Steven Wilson has shared his eerie new video for new song On Chapel Slope, which gives fans a further insight into the fictional village of Larkstone, the centrepiece of his upcoming album Requiem For A Village.
Wilson will release his ninth studio album through Fiction Records on November 6. The album's title comes from the cult 1975 folk horror film of the same name. Directed by David Gladwell, who had served as Editor of Lindsay Anderson’s If.... and O Lucky Man! films, in the film an old man sees the dead rise from their graves in a rural English churchyard, in a representation of the modernisation of rural life.
The film has served as an inspiration for the new album, which is described as being "set in a Wicker Man landscape where the paintings of Stanley Spencer hang in the local art gallery, the stories of M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood sit on the shelves of the public library, and the children of the stones play in the market square..."
In the new video, directed by Mike Bennion and which features a village wedding with the central characters played by Wilson and his real-life partner Rotem, villagers rise from the graveyard surrounding the church with images of a nameless and decaying rural English village, which later extends to the attendees of the wedding itself, as Wilson's equally unsettling musical score swirls around.
Requiem For A Village will be available on CD, Blu-Ray, 140g two 12” black vinyl, oxblood coloured two 12” vinyl and as a boxset featuring 2 CDs, Blu-Ray disc packaged in a 96-page hardback book box. Limited numbers of signed CDs will be available through Amazon, and CDs with exclusive packaging will be available through HMV.
Wilson will play two sold-out shows at the Royal Albert Hall (28th and 29th October) accompanied by his band, the Parallax Orchestra & Sansara choir conducted by Tom Richards. The shows mark the closure of one album cycle and an introduction to the next, as the musicians will play newly created orchestral arrangements of The Overview as well as tracks from Requiem For A Village.
