos (which I didn’t cover). In said promos, the booklets apparently had a fictionalized history written out by Steven Wilson that detailed an underground career in the 1970’s and also mentioned the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck as a related project.
That being said, some of the material recorded under the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck moniker exhibits a Krautrock influence that’s more prevalent than anything Porcupine Tree would record (I’d suggest reading the linked Wikipedia article if you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘Krautrock’). Much like the earliest Porcupine Tree recordings, Steven Wilson would play every instrument of every song (with a small number of exceptions). Unlike Porcupine Tree, this project is entirely instrumental—no lyrics to analyze (the same is true of Bass Communion).
Unlike much of Steven’s projects where it currently lies dormant but could be revived (No-Man, Bass Communion), currently active (Blackfield, solo), or became the launching pad for something else (Porcupine Tree), Incredible Expanding Mindfuck flat-out died. The project’s final release was in 2001 and Steven almost never discusses the project in any interview. Additionally, a box set was given the image of the project’s name and lifetime on a tombstone as if Steven were saying “Incredible Expanding Mindfuck is dead.”
The self-titled debut album by the project is one where information regarding it was scarce. More so than anything I’ve covered here since Steven’s 1980’s projects of Karma and Altamont. That can either be a very bad sign of what’s to come or it can denote that there’s a hidden gem on our hands. Since I’ve never heard this album before, I’ll be finding out as I write this review. Care to take a look?
“The Gospel According to the I.E.M.” (12:56)
This track opens with what seems like airy noise, but there’s some background synths in the mix. This lasts until some hi-hats come in via the drums (at around 1:00), followed shortly by bass. All of this is topped off with atmospheric synths. At around 1:45, drums shift rhythm to something involving a lot more crash cymbal work. During all this, the synths pick up in intensity—building up to something. Indeed, the effect is spooky—particularly with the random bursts of effects-driven guitar coming in intermittently.
Without warning, everything but the synths drop off at 2:59, leaving the listener in an unsettling soundscape until the band returns a few seconds later. Now, Steven’s playing along on guitar, but the odd effects that his solo has makes it so the unsettling atmosphere persists even with the order of a rhythm section. There is a lot of dissonance achieved in this rock-based solo. This solo lasts until about 5:20, where the drums change rhythm to something less up-tempo. Now, Steven’s guitar playing is using diminished chords for a few seconds. Then, everything drops out besides samples of cymbals played in quick succession…creating a very unsettling effect.
This off-putting soundscape goes through bits of mellotron-esque tones, silence, and even mild spoken word samples. That is, until a drum fill shifts things into the pattern that appeared at 1:00 (without a bass buildup). Soon, Steven’s ghost-like guitar tones enter the fray for added atmosphere. At about 8:00, the drums morph to the rhythmic pattern from 1:45, while Steven does some slide-guitar touches to the dissonance as a lead-in to another guitar solo. Once the song reaches the 9:00 mark, some held effects can be heard and at 9:30, Steven’s begins to add white noise effects in the background that swirl around before another guitar solo is furiously hammered away. The result is a sonic maelstrom that has only drums and bass keeping things in order—otherwise, this is chaos.
This semblance of order endures until around the 11 minute mark, where all the instruments except for windy noise and some discordant guitar bits from Steven completely drop out. There are something like ghostly choral echoes and what sounds like muffled explosions in the distance of all this, but then everything fades to silence in the last fifteen seconds. This is the sound of not a bang, but a whimper—an anticlimax that doesn’t take away from the strong piece that preceded it.
While “The Gospel According to the I.E.M.” is—structurally—a jam not unlike those found on Voyage 34, the amount of dissonance and experimentation that Steven Wilson is willing to put into this exhibits a few things. First, it exhibits a continued willingness to tinker with sound (something that Steven will show in a different genre in Bass Communion) that reveals Steven’s propensity for working outside the conventional definition of what music is. Secondly, the rhythm section’s foundation of order provides a failsafe—if Steven pushes too far into experimental territory, the steady rhythm section can make this remain classified as ‘music.’ Thirdly, “The Gospel According to the I.E.M.” declares that Incredible Expanding Mindfuck will sound unlike Porcupine Tree or No-Man—this sound functions as a beast all its own.
“The Last Will and Testament of Emma Peel” (8:08)
This is the only song on I.E.M. which I was unable to find on YouTube. I can’t evaluate it, so we’ll move on to the next track.
“Fie Kesh” (8:23)
“Fie Kesh” starts with a sweeping set of Indian-style percussion and sitar, along with bass that pops in intermittently. This lasts until acoustic guitar shows up at around the one minute mark, but then that acoustic appears with a flanger-effect and does some lead work. You can also hear something sounding like wind chimes amongst the percussion. There is a massive Grateful Dead-esque jam involving the shimmering lead guitar and the cascading percussion work—both feel as if they come close to, but not quite, enveloping the listener.
At about 3:50, the lead turns to an electric guitar and stays that way for a while as the acoustic shifts to rhythm work. The whole time this goes on, the steady sitar/percussion/bass rhythm provides the bedrock for the atmosphere which envelops this piece. You can also hear snippets of keyboards flicker in-and-out of the mix.
The jam begins to simmer down at around the 6:45 mark—it’s clear that percussion drops out and the acoustic guitar subsides in favor of an utterly haunted-sounding synth effect that glitches out—something is seriously wrong and the music reflects that in an unsettling way. If the rest of the song was a dream, then this is the horrifying wake-up call.
Structurally, “Fie Kesh” is far looser than anything that Steven Wilson has touched up till now. This can almost be considered a free-form jam based on a motif involving Indian-style percussion and sitar. However, those last two minutes of nightmarish synth effects make me think that there was some definite structure put into this. If so, this still doesn’t have a conventional song-structure. The song is too jam-based and meandering (not a bad thing) to do that. But there was definitely an idea in mind.
“Deafman” (9:01)
A machine-like whirring synth begins “Deafman” before a steady guitar riff begins to play. At 0:37, drums enter with a brisk and jagged rhythm that befits things before bass pops in at the one minute mark. All this time, the whirring synth comes in and out. At about 1:15, there’s a sample playing (can’t make it out) and soon after that, some atmospheric leads of synth pop in and hover over the rhythmic foundation for a while. And by a while, this persists until fuzz-toned guitar leads appear at around 4:45, which leads to a Zappa-esque guitar solo at close to the five-minute mark. That Steven can play a guitar solo of Zappa-esque dexterity shows just how far he’s come since 1992.
After the solo ends at around the seven-minute mark, the other instruments begin to fade away while Steven strums a fast chord pattern that the studio mixes to a blur of white noise. This ends up masking the fading-out instruments. Such a pattern persists until the synths and white noise are all that can be heard as the song reaches the eight-minute mark. Then, the white noise dies out and some clean-toned guitar pluckings are all that is left as the song ends.
“Deafman” has enough individuality to stand out from “Fie Kesh” or “The Gospel According to the I.E.M.” (for instance, there isn’t a nightmarish element to this one), this one seems to meander a bit too much for its own good. I think the bit between 1:15 and 4:45 definitely lasts a little longer than it should. That being said, this is still a good track.
“Headphone Dust” (6:18)
A simple acoustic guitar starts off “Headphone Dust” and it stays that way until some slide guitar pops in about twenty-five seconds in. The result forms the most soothing-sounding thing to be found on I.E.M., but there’s something right around the corner. That something arrives in the form of synth at around 1:30, which corresponds with the acoustic guitar and the leads picking up in volume before the two-minute mark. However, it still sounds peaceful—especially compared to “Deafman.” This is the essence of a jam which persists through various scales and modes until the lead appears to drop out at about 3:45.
After the lead drops out, there’s ghostly-sounding synth rolling over the acoustic foundation. Once the foundation meanders about the same chord rhythm for a while, the synth drops out abruptly about the five minute juncture and some intermittent acoustic lead guitar pops in-and-out for the rest of the song. There’s a sense of harmony and peacefulness as the rhythm slowly simmers down in volume and then stops, bringing the song to a close.
“Headphone Dust”—a track left off of the vinyl version of the album—achieves a mood that the rest of the album doesn’t: tranquility. This is the least-abrasive sounding song on the entire album. It also has somewhat of a blues-based sound in some of the lead work, a sound which Steven has seldom explored up to this point.
Final Thoughts:
The debut album of Incredible Expanding Mindfuck feels like an outlet for Steven to explore familiar territory—psychedlic-inspired jamming—in a new manner. I say new because these songs don’t feel like retreads of On The Sunday of Life/Up The Downstair-era Porcupine Tree. Steven’s allowed the exploratory nature of the live jams of bands like The Grateful Dead to seep into the material here, but he’s also married that to a flowing sense of music—almost nothing here seems overlong. That being said, that wandering territory is a quality that’s nowhere to be seen in Steven’s work with Porcupine Tree (where even the longer pieces have a defined structure) or No-Man (whose propensity towards pop also imposes a definite structure). This wandering quality also makes Incredible Expanding Mindfuck’s debut function as good background music—apart from the abrupt shifts to something nightmarish at the endings of both “The Gospel According to the I.E.M.” and “Fie Kesh.” This is a good album, but I’ve heard even better things about one of the later albums from Incredible Expanding Mindfuck.
The Next Ten:
* Porcupine Tree - "Signify" (September 1996) * Bass Communion - "I" (April 1998)
* Porcupine Tree - "Stupid Dream" (March 1999)
* Bass Communion - "II" (July 1999)
* Porcupine Tree - "Lightbulb Sun" (May 22, 2000)
* Bass Communion - "III" (March 2001)
* No-Man - "Returning Jesus" (March 27, 2001)
* Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "Arcadia Son" (May 2001)
* Incredible Expanding Mindfuck - "IEM Have Come for Your Children" (September 2001)
* Porcupine Tree - "In Absentia" (September 24, 2002)
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