Porcupine Tree: The Incident

Following the Prog Rock path to success is a long old road these days. Porcupine Tree have indefatigably toiled away since the early 90’s producing a string of consistently good albums and have very gradually and slowly established a sizable fan base.

Although I pine slightly for their early albums of cheeky floydish psychedelia, the rockier and more seriousness of recent albums seems to be wining them through.

The incident builds once again on the success of its predecessor with lengthy compositions interspersed heavy riff-age, gentle acoustic strum-age, and (to continue to invent my own lexicon), delicate piano-age, with of course a healthy dose of moody aural soundscapes.

Porcupine Tree: We Lost The Skyline

An intimate live performance at Park Avenue CD’s in Orlando, Florida that was supposed to feature the whole band but due to space restrictions is just Steve Wilson on his own for the first 4 tracks and supported by John Wesley on second guitar for the remainder of the album. Porcupine Tree have not heavily promoted the album but it does contain a very nice 30 minute stripped set of some of the bands highlights. Interesting in between track banter too from Mr Wilson who shamelessly namedrops his friendship with Robert Fripp.

Porcupine Tree: Voyage 34

Porcupine Tree have been around since the early 90’s and have just released their 6th Studio album, "Light-bulb Sun". However despite being regularly acclaimed as the next big thing they have still not properly broken through to the mainstream. Voyage 34 is actually and old track that was intended for the 2nd album "Up the Downstair". However, because there was no room to include this lengthy piece on the second album it was released on a pair of limited edition EP’s, but as it was one of the highlights of their live set it quickly became unavailable. The full-length 63-minute voyage is a transcript of Brian’s rocky 34th and final LSD trip. The first phase describes Brian’s gradual transformation into his anticipated nirvana state. It starts with a repetitive guitar riff unashamedly plagiarized from "Another brick in the wall (part 1)", this is followed by an excellent guitar piece before the trip slows down to become more ambient, slightly darker and moodier but generally just less eventful.