Steven Wilson | TapeOp

If there were some kind of award for the "hardest working person in the music industry," London-based Steven Wilson would definitely be up for it. In 2008 and 2009, Wilson has (amongst other work) completed and toured the latest No-Man album Schoolyard Ghosts, mixed the resulting live DVD, worked on the new Bass Communion CD, toured with his Blackfield collaborator Aviv Geffen and remixed the entire King Crimson back catalogue in surround — an area in which Wilson has become somewhat renowned. His work on 2007's Fear of a Blank Planet, the ninth studio album by his band Porcupine Tree, was nominated for a Grammy in the "Best Surround Sound Album" category. Having toured on keyboards in the No-Man live band in 2008, I can confirm that Wilson is not only a talented and all around nice guy, but his obvious enthusiasm for music and recording is infectious. He has the geek's grasp of detail and in-depth knowledge of his subject, yet without any of the personality problems that can manifest amongst those whose factual outpourings dig deep into the obscure corners of their chosen oeuvre. Wilson is much in demand as a producer and his work has ranged from the lilting jazz-tinged tunes of Anja Garbarek, the meatier Opeth and progressive survivors Marillion. But it is with Porcupine Tree he has made his mark, and the band goes from strength to strength, garnering fans, friends, excellent reviews, albums sales and sellout concerts in many parts of the world. In between his busy schedule, Wilson has also found time to record his first proper solo album, Insurgentes.

"The name comes from the longest street in the world, which is in Mexico City," says Wilson. "When you are there you're never very far away from a sign to the street. I kept seeing this word and it became a kind of constant when we were traveling around the world — and of course I wrote some of the music for the album there." The word itself wasn't just a sightseeing inspiration though, as Wilson also sees it as a metaphor for his musical career so far. "Insurgentes literally means rebel or uprising (insurgent, rebel, revolutionary, golpista, revolter, seditionist) and in a sense this is the way that I make music and the way I have chosen to conduct my musical career, such as it is. Without wishing to sound melodramatic, it's been a very unconventional career and so, in a way, I did feel some resonance with the word. It seemed like a perfect title as I've been going against what the music industry expects and what you are supposed to do to be a successful professional musician — which is a convoluted way of saying why I thought the title was appropriate."

The album is very much an international project. Wilson received recordings from his collaborators around the world and also journeyed afield to make location recordings using nothing more than his trusty Neumann U87 microphone, laptop and a MOTU Traveler FireWire interface. "There is a sense where you go and travel and work with local musicians that the music can take on that slightly 'world atlas' sense, but there are some precedents that it is possible to work in this fashion and produce music that is definitively your own," says Wilson. "Peter Gabriel [ Tape Op #63 ] has very much used an international cast list for his records, but has stamped his personality onto it so it sounds very much like himself. I think if you have a strong enough personality it will come through. The guys who make so-called 'world music' are often actually attempting to create a kind of geographical musical encyclopedia. I wasn't trying to do that — I was more interested in how these wonderful musicians could enhance and contribute to my existing vision."

Wilson has become renowned over the years for musical collaborations, first with singer Tim Bowness in the band No-Man, right through to his current work with Blackfield and Porcupine Tree (which is Wilson on vocals and guitar, Richard Barbieri on keyboards, Gavin Harrison on drums and Colin Edwin on bass). Insurgentes is however the first album to sport Steven Wilson's name on the cover — so is it a true "solo record"? "My first album was in 1992 with No-Man and I don't have a fantastically articulate answer as to why this is a "Steven Wilson" record — it just felt right," he says. " This album has aspects of every other project I've been involved in, and while I could say that others in the past have been representative of me as a musician, I feel that this one is more so than any before — because it really does touch on everything I like — It is very much a reflection of every side of me. Some of my other solo projects, such as Bass Communion and I.E.M. [Incredible Expanding Mindfuck] have some aspects of my musical tastes and personality, but somehow, as I was writing this album everything that people might associate with me as a musician came to be on there — industrial noise, prog rock, ambient music, songs, instrumentals and orchestral textures, all wrapped up in this one beautifully ambitious record. So it seemed like this was finally an album I could put my name to. It does kind of represent, for me, one album, which is a complete presentation of my musical personality. It's not just a compilation of the things I've done in the past, as there are things on the record that people won't have heard from me ever before — for example, the use of extreme noise. It's kind of summarising what people already know about me, but moving into new waters as well. When you collaborate you are aware that there are parts of your musical personality that don't overlap with the people you are working with. For example, when I work with Tim [Bowness — No-Man], he really doesn't like rocky, heavy stuff, so the music tends to lean to the more orchestral, ethereal, romantic side — you won't hear metal riffs and the rockier elements! When you collaborate it takes you in directions you might not think of by yourself, and on the new record I didn't have anyone to bounce ideas off. Sometimes there were almost too many possibilities and I found it hard to make decisions. In some senses, making a solo record is more stressful in that you don't have that sounding board — that other opinion to rely on."

Although it bears the Wilson moniker, Insurgentes indeed boasts some impressive collaborators such as Gavin Harrison, bassist Tony Levin and pianist Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater. "Some of them I've known over the years, but not had a chance to work with before — like Jordan who is a fantastic pianist from New York — he's played with everyone from Bowie and Prefab Sprout," says Wilson. "The one thing about making a solo album like this is that it's a great opportunity to work with people whom it's not possible to work with in a band format. There, the question of 'who are we going to get to play on this record?' never comes up. Making a solo record gives you this wonderful opportunity — in a sense the world is my oyster and I can decide whom I want to play with. I invited a few friends and contacted a few people I didn't know personally at that point. There's a Japanese musician, Michiyo Yagi, who is an incredible koto player who has worked with John Zorn and is very much part of the avant- garde jazz scene. I just loved the way she played her instrument, so I got in touch with her and asked her to play on the record. It was the same with Clodagh Simonds from Fovea Hex who sang on one of the tracks."

While Wilson was laying down tracks and recording contributions from his eclectic cast of players, Danish filmmaker Lasse Hoile was filming the process for a DVD documentary. "Everywhere we went to record, Lasse, filmed it — and not just the making of the record, but other stuff that we made up on the spot and some weird shit — some surreal stuff. We talked to other musicians and producers and asked them what it's like to be in the music business in the 21st century — obviously it's changed beyond recognition in the last five years alone because of download culture. So we questioned them about downloading and MP3s and how it has affected what they and we do." The film makes up part of the variety of the impressive packages for the release which also include vinyl, high resolution and surround sound mixes — all of which should go some way to reducing the amount of piracy of the album. Wilson's projects often include a bag of extras and beautiful artwork and this 'added value' could be why his musical output still sells where others see only decline.

Wilson is known as a bit of a sonic wizard, and his work is often name- checked in various hi-fi and audiophile publications. His recordings are often considered amongst the best sounding contemporary productions and commonly compared to masters of the genre such as Pink Floyd and Steely Dan. So it may come as somewhat of a surprise to find that the aforementioned MOTU interface isn't the only way in which his work breaks the barriers of what might be considered "high quality" in the recording world. "I used mainly Apple's Logic 7 running on a G5, and that along with the MOTU is about it really!" he says, at least for the location recordings — though he does use Apogee and Pro Tools hardware in his home studio. For Wilson, the sonic nature of the source material is more important than the equipment it was captured with. "One track was recorded in Mexico City in the middle of the night in a convent," says Wilson. "There was a grand piano there — it wasn't a great one, but it had a character within the room it was located. That was recorded with the laptop and MOTU and the mono U87." Wilson is aware of the high regard in which he his held for his audio skills — which is why he is much in demand as a producer — but he's not obsessed with capturing and presenting all his sounds at the highest quality. "I'm obviously aspiring to make records that sound very good, but within these you can have very lo-fi sounds. When you are working with lo-fi though, it's because you want to produce a certain sound rather than because it's only the best you can do — that's the difference. I think people appreciate that there is a certain artistry in that. It's interesting that the whole idea of lo-fi has come back, starting with artists like Portishead, Nirvana and Beck who, after years of the arrival of the CD age and very shiny sounding records, were obviously recording in expensive studios on expensive systems, but choosing to make their records sound like, or at least incorporate, very lo-fi elements by using samples from old vinyl and accentuating the fact that there was surface noise and crackles — and I love all that shit! I love lo-fi sounds — but in the context of great sounding records. There are a lot of very fucked up, fuzzed out sounds on the Insurgentes record. There are guitar tones where I've got the guitars going through E- Phonic's LOFI plug-in, reduced to 3 or 4 bits to get that crunchy, fizzy tone — which is in some respects the antithesis of 192 kHz, 24-bit surround sound. But in context it sounds fantastic and gives it an edge."

Wilson's studio isn't full of the vintage analogue gear sonic purists might expect, but rather the kind of equipment you'd find in a much more modest setup. "It's always embarrassing when people ask me if they can take pictures of my studio," he says. "It's basically just a computer these days. I use the Apogee Trak2 with a Digidesign card to interface with my Pro Tools hardware. I'm not using any vintage stuff though, and you know what? I wouldn't know what I was doing! If you asked me what mic pres I liked or whether I prefer Neve or whatever I wouldn't have a clue! All I know is that I like the sound of my U87 through my Trak2 and I know how to get the tones that I want to get from that system. About half of the guitar the sounds on the album were done with my PRS guitar directly into the Apogee with [Line 6's] Amp Farm and Echo Farm [plug-ins]. For the other half I went over to Florida and did a session at RedRoom Recorders with a couple of guys I really rate very highly [John Wesley, Porcupine Tree's live guitar player and Mark Prator]. They have an amazing collection of vintage guitar pedals and amps, stuff like old Electro-Harmonix pedals, Marshalls and a great guitar collection. I probably used everything from DI to vintage amps on the album. Florida, believe or not, is the home of death metal so they have lots of experience of recording heavy guitars. On every album I do, I go over to record a session at RedRoom in Brandon. If I could have all of that vintage analogue gear I'd probably use it, but most of it is outside my means — and anyhow would need a lot of maintenance.

"I have kind of grown up in the era of digital recording and must say I love it — not necessarily the sound, but the convenience and the editing. A lot of my music is constructed by editing and moving data around and processing in the digital domain. I do love the sound of beautifully recorded analogue albums — they can sound amazing — but what I have done over the years is to find a way to get that kind of sonic quality and analogue warmth in the digital domain. If I do have a skill, I think that's it. Because I've been forced to attempt to make great sounding records using digital technology, that is exactly what I have tried to do. I think that I'm always trying to make my records sound like the ones I grew up with. I've found ways to circumnavigate the problems with digital — there are some great plug-ins now that simulate the analogue domain, whether it's Echo Farm or things like LOFI and tape saturation simulators. I feel more at home and feel more able with digital, where on analogue I might feel a little bit out of my depth because I haven't learned to make records in that world."

Once Wilson has the recording inside the computer, it stays there. The only concession he makes to the analogue world is that he mixes through a Neve 8816 analogue summing mixer at the end of the process, rather than straight out of Logic. "I create stems and route these out to the Neve and back into the computer as a stereo file — hopefully to put back a little bit of that warmth and depth that may have got lost in the digital domain," he says. "I don't actually own the Neve — I hire one for the last stage of mixing from FX Rentals and spend a day putting the final mixes through it. To be honest I'm not even sure I can hear the difference, but I know that when I give the tracks to the mastering engineer, he can hear it. When the audio is in the computer I'm like a pig in shit with those plug-ins! I love it. I'm editing — I'm moving tracks around and all the time changing the arrangement. The songs on Insurgentes are not conventionally written songs — they are not the usual structures. I'm doing this through the whole recording and mixing process and it's something you could really never do with tape."

Wilson's early career with No-Man was marked by its use of samples, loops and drum machines, but he uses none of these in his current work. "I'm a bit of a contradiction as I don't really like a lot of electronic instruments and I don't really use a lot of virtual synths. I still prefer the sound of real pianos and drums. I love the sound of old instruments such as Mellotrons and guitar. I don't use a lot of soft synths. I have a harmonium, banjo, glockenspiel and zither. I have a big collection of playable instruments. I also do a lot with vocals, treating my voice and stuff. In many ways the songs are still written in an old fashioned way, with a guitar on my knee or a piano — less so on this solo record perhaps, but even here a lot was written like this. Insurgentes was more about experimenting sonically in the digital domain As for instrumentation, it's still all the stuff I've been using for 20 years. Even if I wanted to I can't erase elements of my musical persona — it's no different from any other aspects of our personality — there are things we can never change or cover up as they are just part of us. Things like our insecurities and the things that make us happy and sad. There are certain chord voicings I always return to, certain harmonic movements that sound good to me and I always come back to certain recording techniques rhythms and time signatures. I know there's a kind of Steven Wilson 'musical matrix' and even though I'm always trying to progress and move forward and evolve, I know there's stuff I can't get away from. I'm often not even aware of reverting to type. Having said that I can see that it could be seen as a positive thing. It's a strand that runs through all the music I make and what makes it recognisably me, I guess."

Admirers of Porcupine Tree's music often comment how much the recordings sound like a coherent band playing together, so it's also something of a surprise that the individual elements that make up a track are often recorded in the different member's home studios and the files flown in for Wilson to manipulate. "On the last album [Fear of a Blank Planet] everyone basically recorded in their own studio. I know some people are not big fans of this idea of everyone going off and recording in a solitary way and coming back with files. It's not the most romantic way to record an album. But four guys in a studio sweating away in the night is not the way we make records! We all try ideas out in our own studios and we can all record to a very high standard. Gavin [Harrison] has spent years and years experimenting in his own studio with mics and preamps and he now has a system that works for him that he's perfected. I don't need to sit there with him while he's recording his drum parts. We all make demos, swap files discuss them and we'll go away and redo stuff. It's almost too easy a way of making records! I remember recording with Porcupine Tree years ago and I was there for everything — with the drummer, with Colin and the bass. It was very stressful. I really admire full-time producers — you have to concentrate on things like that for weeks on end and I find that hard, just listening to endless drum takes and so on. I just get delivered files — not very glamorous I know, but it seems to work very well." So if the recording is all constructed "after the event", where does this sense of emotion and spontaneity come from? "I have learned from my mistakes and come to understand that the demo is always hard to recreate," says Wilson. "So when I write the music I'm actually recording the demo at the same standard as the final piece. The important thing to realise is that when you are actually creating the music is the time when you are most in tune with the emotion and feelings you are trying to express. If you try and revisit that song in six months, you are in a completely different emotional space than when you wrote it. So 90% of the time, my demo vocal is going to be what ends up on the record. This is a key to preventing it sounding like a piecemeal project. The original sprit is retained — I think this is why the albums (I hope) don't sound cold and mechanical. It's that the performances are very often first or second takes captured at the moment of inspiration — we don't do the Steely Dan thing where we take six months to cut a drum track. I'd find that boring — I love those records. But I don't find that kind of recording fun.

"We can talk all day about technical things and technique but ultimately, if you are going to produce good records, it comes down to one thing only — knowing in your mind when it sounds right. It's all about instinct and intuition. If I'm using a plug-in, very often I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I never ever save settings — I always like to go back to square one. At the end of the day plug-ins are no different to hardware — there are a number of settings and controls that you can turn which change the sound. Whether you're more comfortable turning physical knobs or on screen ones with a mouse, there's basically no difference. If I rented an amazing piece of analogue gear tomorrow and plugged my guitar into it I'd throw the manual away — I never read manuals — and start turning knobs until I start to hear something I like the sound of. This is like old analogue synths where you couldn't save sounds — every time you turned it on you needed to create sounds from scratch. But that is the important thing — the artistry is in the instinct to know when something is right. I load a plug-in and turn knobs until I hear something that sounds okay to me. Obviously I have a certain amount of knowledge of these things — I'm not a complete idiot! But I'm a songwriter/producer — I'm not so interested in being an engineer. But I guess I've learned enough of that side to be able to do what I do. I once met producer John Leckie and he said that's exactly what he does too. The great maxim is that how many great artists went to music school and are properly trained in music technology? Hardly any, I suspect. All these guys who learn the chops at music school are rarely those with the instinct for making great music — there's definitely the element of the idiot savant in it. The great artist and producers like Leckie and Trevor Horn often don't know that much about equipment, but do have an instinct for when music sounds good and sounds right."

Wilson's reputation for surround mixes stems not from it being seen as "the next big thing", but from a belief that the creative process is enhanced by spreading the sound out over more channels. "I think [5.1 mixes] are absolutely amazing. It's the definitive way to hear my records. Like anything there are good and bad ways to do these mixes and I have heard some classic albums retrofitted as 5.1 which sound horrible — but it is possible to make mixes that are definitive in the 5.1 format. That is the case with records I make — I have it very much in mind when I record. They are very 'produced,' for better or worse, and are very dense with textures and layers, and sometimes it comes to the point that stereo can't contain that information — so surround gives you the opportunity to spread all these round in a three-dimensional space. The Nine Inch Nails albums sound amazing in surround because they are not trying to sound like a band in a studio knocking out a song live. They are very impressionistic and I think these lend themselves very well to surround. On the other hand I heard a surround version of Pet Sounds and that didn't sound so good. I'm not sure if that was the vision of the mixer or the limitations of the original recording — there's not much you can do with 5.1 on albums recorded on 4- or 8-track. Some of my songs use 64 or more tracks and it's hard to squeeze these into stereo. I mix at home with a set of Genelec active speakers, and while the room is by no stretch a perfectly acoustically treated space, I've been working there for many years so I know how things should sound there. One of the problems of going to fantastic sounding recording studios is that while things can sound amazing, there's no point of reference — you're not quite sure how things are supposed to sound. I've been recording for 20 years in my shitty little room so I know how things should sound in there and I can mix with confidence — I know all its foibles."

Insurgentes was mastered by Andy VanDette at Masterdisk in New York. "I have worked with him a few times and he really cares. All you want is someone who can go the extra mile, and he has an affinity with the music. He's a perfectionist — I once saw him discard a whole vinyl cut because he could get another half dB out of it — and I really trust him. The surround mix I master myself — if you have got the mixing right the mastering engineer shouldn't have to do much. Either the mixing is wrong or the mastering is wrong. I try to make the mastering easier as I can make the decisions about the bass and high frequencies in my room. I'm also aware of the whole loudness wars thing too. I do some limiting, but very much less than most contemporary releases — I think there is a line you shouldn't cross and I think a lot of modern records releases do cross that line."

On one hand, the good news is that Wilson proves that you can create high quality, audiophile and award- winning music using the kind of equipment you can buy from the local music and computer store. The downside is that he also demonstrates that you actually need talent, skill and a good ear to make it work for you. And that's something you can't buy online with your credit card.