Classic Rock Bottom

Another week, another Porcupine Tree posting. This weeks were going to dig into the catalog a little deeper and use the same template as last week, some early work and some later work... But first a few more facts about the band...

  • Much of the inherent musical background of Porcupine Tree goes back to Wilson's childhood, when his parents gave Christmas presents to each other. His father received Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon whilst his mother got Donna Summer's Love to Love You Baby, which Wilson assures, both played "in a continuous way".
  • The music is often described as melancholic. He states music is a way for him to channel all his negative feelings, and "an exorcism of those elements within", finding it "easier to write songs about the negative side of the world than it is about the happy side of the world."
  • Porcupine Tree is notable for being an album-oriented band, making very conceptual records where many songs are related to each other. Even so, each Porcupine Tree song has a distinguishable personality. Wilson explains: "The important thing with Porcupine Tree is that all our songs have a unique sound world that they inhabit. I don't like the idea of any song sounding like any other song.

 

So a couple of things happened with last week's SHT post...

  • We introduced Porcupine Tree to the CRB masses. (OK masses is a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point)
  • It went over so well, that were posting more this week.

And then one thing didn't happen...

  • A free offer for a brand new shrink wrapped Porcupine Tree Signify CD was embedded in the content. No one claimed it! Weird that a bunch of music fans didn’t catch onto a free CD offer... hmmmm, so let’s close that offer and make this one a little more obvious. The very first 100% correct response to answer the question at the end of this column will receive the Porcupine Tree - Signify release. It is a double CD set. I will send it standard mail within 24-48 hours of that person’s correct response. The response must be in the form of a reply to this column and not posted in any other forum or private messaged.  If your answer is wrong, you don't get a second chance, thats it one and done!

 

PLAYLIST --> http://snack.to/ati2xaql

 

On The Sunday of Life
1991

1 - Message From A Self-Destructing Turnip (0:27)
2 - Radioactive Toy (10:00)

On the Sunday of Life is the debut album of English progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released in July, 1991. It compiles tracks that Steven Wilson produced and recorded for two cassette-only releases, Tarquin's Seaweed Farm (1989) and The Nostalgia Factory (1990). The rest of the music from these tapes was released three years after in the compilation album Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape.

Most of the lyrics were written by Alan Duffy, a school friend with whom Steven Wilson had lost touch a few years before the album was released. The album title was chosen from a long list of nonsense titles compiled by Richard Allen of Delerium.

This album is extremely experimental, if anyone ever thought this band ever sounded like Pink Floyd, it has to be because they listened to this.

Deadwing
2005

3 - Shallow (4:17)
4 - The Start of Something Beautiful (7:40)

Deadwing is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released on 28 March 2005. It quickly became the band's best-selling album, though was later surpassed by Fear of a Blank Planet. The album is based on a screenplay written by Steven Wilson and Mike Bennion, and is essentially a ghost story. Wilson had expressed the intention to eventually have this film script made into a movie.

The album produced two singles, "Shallow" and "Lazarus". "Shallow" also appeared in the movie Four Brothers. It can be heard as background music in a bar. The album also produced three music videos for "Lazarus", "The Start of Something Beautiful", and "Glass Arm Shattering".

The album includes collaborations with King Crimson's Adrian Belew, who plays guitar solos on the title track "Deadwing" and "Halo", and Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt, who adds vocal harmonies on "Deadwing", "Lazarus", and "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here". He also plays the second guitar solo on "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here".

Fear of a Blank Planet
2007

5 - Fear of a Blank Planet (7:28)
6 - Sentimental (5:27)

Fear of a Blank Planet is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best-selling (until it was surpassed by The Incident in 2010). Released by Roadrunner on 16 April 2007 in the UK and rest of the Europe, 24 April 2007 in the United States through Atlantic, 25 April 2007 in Japan on WHD and 1 May 2007 in Canada by WEA. Steven Wilson has mentioned that the album's title is a direct reference to the 1990 Public Enemy album, Fear of a Black Planet. He explained that race relations were a major issue when it was released and he sees "coming to terms with information technology and...the 21st century" as a modern issue.

The album was written in Tel Aviv and London between January and July 2006. The promotion of the record included a premiere performance of the songs during the shows in support of the Arriving Somewhere... DVD tour between September and November 2006, and a series of listening parties at New York's Legacy Studios, and London's Abbey Road Studios during January 2007. Fear of a Blank Planet was followed later the same year by release of the Nil Recurring EP. With the release of Insurgentes, his first album as a soloist, Wilson would further develop some of the ideas on which Fear of a Blank Planet was conceived.

Even though it doesn't include any singles, the album charted in almost all European countries and entered the U.S. Billboard 200 at #59. Allmusic, which gave the album a 4.5 out of 5 score, assured that "While there is no "radio single" on the disc most songs transcend their complex structure and feel as provocative as any traditional rock tune". The album was highly acclaimed by the critics and gained the status of "Album of the Year" in many magazines and websites.

Here’s your question...

British commander General Cornwallis occupied this city but was driven out by hostile residents, prompting him to note that this city was "a hornet's nest of rebellion". Name that City!

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Well, it's very, very good music!

I would like to able to listen to all of their albums, but I'm not gonna buy all of them. I've got 5 PT-albums now, and the only one, that I'm not really in to is.......Signify. Maybe it takes a few more listenings, but the latest 4 albums, that they've made appeals more to me. It's definitely the heavier guitars on those albums, that makes them better imo.

I hpe that, they will return as a band soon, and even though "The Raven"-album is awesome, Wilson needs to rock again!!

Signify is definitely on the experimental / psychedelic side. But there's a cool factor is has that works for me. I have a few more coming in the mail so there may yet be a part III if they come in time for me to listen to...

well I may get a certain amount of flack from you guys here, but I DL just about everything anymore. If its really good,I go out to buy it. Porcupine Tree....was over 14 GB worth of DL. Most I have ever DL'd of a band. a ton of rare stuff. This is one band I can't wait to go out now and not only buy their CD's but even get any vinyl if it is available.

Awesome!  Have you seen the AutoRip feature at Amazon?  Its the best of both worlds when its available, you get the CD package and the instant download.  I've done my fair share of downloading as well, and it was not easy to recover from a recent crash.  

#1 - I had 10 free downloads each month with my Zune subscription.  I crashed at the same time they were switching to XBox Music and spent considerable amount of time on the phone getting my music back.

#2 - I had several MP3 purchases from Amazon before they introduced their Cloud service.  They had a history of my purchases so it was easy to send and email and request they add them to my cloud service and all went smoothly there.

#3 - I had to re-rip my physical collection.

#4 - I switched to iTunes since Zune was going away.  Which I've really liked now that all the hard work has been done!

So with lessons learned, I purchased an internal 1.5 terabyte drive to house my photos and music,  and a 1 terabyte external western digital drive.  I backup often now!

The Porcupine Tree packages are very cool!  So DL wasn't an option for me because I wanted the physical package too, but several of them were AutoRip CD's so I got that instant gratification and then that cool packaging to check out when they were delivered!

I love the Autorip function on Amazon.  However, the vast majority of new albums aren't featured.  So that's a drawback.  But it's great when the CD's arrive and you don't have to rip 'em to the computer.  Luckily, once they are autoripped, you can send them to iTunes.

I had one situation where I ordered a remastered deluxe edition and Autorip gave me the crappy not remastered no bonus tracks version...  Oh well, its still a cool service that will only improve with time

What's scary is finding how much stuff has been AR'd for you. Got a Kindle a month or so ago and I was fiddling around and there's a lot of stuff that was ripped. A LOT.  

I didn't realize it worked with a Kindle.  That's cool.

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