Latest / Electronic Music / Richard Barbieri - Porcupine Tree
Transcript
- Hello and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast channel about electronic music and all things synth. I'm Rob Piricelli and in this episode I talk to musician, synthesis and sound designer Richard Barbieri. As part of Japan, Richard Barbieri soon became the thinking person synthesis. Famous for his rich and textural electronic backings that beautifully complemented the work of the other band members to forge what is still a unique sound to this day. Richard went on to work on a wide array of projects, some with fellow members of Japan, one of which introduced him to Stephen Wilson. He joined Porcupine Tree in 1993 and aside from Wilson is their longest serving member to this day. After a 12 year hiatus Porcupine Tree reconvened to write and record Closure Continuation, their 11th and some would say best album to date. I managed to catch up with Richard during rehearsals for the first leg of their tour to support the album and began by asking him about his first exposure to and experience of electronic music. I guess it was the first Roxy music album. I was a, I was a massive music fan when, when I was a teenager and um, okay, in equal parts I like progressive rock music and I liked But in both cases, the first time I ever heard synthesizers being used almost as sound design was, uh, when I heard what Eno was doing with Roxy Music. And of course, previous to that, I wasn't a very good keyboard player, and there's no way I would have been able to be part of a band solely as a conventional keyboard player. It just wouldn't have happened. Um, but. On hearing what was happening with synthesizers and what, what he was able to do, then that gave me hope and inspiration. Um, and then when I started working with synthesizers, I, I concentrated more on the sounds than I did the playing. So the controls were more important than the keys. And I tried to make one note, do lots of things rather than play lots of notes. Um, so I guess that's the first thing. And then I started to. Kind of look back at the history of electronic music and I started getting into Stockhausen and all kinds of things Daphne Aurum, and you know, what about your first instrument? Yeah, how did you then start? How did that manifest? You know your interest into it then actually, you know using equipment It was a micro mug. It's fantastic. I've still got it. It's just to my to my left and I think that came out in about 1976 or 75 And it's a great monosynth And it actually has really good routing on it. I mean you can do all kinds of Programming tricks with it. Um, and I kind of gravitated to that more than I did a mini moog because I tried one or two in the studio, um So that was the first time I started making sounds and and at first it was a bit ham fisted and a bit cheesy Um, but by the second japan album, I was starting to kind of create Sounds and thinking of music in terms of what, what the emotion is and what the, what the kind of meaning is and, and just trying to, um, create a vibe rather than playing. Right. Yeah, because you've often described yourself as like less of a musician. Yeah, and that's obviously something that I guess you you took from eat or got inspiration from Eno from I did but also the fact that I had no training at all and I I have no concept of musical theory. So I'm not. Uh, in a way, that's, that's a terrible weakness to have, but also I'm not bogged down by the convention of, of how things work, necessarily. So, um, I might not be able to sit in on many jams in a conventional sense, but I'm coming at it from a different angle. Because I, I don't, uh, I'm not, I'm not bogged down by the theory and by, by the knowledge, let's say. And is that, um, does that provide a sort of balance within, for example, Porcupine Tree, where you've got somebody like Stephen Wilson, who clearly is, you know, very well versed in all of that, and the two opposites form a whole? Well, actually, the two opposites in Porcupine Tree is Gavin Harrison and myself. Stephen claims to be more on my side, he claims to be a non musician, but He's, he's not going to take that award in the band. That's going to be me. And, um, Stephen is right there in the middle in that he has a musical dialogue with both myself and Gavin, but myself and Gavin as far apart as we could be. And I think that's the strength of Pookie Puntry. And I think that's what makes us sound a bit different. So when, when I get a piece that's maybe written by Stephen and Gavin, when I listen to it, I don't start theorizing. I don't, I don't work out the time signatures. I completely ignore the time signatures. I do everything in 4 4, like a good 80s person should do. And, um, so I start running sequences and running things in 4 4 and suddenly, of course, they're making interesting things with his, with his signatures, which are in like 11, 13, 9. Um, and I don't worry too much about the key and everything. I'm just trying to find interesting harmonically. Engaging things so I come at it as a non musician and I think that's for the benefit of the band Sure, and was that the same in Japan? That that kind of your, your, your interaction with the rest of the band, I think so to a degree. Yeah. I mean, we, we were all self taught. So, uh, probably I was more similar to mcconn. So mcconn had no kind of theory in that sense, but he, he had a great ear for, uh, for music and, and what he came up with was just, you know, so unique. Um, Steve Jansen was a bit as a drummer was a bit more wary of, uh, and. knowledgeable about construction of things and and and uh, Uh the the kind of science and the mathematics of it, but again, he he came at it from a different angle And and he's one of the people who influenced gavin harrison So much because gavin couldn't couldn't hear his history You know, you can most generally, you can hear musicians history, can't you? Absolutely. But with Japan, you, you didn't know where we would come from really, because we didn't know what the rules were. So who are your synthesizer heroes, uh, growing up? I mean, you've mentioned Eno and Stockhausen. Were there any sort of, um, powerful influences on your style and what you ended up doing? There's, I mean, there's tons of great electronic artists. Yeah. But they're generally writing electronic music and they're usually solo artists. You don't really hear electronic musicians within a group. You hear keyboard players who play synthesizers within a group, but not what I would call electronic. Um, but in terms of what, what people did with the synthesizers, um, I was quite a big fan of Tom Dolby, actually, um, Thomas Dolby. I think he had an album called, um, the flat earth and some of the programming on that is great. It's really great. Um, I love it when, when a synthesizer player programs in an abstract way, where they're actually programming environmental sounds and they're creating their own environment. Like Eno did that with African music. It's quite amazing. He did it with Roxy music. He created this whole battlefield with tanks and missiles and, you know, gunfire all with the VCS3. So I love that kind of approach. Um, And one, actually another amazing album is, uh, by Ruichi Sakamoto. It's called B2 Unit and it was one of his first solo albums. And, um, it was all done on a Prophet, all done on a Prophet 5. And he was recording that while we were recording a Japan album. And so we looked in on his studio recording sessions quite often and amazing, amazing programming. All the bass drums, snares, hi hats, everything is Prophet. Um, that was very impressive. And, um, even people like Joe Zawinul. Um, in the jazz sense, he, he would always play the sound as, as it should be played, if you know what I mean. So he programmed and he was well into African music and world music as well. Um, so he'd program up these quite interesting, reedy kind of synths that sounded quite like ethnic instruments. And of course he'd, he'd play, play it the right way. Um, and I thought that's. That's one of the most important things is is actually how you how you play something how you play the sound You mentioned sakamoto there. Um, did you work very closely with him during your time with japan? Like I can't because i'm trying to remember that how that all crossed over and I know he worked the day Yeah, he did. Um, not not really. It was more a case of he was making his album. We were making ours and um, he Uh contributed co wrote one of the tracks so he'd come in for the day and and and You Did all this stuff probably in an afternoon. Um, yeah, yeah, very impressive, but But he did use a terrible preset sound The quacking duck sound on the profit five. Yes. Yeah. So that's a crime in my book. You're well known for your use. Um, particularly, you know, in the days of Japan of, of things like the profit five and the Oppenheim. And also there's a you're quite keen on the Roland system 700 as well. Do these instruments still figure highly in your work today? And of course, certainly with the, the profit five and the Oberheim, they've had recent reissues from the actual companies themselves. I just wondered, you know, do they still figure in your work today? And what do you think of these new versions? Yeah, they do figure. Um, I don't have the Oberheim, unfortunately. Um, but. Yeah, I mean the Prophet 5 and the Roland System 700 Lab Series, I've used on everything, every album I've ever made, um, so yeah, they're right to the fore, um, I like to have a kind of, uh, I don't know, a spectrum of different things, you know, I'm using a lot of new analogue as well now, there's a company called Dreadbox that make really nice little synths, and um, I've got about 3 or 4 of those, and I've been using those a lot, And the, the, the collaboration Roland did with, um, studio electronics. It's an SEO too. I've got that just to my right and I'm using that on stage and it's, it's really powerful. It's, it's, it's fantastic. I love it. Um, great for programming. As well as things like the V synth and classic, you know, virtual analog stuff, the access virus indigo. I've got two of those. I love them so much. They're amazing. So it's a bit of everything. And of course, um, a lot of the sense in reason as well. You've got a profit. You've got one of the new profits. I have got the new version. Yeah. Yeah. How are you finding that? Yes, it's great. It's great. I don't, I, I don't use any of the new features. I basically just want it to be the same as what I had. So I, I don't like velocity on synthesizers and I don't really, I kind of like aftertouch, but. I just want it to be the same. Yeah. And I suppose that ties in with the fact that you don't consider yourself a traditional musician, that things like velocity, which are, you know, kind of key to a, a, um, a classic performance player. True. Not be so important. True. I mean, I like controllers. I like to use controllers. That's why I like the V synth so much. Huge amount of control over the sound. Um, but yeah, with the profit, I tend to use the wheel and I tend to use noise modulation rather than, um, pitch modulation. What is your approach to sound design? Because that's obviously where, you know, you've spent a huge amount of your career doing. Do you just spend time, you know, coming up with patches and then just kind of add them to a, you know, a virtual type folder somewhere and then I'll use those later on? Or do you create patches specifically for tracks as part of that whole writing process of a song or an album? Well, it's a little bit of both. Um, the thing, I think my biggest influence. In my approach to sound design was when I was a kid and I used to listen to the radio and it was a badly tuned radio and I'll be under the covers at night listening and you would get two stations at the same time combining and often I would think that that was the same thing I thought was an amazing piece of music. Until I realized that there was two things playing at once. So it all became about the context. And then sometimes I'd hear a lovely piece of music and there'd be a voice coming in. And I thought, oh, that works so well. But of course, it was just coming from another station. And that was a big influence on me, actual, actual kind of sound design to create a mood. And I guess we kind of heard that. I mean, I love sampling. So that whole thing with Brian Eno and David Byrne, my life in the bush of ghosts, great example of sampling, uh, DJ shadow in the nineties. Um, I love things that are taken out of context and placed into, into another environment. But going back to your, your, your question, um, I do often. Make sounds specifically for, for that piece of music, but, and it's usually based around the, the, the lyrics or the feeling that the, the track he's given me. So feed off that, that vibe. I do. I do. There's a track on the porcupine tree album, a new one called dignity. And, um, it's, it's taken from a piece that I wrote. So I co wrote it with Steven. And, um, once he'd written the lyrics and he presented the track back to me, I had the storyline. So then I could really elaborate even more. And it was kind of like a, the life of this person who ended up homeless. Um, and I took it right back to the early days of this person at school. So I created this whole playground environment. It's things like that, you know, um, sometimes I latch onto just little phrases or words and, and I'll kind of create a sound response to it. So imagine that you're stranded on a desert island and you want to do some sound design work. What's the one thing you always go to, to, to do something? Is there a, an instrument in your collection that you always go to start with maybe to create sounds? Hmm. That's, that's, that's interesting because I suppose you would have the widest range or palette of sounds on, on, on possibly a more digital based since, you know, like a more, uh, thing that would have wave tables and would have kind of different shapers. And so, so in a way you'd have more of scope. Um, whereas of course it's not as nice as pure, pure electronic, um, you know, semi modular synth or, um, but yeah, I think I would go for an all in one type thing where I could. Actually create music that had a wide sound palette. Yeah. Including percussion and all sorts of things. So, yeah. I mean, would that maybe be a sampler or something? Possibly. I think this Access Virus 2 is just amazing. I love it. Probably take something like that or the V synth. Coming back to sampling, because sampling is something I wouldn't have normally associated with somebody like yourself. I've always seen you as the kind of the analog synth programmer. Tell me a little bit about your history with sampling. What tools were you using when you started and what do you use now? Well, I remember when we were doing Tin Drum, um, David was, um, Putting in samples into the tracks and we were doing it via like a Walkman with like some traditional Japanese folk music or singing or, uh, and, um, we would have that gated so that every time you played a note on the keyboard, it would trigger the sample that would be running and so obviously it's all about an accident of finding the bits where it works. It's a lot of trial and error, but, um, When you got it in the right place, it was amazing because it's you're hearing this vocal and you're thinking, I love it. And how could that happen in any other environment? How you'd never have got that. So, um, that we were doing it right back then. And then of course, as I mentioned those albums as well that I love. And, um, most of my solo albums. And the albums I made with Steve Janson and Mick Cahn, they all have a large amount of sampling in there, a large amount of external sound sources. Were you using any specific hardware or? Um, yeah, I, instead of putting them into a sampler, I put them into the ReaDrum. Okay, yeah. Randomly. So I'll have, sort of 16 channels of, of different samples, uh, different pitches happening at different times. And I'll just key in some basic, uh, I won't even think about the rhythm. I just key in a few, you know, steps and, and then start running this. And you sort of step back at that point and you start listening and you come at it more like a producer. You think, hang on that, that was amazing what I just heard then. And then you find what that was and then that becomes part of it. So it's a lot of experimentation really, but again, it's starting from a, from an abstract point. If you put something in a sample and you start playing the keys, well, you know what it's going to sound like. So I, I, I like to set these things in motion that kind of aren't me. I mean, I'm making them happen, but. I'm detaching myself from it. So it's kind of like a conscious decision of yours to make your instrument sound more Organic and natural rather than inherently synthetic Yes, although of late I've kind of you know, I enjoy listening to very synthy music, you know There's something very satisfying. I just think it's how it's used. But yeah, I was never that type of player. I guess I was never Went for those, those kind of obvious sounds, although they are, they are very nice. I do, I do like them, you know, like an album like Blade Runner, a soundtrack like Blade Runner. I mean, it's, it's as synthy as you can get, but it's just such a beautiful sound. It's definitely a benchmark. Yeah. Um, so you, you mentioned re drum there, which obviously is a component of a reason. Yeah. Um, and uh, in a recent video that I watched where you went through your rig, um, you, you have some of the, the hardware that you've mentioned, you know, the profit and the, the access viruses and slap bang in the middle is a Mac book and you say, I'm running reason. I use a lot of software instruments. Hmm. Which pleased me greatly because I'm a big, you know, reason user have been for many years and I've known that you've used reason in the past. I was delighted to see that that's still something you're into. So can you tell me a little bit about why you use reason? What makes that stand out for you over and above some of the other tools that are out there? Well, I think it was a I found something that worked for me, uh, that helped my creative process. Um, and I wasn't, I wasn't sort of concerned as probably my fellow musicians, musicians are more with, um, recording acoustic instruments. Um, the technical side of it, the, you know, that, that wasn't, That wasn't an issue for me it was about being creative and being able to work in lots of different ways in sync and um, also now being able to record audio and also now being able to use third party VSTs, uh, and. It works for me. I mean, they get a bad press and, and rightly so really, because they're quite happy to portray themselves as, as less than professional in a way, you know, it's the people look are a little bit snobbish as regards it, but, um, I don't, I think they should use more examples of other types of musician, other kinds of composers, you know, after sort of, um, 12, 13 years, they're still reverting back to this four to the floor kind of demos that people were making like 20 years ago You know what? I mean? I do and it's like a dj thing and it's just I I just think they they should get some Some different people on board really, but um, but anyway, that's not my concern. It works for me. I like it. Um, another thing I like is adding in apart from the samples. I like this grain table synthesizers, which is samplers as well. So you you can put in musical passages or vocals and then you start messing with the with the time and with the whole structure. You're actually moving the molecules around the atoms into a different order and that combined with the other samples as well takes you into other worldly places. Do you use Reason as a sound design tool as well as a recording and sequencing environment and what what's your sort of process? I do I do and um again it's it it's like trying to find the unconventional way of going about things like I use the, uh, I use the graphic EQs as an effect as filters for my sounds in real time. I love the fact I can record everything obviously in real time. So you get all those control movements. Um, so often instead of using the filter on, on a sound, I'll use that because I can really pinpoint certain frequencies and bring out sounds that I probably wouldn't be able to with any type of step filter or ladder filter or whatever. So maybe, maybe basically it's using things for the wrong reasons, using the wrong things for the right reasons. Um, as I say, I, I use the, the drum machine for, for firing off samples and for, for triggering other, other synths. I use a pattern sequencer linked up to the grain table. So, um, I'm giving myself random rhythms there that is creating these weird things. And then I'll, I'll, I'll use unconventional time signatures and then forget about it. So something might be in, instead of putting 24 steps, there'll be like 21 steps and you'll just get this overlapping where you're getting events that don't happen again. It's all about creating movement and it's going right back to what we said at the beginning of not being able to play proficiently. Therefore, I try to make as much movement in the sounds as possible. Do you use Reason live as well as in the studio? I do. And is it for the same, do you use it for the, in the same ways or are you using it simply as a host or do you use the sequences live? No, I don't, I don't use the sequences live. No, um, anything that's heavily sequenced, we, we put onto back in, um, because there's no point. There's no point taking up time on stage, controlling sequences when you could be doing other stuff. Um, but. Yeah, I use it for a whole, a whole load of instruments. Uh, also I like to divide things up along the keyboard. So it's really handy when you want to, uh, produce a lot of kind of, uh, textural changes and you, you can basically divide the keys up however you want. That, that's, that's a luxury. I mean, I could do a whole gig with it, I think, but I don't want to get too much into that because I like the physicality and I don't like, I don't like controllers with. Messing around with software that, that worries me. Your live rig, you've, you've mentioned the viruses. Um, And the, the V synth as well. And, uh, some of these, you know, little, uh, tabletop modules. So we, you know, call them that. What sort of things have you got there? Cause, uh, you know, so I noticed the big keyboards, but yeah, you've got a table of stuff in front of you with effects and, and, you know, small boxes. What, what are you, what have you got there? Well, um, yeah, onto one side, I've got like a tabletop. With um, there's a Nord Lead A1 which is just controlling the uh, it's just controlling Reason, the laptop. Just because I like, I like the feel of it. Uh, it, it works well with it for me. Next to that I've got the little Roland SE 02, the analog synth. I've got, oh this is interesting, yeah I've got the loop station, the Boss RC 505. Yeah, uh, with um, five stereo loopers. I think it's about three hours, two and a half hours of stereo recording. I mean, that is really useful. So I can use that in different ways. I can bring anything from my rig into it and start building up a textural thing. Uh, I can have samples that I can trigger off from it. It's it, I can have things backed up to it. It's, it's really handy. Um, I, I use that a lot. Yeah. Um, I've got the new Prophet, the, the little desktop version, Prophet 5 desktop version. Um, and as you mentioned, uh, an Indigo Virus, Virus 2, the V Synth. Um, a workhorse kind of, um, Nord Electro for the, um, you know, the Mellotrons and the Pianos and Organs, uh, different combinations. And I realized because I couldn't get some of the same sound taken along the old JV 2080. Just because we're doing a few things from the past. And I kind of think I got the sound right at the time. So I just want to, you know, I want that there. Um, so you mentioned, um, You're doing some of the, the old tracks as well as the new tracks. When, um, when do you start the tour and what can we expect to see in that show, if you can talk about that? Yeah. Well, well, it's gonna be a long show. , uh, there, there'll be an interval. Um, we'll play all of the new album, not, not in sequence, but throughout the, the evening. Um. And we'll focus on the other two albums that we feel are the strongest, which is In Absentia and Fear of a Blank Planet, but we'll also do older stuff as well. Um, so a few selections of older stuff, uh, and one or two things we've not played live before. So it'll be a bigger production. I mean, there, there won't be any gimmicks, but there'll be a bigger screen. There'll be, uh, obviously a lot of these venues we do in there, they're like indoor arenas. So it's the first time we've done this type, type of show. And when you go into them, they're just a box. You've got to build everything from the, the, the rigging to the, you've got to build the whole production and take that around with you. So we've got, you know, three buses, four trucks, a whole large crew, which we'd never used to have. So we need to project. Um, so that's what we're going to do. But I think, I think the main thing is, is after all this time, I think people come in, uh, they want to see the band. So we're not going to blind them with some stage show or some, you know, kind of concept or storyline or whole, um, we'd like them to, to be able to see us as a band. Is it just going to be the three of you playing or will you be bringing in other musicians? We'll, we'll, we'll have the same kind of lineup. So there'll be another guitarist and backing vocalist and a bass player. So it will be the same as we had before, but. Sure. Cause Stephen's done a lot of the bass on this new album, hasn't he? He's done all of the bass. All of it. Right. Okay. So obviously drafting somebody else in to do that makes sense. Yeah. I mean the whole album. Yeah. Although it has the PT porcupine tree DNA and it still sounds like us, it's very different for a number of reasons. Primarily, I think it's with Steve's playing bass. It, he plays in a totally different style to our previous bass player. And he's a guitarist, so he plays it like a guitar. So it's more in a sort of Chris Squire, Geddy Lee envelope, I suppose. More melody. Um, it's the first time that there's only been three people on the album. There's no orchestrations, there's no guest musicians. That's different. The tracks apart from one are all co written. That's new. So it's a complete collaboration between the three of us. And we made the album over a long period of time, uh, for the first time in our careers without any pressure. We didn't sign any contract to make this album. Nobody knew we were making this album and we knew that at any point we could throw it away. And once you know that it frees you up beyond belief and it was so enjoyable doing that without a schedule, without any pressure. So it feels very different for us. Was that brought about because of the pandemic? The fact that you, you just had time to, you know, sit there and do this stuff without any commitments or external influences? Well, the pandemic speeded up the process. It made us finish off the album basically, but The majority had been written over the previous eight to nine years. Oh, okay. So there's no, there's no concept to the album because each, some of the songs are 10 years apart. Um, but each song has its own story. That's why kind of the concept for us was, was the title of the album. Closure slash continuation. And that's more about us. We don't know if it's going to continue or if it's the end. And you're free to make that choice. We're free to make that choice again. And there's no, why would we put pressure on ourselves? Yeah. Cause yeah. Porcupine tree has been on a hiatus for like 12 years, I think, isn't it? And you know what, I mean, what was the spark to, to do this? Yeah. What, what prompted this desire to make another album? And. Was it an easy, uh, choice to, you know, get back with Gavin and Steven after so, so, you know, such a long time and I, I, you know, I don't know if you guys, you know, constantly kept in touch across those 12 years. We, we did. Um, we were kind of quite proactive on a, on a musical level and on a social level. So I wouldn't like too long to go by without saying hello to the guys or seeing them or going for a meal or a drink or sending them some music. Whether the ban was going to happen or not. So the three of us were fairly proactive on that, but I think it could only have happened after this period of time, because when we finished porcupine tree, it wasn't a great. We wasn't a great feeling. Um, we we'd just been doing it too long, too much touring. Um, we should have had a break before then. So I think the friendship suffered the music I think suffered. And I think it plateaued for the first time in our career. And I certainly didn't want to have that as the last book, you pine tree album. Um, so it happened, it happened gradually. Um, over, over this period of time. And I think the fact that Steven's had like 10 years of, uh, a solo career that enabled him to draw a line between the two things. And he's kind of come to Porcupine Tree now, not as a control freak, but I've come to it as a collaborator. And that, that was really nice. One of the, um, things that Porcupine Tree certainly stood out for me was, um, Stephen's adoption of using 5. 1 mixes in a number of the releases. Cause I think, I can't remember which album it was, but it was, it was Elliot, uh, Shiner in, in the U S did a version. Stephen didn't like it. So then went over and that kind of started the ball rolling. And of course he's become, um, almost like a household name for that kind of thing these days. The new album is in. Uh, 5. 5. 1 and Dolby Atmos. And I was just wondering, um, A, how did, you know, how does that sound? And B, as a sound designer who is, uh, whose main focus is creating soundscapes and evolving sounds, does the, the 5. 1 and Atmos environment provide you with an even bigger canvas on which to paint? And do you relish that? Well, I'll let you know when I hear it I'm the only one not to have heard it in um In surround or dolby atmos. All right. Um, there was a there was a play it there was a preview of it In london last night. I couldn't make it um It's so hard. So I'm I missed out on that but i'll get to hear it one day and i'm sure i'll really enjoy it I've listened to our previous 5. 1 surround mixes You Um, I don't have a system set up for that. I don't know what I feel about it. I mean, it's great. You know, if you're, if, if you can choose where you sit, it's fantastic. You choose the best seat in the room and then you, you get the full effect of what it's for. If you move or you, you go somewhere else or you just, then, then I don't see the point, suddenly you've lost it. That's why I don't see the point of doing it live. I know Steve, Steven really wanted to do something surround for in the live sense, but. We, we, we kind of outvoted him on that because you can't have somebody, you know, coming along and paying a hundred pounds for a ticket or something. And they're seated right next to one speaker and they're not getting no perspective of what the track's about. Yeah, yeah, and I saw him on one of his solo shows at the Albert Hall and that was allegedly presented in quadraphonic Yeah, but it's difficult to Sort of understand how good or bad that was given that the Albert Hall has such great acoustics Anyway, I wasn't entirely sure how much it was giving to it or even taking away from it but as as a musician that's recording I'm guessing that Um, yourselves or maybe just Stephen on his own are always thinking about how this might translate into a larger, you know, multi channel audio mix. And so does that impact, uh, the way that you record, the way that you compose? It does. Totally. Um, we produce these albums together and the album is mixed as you go along. There is no mix. It's not like the old days where you'd go into a studio, pull all the faders down, And you'd have nothing and you'd start from scratch. It's not like that. You, the mix is, is something in development all the time. And you react to that. So it's, it's a production decision. It's a musical decision. Once things start working well in context and they're in the right positions and you find that right position and that right frequency. Well, then that's a keeper and the next person who reacts to it does so with that in mind. And that's that's kind of how I look at it because being in a in a rock band I've always had to try to find the space and on this album There's far more space than than previous because steven has has has kind of disengaged the guitars I mean, he's down to one guitar really so there's none of this thick overdubbing and and heavy riffing. Um, he's just, he's in love with this telecaster that he's using and it's dynamic and it sounds great, but, but because there's just one of them, you can place it and it, and it frees up so much space. So the mix is in progress. And at one day the mix just, it just ends and you think the track's done. And of course it's very cinematic. The whole porcupine tree sound is very widescreen. So it lends itself obviously to, to surround. In all its forms Of all the porcupine tree albums that have been and we're going back, you know in some way Where does the new one sit in your estimation of you know, the best work that you've done? Well, it's right up there um I mean, I think we've all we all agree that in absentia and fear of a blank planet to date were the Were the best two albums that we've made um And this is Along with those we don't know yet whether this is our best or not It could well be our best obviously that you you feel stronger about that at the time you're making it And soon after it will take a few years before you look back And reposition maybe where where this album goes, but I think we're all pretty confident that it's it's up there with the best work We've done And the, you know, the title of the album suggests, you know, closure stroke continuation, which is clearly what this album was about. It was about drawing a line under those 12 years, and now we're going to move forward and do this, this work. Can we expect another Porcupine Tree album after this one? Or is that just, you know, dependent on the response you get, or the feeling that you have after you've come off tour? We really don't know. We, we really, we're not Playing any games here. We really don't know and we like the fact that there's no pressure Uh, we made this album under no pressure. So it would be silly to to put ourselves under pressure Um, if it's the last thing we do then we'll we'll be quite happy um because We'd have made a great album and I think we'd have ended up on a fantastic tour And we've ended up with with a kind of good friendship All the things that we didn't have on the you know, 12 years ago So for me, that's, that's, I'd be happy with that. But on the other hand, if we find that there's something that we can do, that's new, that we can keep the porcupine tree sound, but maybe widen the perimeter a little bit more. I mean, on this album, there's a few tracks that are pushing on the perimeters of what's, what is the porcupine tree sound. Steven is now very interested in synthesizers and keyboards. That's, that's kind of his direction. Who knows in maybe, you know, a couple of years, we might, we might have some new recordings. But with the music industry, you don't know, maybe there are no more album. Maybe people just release tracks now. I don't know. Cause I was going to say the, the, the freedom that you clearly now have and that you are clearly relishing is born out of an industry that has changed dramatically since you first got into it, where you were very much in, in a, uh, a machine, shall we say, a label and marketing and all that kind of stuff. Whereas nowadays as a, an accomplished, successful musician. You have the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want, put it out in whatever form you wish. And that freedom is, is, is completely different to where the way it was before. Is that a good thing in your mind? I think we, we can't change our relationship with the album. As, as a presentation of a work, uh, that to us is, is kind of written in stone almost, and we're of that generation, you know, we're, I mean, I can't believe how lucky I am that I can go into a record shop and buy an album for 10 pounds, you know, buy a work of art for 10 pounds. For me, that's incredible. But for most people today, that would be a ripoff. I'm not paying that amount of money for music. So, no, we don't see it. We, we, we see it in the traditional sense that we need this format of an album to present a piece of work. You know, there's no compromise on that, but we're probably the last generation that are gonna, gonna feel this way or possibly work this way. And yeah, it does change a lot of things. It changes, uh, record sales now. I mean chart positions are now determined as well as physical cells on streams. So, you know, how many people listen to your album? But they might have just listened to like 30 seconds or something, you know, it's It's funny because you mentioned that and clearly porcupine tree Um are looking you're always looking to release physically as well as digitally Yeah, which is which is admirable and and great and you know people of our generation will obviously welcome that. Yeah But it was interesting, you know, my children my daughter's, uh 18 And in the last couple of years, she's got into buying physical products, albeit CDs. Yeah. Unlike her father, who's got, you know, a big vinyl collection. But she, she's buying CDs, and she appreciates the physicality of that, and not just listening to the music, but, you know, arranging them in a particular order, and the cover art, and all this kind of stuff. Brilliant. Well, maybe it's an inherent thing, you know? It might be, yeah. It might be an influence. Yeah. Maybe that that that will never quite go away. I mean, it's not that we don't like new artists, you know, I mean, we're, we're, we're massive Taylor Swift fans. We like Harry Styles. I mean, they're making great music. You know, these are important artists, but they're likely to just drop an album out of the blue. You know what I mean? It's not a traditional thing. It's not Things work in a different way now. Um, but I still think there's, there's always going to be great music out there and great artists. It's just, it's just how, how the public, um, consume that. And at the moment, obviously the direction it's going in is that music is an accessory to their lives. For us, it was our life, you know, that I could quite happily sit at home and listen to three albums. Who has the patience to do that now? What do you think of the Reissue business because obviously with vinyl making a big comeback in recent years, um, there's been a clamoring to reissue, you know, albums from the past and, you know, Japan have had, uh, you know, quiet life just not long ago was released in a super deluxe edition set. You know, what are your thoughts about, you know, reissuing old content and adding in those extra tracks and putting it into new packaging? Yeah, I'm not sure about the extra tracks. I've always been a bit, uh, I'm a bit of a stickler for the, for the album and, and that's the piece of work. And, um, I love reissues because I, I buy this, I buy the same albums again and again. You know, I'll end up with five or six copies of the same album, but, but I love the fact that the packaging is, is there's more quality to it now, you know, their reissues used to be quite, um, it was arbitrary as to the quality you'd get, but, but now some of them are fantastic. Um, and of course, being somebody who got rid of all my vinyl, yeah, you know, in the eighties, probably, um, I'm now on a quest to sort of at least get my top hundred. Albums back on vinyl so i'm enjoying buying these things I'll listen to the i'll listen to high res though of it, you know, i'll get the code and download it and listen to that but Um, but just having the album there. It's just fantastic So yeah, I'm all in favor of it. Moving back to music technology, what excites you today? You know, what products are you seeing, be it hardware or software, that really give you that kind of buzz that you got, maybe say in the early days when you were first discovering that, you know, that MicroMogul, you know, the Prophet 5. Is there anything that really, you know, makes you very excited for the future of electronic music technology? That's, yeah, that's That's really difficult. I, I, I used to have endorsement, uh, with Roland, uh, for, uh, with the V synth. I was involved in that whole, uh, programming and, um, and then promoting it. And I went to Japan and I spoke to the head guy there. Oh, of course there is, yeah. And, um, he probably says the same to everyone, but he, he, he asked, he said, what do you think the future is of, you know, and I got very tongue tied and I couldn't, I was trying to explain how I felt that. These instruments could be played physically in a different way than resorting to the keys as we know them Then I thought there would be possibilities for making a new kind of sounds Hmm and a new sort of forms of music that you wouldn't get without that theory But it got very deep and I didn't know and I got a bit confused and I was thinking of like gel pads and sort of things that your fingers would would immerse into and it all became a bit. You know, in the end, you realize you've just got a rubbish idea, probably. Well, you say that, I mean, you're talking about gel stuff. There's this controller by Roli called the Seaboard, which is that kind of, it's kind of gel and it transmits MPE, so you can get really expressive. So maybe that was kind of what you were thinking about. I like that where you take the keys out of the equation. You know, and some composers used to write music in a different way, didn't they? They use different diagrams and symbols. Um, and I, I kind of like the way of composing in, in a more abstract way or creating your own table of, of, of scales or, or, or events. I'm not sure, but there's lots of, there's lots of interesting products without keys, you know, these kind of pads and different that they was interested me. And I wonder whether that could be taken a stage further. But, no, I mean, you tell me, have you heard something that's vastly different recently? No, and that's one of the things I often have conversations with people about. Back in the 1980s and the 1990s, there was a lot of innovation. It seemed that every two or three years, maybe less, sometimes a little more, there was a big leap. You know, we went from analog synthesizers to digital synthesizers, be it FM or wavetable, then we had sampling, and then we had, um, physical modeling, and there were leaps and bounds in the 90s in that regard, and then all of a sudden, everything just became very bland and sample based, and, you know, many big powerful synthesizers just relied very heavily on a huge amount of samples. Yeah. And it seems to seem to stagnate for a number of years. I think we're seeing a lot more innovation today than we've done before. Um, but it's all always in different. You know, uh, paradigms. Um, you know, maybe it's a touch sensitive keyboard. Maybe it's something that screen based. Maybe it's, you know, something on an iPad. Um, but it doesn't seem to be. Maybe it's just because I'm an old man. It doesn't seem to be those kind of leaps and bounds. It's a very slow. Process, but no, I don't know. And personally, I, there are a number of things that, you know, are very interesting to me, but whether they're the next big thing, I often try to think, you know, what's that next big step? I mean, AI is something that gets often talked about. I don't know. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence within music generation? I heard a song made purely with AI and it was fascinating. It, I really liked it. Um, it, It had melody, but it didn't make sense, right? It wasn't used in the way that you couldn't predict what was going to happen next. And that's an interesting part for me that the boring part of AI is. I was talking about this with Stephen Wilson and he said to me he thinks that soon we're gonna get to the point where you'll just, um, you'll come home from work and you'll, you'll switch on your machine and you'll, you'll say, can I have, um, can I have an Elvis Presley type of, um, moody song but with, uh, sung by Freddie Mercury and that's exactly what you'd get. Because they'd have every component they need to make the thing you want. Scary. It's kind of scary. And I mean, we've got concerts already, haven't we? Where you're getting virtual like holograms. And, um, so I suppose artificial is, is, is going to be the big word, isn't it? I mean, is there going to be, uh, is artificial going to be a good thing? Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? Less realism. And on that depressing note, um, Richard, it's been an absolute honor to speak with you. Thank you ever so much for, for your insight and the best of luck with the, uh, the new album and the tour. Thank you very much. Good questions. I've enjoyed it. Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode, where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all the other episodes. Before you go, make sure you visit the Sound On Sound podcast page at soundonsound. com forward slash podcasts, where you can explore all the other great content playing across the other channels. I'm Rob Puricelli, and this has been a failed Muso production for Sound On Sound.