Steven Wilson Interview 2011 (part 1)

Well... in a way yes, in a way no... let me explain. I don't... I don't think... well, I know there isn't particularly... ehm... a strong concept arround through the whole album this time, but... in a way, everything I do it’s… kind of a comment on modern consumerism and the way that people interact with music and art these days, because everything I do is kind of... these days... well... actually always, is going against the… the trend which is more towards… ahm... creating music that can be consumed in small bites. You know, now you have Spotify, you still have Ipods, and people are gonna getting used to to what I call the "playlist mentality" or the "jukebox mentality" which is that you consume... ahm... music in small parts, you create your own playlist and my albums have never been really designed for that approach to listening, they’ve always been designed as... ahm... kind a continuous musical journey and this is no exception, this is... ahm... quite an epic journey. And it’s been sequence to be listened to... in that way, so… although there isn’t... necessarily a message behind the lyrics, the lyrics’ up about all sorts of things, you know... break up songs, serial killers, depression, the usual cheery… cheerful fear I deal in. I think as a whole, the album still has the same sense of… ahm... politics behind it, in the sense that is making a statement about the way that we... you know, we kind of relate to experience music these days, purely because of the way it is presented. I remember the first time... ehm that we were discussing with the record label: "we have to do an internet campaign" and that was quite a… you know, that was quite a learning curve in itself, that would have been not so long ago, that was only maybe four albums ago, like ten years ago. And suddenly the emphasis had gone from ahm... the release days of the album to a kind of implicit acknoledgment that everyone would have heard the album already by the time the release day came around. And that was a very difficult thing for me to accept because I... I mean, I grew up ...ehm... with the kind of the romance, or if you like, with the magic of the big release day, you know. When there was an album you wanted to buy by an artist you really admired, you go into the record shop in the day of release and it was a really exciting thing, to take that record back home and play it for the first time, 'cause you didn't know what to expect; and now that... that kind of... ahm... idea of the release day doesn’t exist, and you also have to... you have to accept that pretty much everyone is gonna hear the music or at least have the opportunity hear the music by the time the album is released, so, I think I became aware after the first time around the early 2000 and it’s just... the whole process has progressed now at the point where we now sit down, record company sit down and then... we try to figure out any way possible to make people actually want to buy a CD, you know... and you can see that in the last years record companies are become more and more desperate to find ways to make people still interested in special... you know, in the physical product: special packages, trying an extra tracks, a DVD ...ahm …a fancy box, a T-shirt. Anything they can do to make people actually buy a CD, they’ll do it now, ehm...which is a little bit depressing to me, because I mean, I still think there’s something very romantic about the idea of collecting and... owning and treasuring something special to you: a piece of music, a piece of art, a movie or whatever that might be. But I'm of an older generation, you know; and younger generations are not grown up with the same sense of... I bet you call it a fetishism about ownership of art. ahm... Having said that vinyl is, you know, making a 'come back' and kids are getting into vinyl, so I think they do understand. Kids still like to feel like they’re buying…if there’s a band they really like, they wanna buy into it somehow and... so, just downloading songs is perhaps not enough for them, which is a good sign. Of course! yeah! yeah! I mean when I was a kid, you know, ehm... I got into music through my... mainly through my parents record collection and I was very lucky. My parents had very interesting collective taste. My father would like a lot of progressive rock and my mother would liked a lot of soul music and disco music. And my father was buying records like: dark side of the moon, and ship in the bells (?) and... you know, the great... you know, big mainstream progressive albums of that date. and they always have those beautiful... you know, well not always, but they love having these gatefods sleeves, with the lyric sheets and... just even the kind of… ahm… the romance of taking the record out the sleeve and put it in the turner and put on the needle. You know, that I have a kind of, sort of romantic idea about that which I'm sure a lot people might ear or do, but I very very early on got the collect mentality with music. Well, I think I might, but I also drug my mom in and said “I want that one” You know, "I want that one!". It was…I think it was a record by The electric light orchestra 'Out of the blue' I don't know if you know that one. It's a great record, with lots of greats songs, and the funny thing is that's a good example, 'cause a record came with the gatefold sleeves and had like a poster inside and also had a spaceship that you could built you built a spaceship at cardboard. You know, real (?) thing , but this are all the things that made you really feel like ...you know, you bought something... worth buying, you know. It's not just this... I think the probelm with CD's is kind of it wasn't neither one thing nor the other, it wasn't a piece of art, it wasn't a piece of software, it's kind of somewhere between the piece of art and the piece of software. And it didn't have the same kind of collector... it didn't spite the same of collectability that vinyl had, and of course now music is -- because music's now is mainly through Spotify and mp3 download -- it has become purely software. It's become completely detached from... from any... ahm... physical manifestation, somwhat you are gonna to collect to known. Although, I know a lot people still do... do collect, you know... vinyl particularly now. So that's a promising kind of... You cannot attempt to get an... you always get a reaction against the current trend and that seems to be the reaction against the trend. It's not for kids to getting the vinyl, which it's great.