Steven Wilson wrote a set of rules for his band before they recorded new album Requiem For A Village, in a bid to avoid what he describes as “vanilla prog” appearing on the record.
In February he told Prog of the follow-up to The Overview: “I decided I wanted to remain in the realm of the conceptual and large scale, but I want to get back to a more quirky musical vocabulary. I’m very keen on keeping the little quirks and imperfections.”
In a more recent Prog interview he explained his ninth solo release – featuring contributions by XTC’s Andy Partridge and actor David Tennant – contains “moments when harmonies, intervals and notes occur that most trained musicians would find offensive, which I love the idea of.”
Now Wilson tells Now Spinning: “First of all was the idea of embracing dissonance, and instruments not being in tune. One of the rules I had with Randy, my guitar player, was: ‘you play the guitar as you find it. If we come into the studio in the morning and the guitar’s drifted out of tune, you’re not allowed to tune it.’”
He notes: “Most guitar players, if you said that to them, they’d just storm out in disgust and resign on the spot! But I think Randy got it.”
He continues: “The other aspect was playing instruments that I don’t normally play – or that I can’t play; approaching an instrument in the way a child approached an instrument. What does a child to when presented with a piano? Just makes a noise!
“There’s a lot of that on this record. I play violin – I can’t play violin! But I found something interesting to do on it. I play drums; I can’t play drums! Ditto on oboe, ditto on other things. It’s that Eno thing of embracing limitations, imperfections and the unexpected.”
Wilson expresses a continued desire to explore his own themes rather than doing what might be expected of him. “There’s always going to be a market for what you might call ‘vanilla prog rock,’” he says, “and there are bands out there doing that very well – bands that make records that Genesis might have made in 1973.
“And that’s fine. I don’t wish to be patronising about that. I made a record like that with The Raven – it was my homage to a 70s prog rock record. But it was a one-off for me. I’m more interested in creating my own music palette and vocabulary, and put them together in a way that doesn’t sound like a hotch-potch but sounds seemlessly, organically hopefully very creative.”
While Requiem started out as a standalone work, he confirms: “I’ve talked with Andy about maybe there being a sequel to this record – in true prog rock style! We’ve created this really fascinating world, and I think there’s potentially more to be said with the village concept.
“When you describe it to people, there’s a temptation to imagine it’s this very all-over-the-place incohesive bolting together genres that shouldn’t go together. it isn’t that at all. It feels like a Steven Wilson record; at least I hope so.
“I’m not self-consciously putting these things together – I just like these things and I think it’s interesting to put them together, and not to overthink it in a way.”
Requiem For A Village is on sale now.
