Porcupine Tree guitarist Steven Wilson will release his latest solo album, Grace For Drowning, September 26 on Kscope Music Records. In a recent interview with Attention Deficit Delirium, Wilson spoke at length about the album, including how the album seemed "heavy" in a different way than his previous work. An excerpt from the chat follows.
"I think [with] the metal thing for me, the party's over. I'm kind of bored with it. It's interesting that you mention Univers Zero, because that's a band that creates heavy music with acoustic instruments. It's really heavy, it's not pretend heavy. A lot of metal is not really very heavy at the end of the day because it's very textured music; but really dark [non-metal] music [can be], things like Univers Zero, Art Zoyd and early King Crimson with a lot of woodwinds. The guitar really is not the instrument creating the heaviness on this [solo] record. There's very little guitar on it at all. There's a lot of keyboards, woodwinds, percussion, drums, choir and orchestra - there's a very wide palette of sounds on this record, but the overall feeling is one of darkness for sure. I suppose that does come from the Crimson thing. Insurgenteswas very much routed in my love of '80s post-punk music, which is what I was listening when I was making that record - Joy Division, The Cure, Cocteau Twins. This record is completely coming from my love of early '70s progressive music, but particularly the fusion of rock music and jazz music. The important thing about this record is that it's jazz musicians largely playing rock music."
Josh Hart is a former web producer and staff writer for Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado magazines (2010–2012). He has since pursued writing fiction under various pseudonyms while exploring the technical underpinnings of journalism, now serving as a senior software engineer for The Seattle Times.
