The Seaweed Farm

From Roadrunner Records:

The captivating new record from PORCUPINE TREE- ‘The Incident’- is set to be released via Roadrunner Records on September 14, as a double CD and a limited deluxe edition in a specially-embossed box. (More details about the deluxe edition will be revealed closer to the release date).

The Incident – like the elaborate and conceptual previous record Fear Of A Blank Planet – takes the listener on a thrilling audio journey. In turns haunting, desolate, hypnotic and euphoric, its centre-piece is the title track – a stunning 55-minute musical statement that breaks down into 14 separate and often diverse (though interlinked) vignettes.

The tale begins slowly with Occam’s Razor, gaining momentum and intensity with The Blind House, Drawing The Line, and The Incident itself, though the group’s masterful manipulation of sounds and textures is never overlooked. The mellowness of The Yellow Windows Of The Evening Train, for instance, is accompanied by the gentle crackle of a needle on vinyl – for all his skill as a producer and remixer, Wilson is a staunch supporter of the ‘old’ ways of listening to music. Incorporating both of these styles, Octane Twisted somehow batters and seduces simultaneously, while I Drive The Hearse, further sweetened by an uplifting guitar climax, is an intoxicating slice of melancholy with which to book-end the record’s 14-piece song cycle.

The seeds of the idea that led to The Incident came to singer/guitarist/songwriter Steven Wilson as he became caught up in a motorway traffic jam whilst driving past an accident. “There was a sign saying ‘POLICE – INCIDENT’ and everyone was slowing down to rubber neck what had happened,” he recalls. “Afterwards, it struck me that ‘incident’ is a very detached word for something so destructive and traumatic for the people involved. And then I had the sensation that the spirit of someone that had died in the car accident entered into my car and was sitting next to me.

“The irony of such a cold expression for such seismic events appealed to me, and I began to pick out other ‘incidents’ reported in the media and news,” continues Wilson. “I wrote about the evacuation of teenage girls from a religious cult in Texas, a family terrorizing its neighbours, a body found floating in a river by some people on a fishing trip, and more. Each song was written in the first person and tried to humanize the detached media reportage.”

Additionally, Wilson delved back into incidents in his own life that had profoundly affected him, including a lost childhood friendship, a séance, his first love, and the day that he decided to give up secure employment to follow his dream of making music. The album’s epic song, an 11-minute Pink Floyd-flavoured masterpiece called Time Flies, for instance, begins with the line: “I was born in 1967.” “1967 was possibly the most significant year in the history of rock music; Sergeant Pepper by The Beatles and the first albums by Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and The Doors were all released that year,” says Steven. “I found myself wondering whether those facts were significant… maybe it’s why I ended up becoming a musician?”

The Incident is not the kind of album that will be fully absorbed in a single sitting – repeated listening will reveal hidden detail. Pushed for a succinct description Wilson calls The Incident: “A slightly surreal song cycle about beginnings and endings and the sense that ‘after this, things will never be the same again’.” The self-produced album is completed by four standalone compositions from band writing sessions last December – Flicker, Bonnie The Cat, Black Dahlia, and Remember Me Lover – housed on a separate CD to stress their independence from the title track.