Porcupine Tree

Porcupine Tree biography

Porcupine Tree are a rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Their music is associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, yet having been influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven Wilson and Richard Barbieri's penchant for the Kosmische Musik scene of the early 1970s, led by bands such as Tangerine Dream, Neu! and Can. Since the early 2000s, their music has been leaning towards progressive metal and alternative rock.

The band is noted for its multimedia approach, with its live performances including screens displaying a different film projection to each song. This visual element was introduced during the tour for the In Absentia album, when the band started to work with Danish photographer and filmmaker Lasse Hoile. This involvement created a distinctive image for the band.

Despite being signed to both Roadrunner and Atlantic labels, the band has their own record label, Transmission, which they use to launch some independent releases and special editions of their albums. In 2007 the band was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album with their album Fear of a Blank Planet and then again in 2010 with The Incident.

Music Radar website placed them amongst "The 30 greatest live acts in the world today" (as of 2010), coming at number 4.

History

Origins (1987-1990)

Porcupine Tree originated in 1987 as a collaborative hoax project by Steven Wilson and Malcolm Stocks. Partially inspired by the psychedelic/progressive bands of the 1970s (such as Pink Floyd) that had dominated the music scene during their youth, the two decided to form a fictional legendary rock band named The Porcupine Tree. The two fabricated a detailed back-story including information on alleged band members and album titles, as well as a "colourful" history which purportedly included events such as a meeting at a 1970s rock festival and several trips in and out of prison. As soon as he had put aside enough money to buy his own studio equipment, Wilson obliged this creation with several hours of music to provide "evidence" of its existence. Although Stocks provided a few passages of treated vocals and experimental guitar playing, his role in the project was mostly as occasional ideas man, with the bulk of the material being written, recorded, played and sung by Wilson.

At this point, Porcupine Tree was little more than a joke and a private amusement, as Wilson was concentrating on his other project, No-Man (an endeavour with UK based singer and songwriter Tim Bowness). However, by 1989 he began to consider some of the Porcupine Tree music as potentially marketable. Wilson created an 80-minute-long cassette titled Tarquin's Seaweed Farm under the name of Porcupine Tree.

Wilson sent out copies of Tarquin's Seaweed Farm to several people he felt would be interested in the recordings. Nick Saloman (the cult UK guitarist better known as The Bevis Frond) had suggested that he send one to Richard Allen, a writer for the UK counter-cultural magazine Encyclopaedia Psychedelica and co-editor (with Ivor Trueman) of the UK psychedelic garage rock magazine Freakbeat. Allen reviewed the tape in both magazines. Whilst he disliked some of the material he gave much of it a positive review. Several months later Allen invited Wilson to contribute a track to the double LP A Psychedelic Psauna - In Four Parts that was being put together to launch the new Delerium label. Allen would also become the bands manager, press agent and promoter up until 2004, his role in marketing the bands image decreasing after The Sky Moves Sideways album. In the meantime Wilson had continued to work on new material. In 1990 he released The Love, Death & Mussolini E.P., issued in a very limited run of 10 copies. The EP remains an extremely rare, collectible piece. It was composed of nine at-the-time-unreleased tracks, as a preview for the upcoming second album. Later in 1990, Wilson released a second full-length Porcupine Tree cassette called The Nostalgia Factory, which further expanded Porcupine Tree's underground fanbase, although at this point the band was still carrying on the charade of being 1970s rock legends. By this point, Porcupine Tree was entirely a solo project, with Stocks having amicably moved on to other activities.

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