PORCUPINE TREE

Random and bite-sized facts on all things on the mythical band Porcupine Tree. Totally random but totally fascinating if you're into it. Do you know Porcupine Tree now?

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PORCUPINE TREE STARTED AS A FICTIONAL BAND

Steven Wilson originally treated Porcupine Tree as a joke. He and school friend Malcolm Stocks invented a fictional 1970s rock band and created an elaborate mythology around them. The joke eventually became a real musical project.

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SIR TARQUIN UNDERSPOON WASN'T REAL

The early Porcupine Tree tapes came with deliberately ridiculous histories of imaginary band members, including Sir Tarquin Underspoon and Timothy Tadpole-Jones. Wilson presented them as if Porcupine Tree had been an obscure band from the early 1970s.

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EVEN THE CREW WAS FICTIONAL

One of the imaginary crew members was called Linton Samuel Dawson. His initials were LSD — another little joke hidden in the cassette artwork.

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THE FIRST PORCUPINE TREE TAPES WERE REALLY HOME RECORDINGS

Tarquin's Seaweed Farm was privately released on cassette in 1989. Wilson later explained that Porcupine Tree had originally been nothing more than a studio project created for his own amusement. He wasn't initially trying to get a record deal.

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ONLY 50 COPIES OF THE FIRST TAPE?

The original private pressing of Tarquin's Seaweed Farm was tiny — contemporary accounts put it at just 50 copies. The cassette contained around 80 minutes of music, including an early version of "Radioactive Toy".

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THE SECOND TAPE WAS EVEN MORE OBSCURE

Love, Death & Mussolini followed in 1990 and was produced in an extremely small edition. The original cassette is now one of the genuinely obscure pieces of early Porcupine Tree history.

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THE MUSIC WASN'T ALL NEW

Some of the earliest Porcupine Tree material actually went back years before the name was used. Wilson told an interviewer in 1994 that lyrics supplied by Alan Duffy dated from 1983–85, when Wilson was about 16, and that he sometimes returned to music he had written at the time.

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PORCUPINE TREE WASN'T ORIGINALLY MEANT TO BE A BAND

Wilson recorded the early material largely by himself. He later said that the original cassettes were assembled from a much larger collection of recordings he had made over roughly five years, many of them simply for himself and his friends.

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THE FIRST RECORD LABEL DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT WAS GETTING

Richard Allen and Ivor Trueman's newly formed Delerium Records became interested after hearing the cassettes. They offered Wilson the chance to turn the fictional Porcupine Tree into an actual record project.

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ON THE SUNDAY OF LIFE WAS A COMPILATION OF OLD MATERIAL

The 1992 album On the Sunday of Life... wasn't recorded as a conventional debut album. It was assembled from the best material on the early cassettes. Wilson had accumulated so much material that there was enough left over for the later Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape.

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WILSON WASN'T PARTICULARLY PROUD OF THE EARLY RECORDINGS

Years later, Wilson was surprisingly dismissive of much of the early material. He described the recordings on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape as experiments from the late 1980s and early 1990s and said he didn't think much of them. He understood why hardcore fans wanted them, though.

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THE BAND'S EARLY HISTORY WAS ALMOST LOST

Wilson once gave his own CD copy of Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape to Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth after Åkerfeldt repeatedly told him he couldn't find one. Wilson later admitted that he no longer had a copy himself.

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THE NAME BECAME MORE REAL THAN THE JOKE

What started as an imaginary band eventually became something Wilson took seriously. The fictional history disappeared, but the name survived — and the project gradually evolved from psychedelic home recordings into a genuine band with its own identity.

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PORCUPINE TREE WAS INSPIRED BY THE DUKES OF STRATOSPHERE

Steven Wilson has said that XTC's psychedelic alter ego, the Dukes of Stratosphear, was a major influence on the original Porcupine Tree idea. The ridiculous fictional names and fake history were deliberately part of the joke.

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THE FIRST TAPE WAS BASICALLY A PASTICHE COLLECTION

Wilson later recalled that the roughly 90 minutes of music he had assembled for Tarquin's Seaweed Farm was largely made up of pastiches of other musicians. He was experimenting with how convincingly he could imitate different musical styles.

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MALCOLM STOCKS WAS THE PERSON WILSON MADE IT FOR

Porcupine Tree began as something Wilson made to amuse his school friend Malcolm Stocks. Wilson later said that the project would never have happened without Malcolm, who encouraged him to make the music and contributed ideas and experimental guitar sounds.

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THE FIRST TAPE SPREAD BY WORD OF MOUTH

Wilson initially assumed that almost nobody else would be interested in his strange psychedelic recordings. He was surprised when the cassette began spreading by word of mouth and people started actively looking for Porcupine Tree records.

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RICHARD ALLEN DIDN'T DISCOVER PORCUPINE TREE BY ACCIDENT

Guitarist and underground musician Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond suggested that Wilson send a copy of the tape to Richard Allen, who was involved with the psychedelic magazine Freakbeat. Allen eventually became one of the people responsible for turning Porcupine Tree from a private joke into a record project.

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THE BAND DIDN'T REALLY BECOME A BAND UNTIL SIGNIFY

Even though Porcupine Tree had musicians associated with it before then, Signify was the first album Wilson regarded as a genuine band record. Earlier albums were essentially Steven Wilson solo projects with other musicians appearing where needed.

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MOONLOOP CHANGED EVERYTHING

Wilson has singled out "Stars Die" and "Moonloop" from the The Sky Moves Sideways sessions as a turning point. Chris Maitland and Colin Edwin played on both, and Wilson said that hearing those tracks made him realise he didn't want to go back to relying on drum machines.

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MOONLOOP STARTED LIFE AS A 40-MINUTE IMPROVISATION

The version eventually released as "Moonloop" was edited down from a much longer improvisation recorded by the band. What became an 18-minute piece was originally part of a roughly 40-minute session.

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SIGNIFY WAS A BAND RECORD MADE APART

There's a strange contradiction at the heart of Signify. Although it was the first Porcupine Tree album conceived as a band record, the members couldn't actually all be in the studio together because of practical limitations. Wilson therefore recorded detailed demos and had the others replace his programmed or played parts with their own.

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INTERMEDIATE JESUS WAS THE EXCEPTION

"Intermediate Jesus" was different. It grew out of an actual group improvisation, recorded outdoors, and became one of the clearest examples of the musicians beginning to create Porcupine Tree music together rather than simply playing parts Wilson had already written.

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WILSON WAS RELUCTANT TO BE CALLED PROGRESSIVE ROCK

As Porcupine Tree developed, Wilson became increasingly conscious of the progressive-rock label. The band had obvious connections to 1970s psychedelic and progressive music, but he deliberately kept changing the songwriting approach rather than simply reproducing that sound.

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RICHARD BARBIERI WAS ALREADY A LEGEND WHEN HE JOINED

When Richard Barbieri joined Porcupine Tree in 1993, he wasn't an unknown keyboard player. He had already been a member of Japan, one of Britain's most distinctive art-rock bands, and had spent years developing a very individual approach to synthesizers and electronic sound.

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STEVEN WILSON FIRST KNEW HIM THROUGH NO-MAN

Barbieri's route into Porcupine Tree came through Steven Wilson's other project, No-Man. The two had begun working together before Barbieri joined Porcupine Tree, creating a musical connection that eventually brought him into Wilson's main project.

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BARBIERI WAS INITIALLY A GUEST

Before officially becoming a member, Barbieri contributed to Up the Downstair. What had started as a guest appearance developed into a permanent role when Wilson decided he wanted Porcupine Tree to become a real band rather than essentially being his solo project.

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HE WAS FASCINATED BY PORCUPINE TREE'S STRANGE EARLY SOUND

Barbieri later recalled that Porcupine Tree were playing music with a trance-like, almost contemporary club quality when he first became involved. That electronic side of the group appealed to him because it gave him room to concentrate on unusual sounds rather than simply supplying conventional keyboard parts.

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HE DIDN'T PLAY KEYBOARDS LIKE A TYPICAL ROCK KEYBOARD PLAYER

Barbieri has described himself as being more interested in abstract sounds and electronics than in playing conventional keyboard parts. His contribution to Porcupine Tree was often about atmosphere, texture and strange sonic details rather than obvious melodies.

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JAPAN AND PORCUPINE TREE HAD A SURPRISING CONNECTION

Steven Wilson was a huge Japan fan, and Richard Barbieri had already been responsible for much of Japan's electronic character. Wilson later said that he and Barbieri shared a wide-ranging love of 1970s music, particularly Bowie and Roxy Music, even though Wilson came more from the progressive-rock side.

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BARBIERI DIDN'T MIND THAT WILSON WAS THE BOSS

Porcupine Tree was initially dominated creatively by Wilson, but Barbieri said this didn't bother him. He had already experienced a similar situation in Japan with David Sylvian. As he put it, Japan didn't feel any less like his band simply because Sylvian was the dominant creative personality.

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THE FIRST PORCUPINE TREE GIGS WERE NOT GLAMOROUS

When the new four-piece finally played live in late 1993, Barbieri remembers the earliest shows as "grim". The band were still finding their identity onstage. Their first gig at The Nag's Head in High Wycombe, however, sold out and produced a surprisingly enthusiastic response.

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SIGNIFY WAS THE TURNING POINT

Barbieri considers Signify particularly important because it was the first time Porcupine Tree really felt like a band to him. It was also the first time they had proper studio time and equipment to develop the sound collectively rather than simply assembling Wilson's recordings.

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BARBIERI AND WILSON APPROACHED MUSIC VERY DIFFERENTLY

Barbieri doesn't rely heavily on music theory or conventional musical structures, whereas Wilson is comfortable with arranging, mixing and playing several instruments. Barbieri has said that they nevertheless tend to arrive at the same musical ideas by completely different routes.

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HE WAS THE LINK BETWEEN JAPAN AND PORCUPINE TREE

Barbieri's arrival gave Porcupine Tree something Wilson couldn't have created simply by adding another conventional keyboard player: decades of experience in atmospheric electronic music, carried over from Japan but adapted to a completely different band.

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BARBIERI WAS MORE INTERESTED IN SOUND THAN PLAYING KEYS

Richard Barbieri has admitted that he didn't have much technical ability as a keyboard player and had no formal knowledge of music theory when he started. The synthesizer changed that. He became fascinated by the controls and started exploring sounds rather than thinking like a conventional keyboard player.

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HIS FIRST SYNTH WAS A ROLAND SYSTEM 700 LAB

Barbieri's first synthesizer was the Roland System 700 Lab Series. It was a semi-modular instrument that produced no sound until he patched it and programmed it himself. Barbieri said this gave him a fundamental education in synthesis and programming.

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HE THINKS OF HIMSELF AS A SOUND DESIGNER

Barbieri has said that he considers himself more of a programmer and sound designer than a keyboard player. That helps explain why his Porcupine Tree parts can sometimes sound like strange electronic noises rather than recognisable keyboard instruments.

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HE SOMETIMES DELIBERATELY DOESN'T PLAY

Barbieri has said that sometimes a Porcupine Tree track simply doesn't need keyboards. In those cases he won't add anything. He sees his role as finding the right space for textures and atmosphere rather than automatically filling every gap.

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“YOU START A MOOD”

During Porcupine Tree's live shows, the band would sometimes ask Barbieri to start the atmosphere while the guitarists tuned up. He became known for creating evolving electronic introductions on the spot. Eventually the joke became that Richard would “start a load of waffle”. Some of those improvised atmospheres survived in the live versions of songs such as "Buying New Soul" and "Dark Matter".

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BARBIERI HELPED BRING GAVIN HARRISON INTO THE BAND

When Chris Maitland left Porcupine Tree, Barbieri was instrumental in bringing Gavin Harrison into the group. It turned out to be a crucial change in the band's history, with Harrison becoming one of their defining musicians.

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SIGNIFY WAS THE FIRST TIME IT REALLY FELT LIKE A BAND

Barbieri considers Signify a turning point. He has described it as the first Porcupine Tree album that really felt like a band, because they finally had proper studio time and equipment to experiment and develop their sound together.

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HE WASN'T INTERESTED IN COMPETING WITH THE GUITARS

Steven Wilson has said that Barbieri's keyboard role was deliberately different from that of a conventional rock keyboard player. The keyboards weren't there to compete with the guitars. Instead, Barbieri created textures and sounds that occupied their own space.

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BARBIERI AND WILSON REACHED THE SAME PLACE BY DIFFERENT ROUTES

Barbieri has said that he and Steven Wilson often arrive at similar musical ideas in completely different ways. Wilson understands musical theory, structure, mixing and multiple instruments; Barbieri tends to work through sound, instinct and experimentation.

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HE HELPED CHANGE THE STAGE PRESENTATION TOO

Barbieri later said that he and drummer Chris Maitland, both of whom had experience of professional touring setups, were concerned by how shabby Porcupine Tree's early stage presentation looked. They pushed for better lighting and a more organised stage, while Ian Bond became their sound engineer.

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PORCUPINE TREE ONLY BECAME A PROPER BAND WITH SIGNIFY

For years Porcupine Tree was essentially Steven Wilson's studio project. Even after Richard Barbieri and Colin Edwin became involved, they were initially guest musicians. Signify, released in 1996, was the first album Wilson regarded as a genuine Porcupine Tree band record.

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THE FIRST BAND REHEARSED FOR ONLY A WEEK

Colin Edwin later recalled that the four members had only rehearsed together for about a week before playing their first gig. He said that, despite barely knowing each other, they sounded remarkably complete from the beginning.

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THE SKY MOVES SIDEWAYS WAS A HALF-BAND RECORD

Although Porcupine Tree had become a live band by the time The Sky Moves Sideways was recorded, much of the album was still essentially Steven Wilson working alone. "Moonloop" and "Stars Die" were different: Colin Edwin and Chris Maitland played on them, and Wilson later described those tracks as a turning point.

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MOONLOOP WAS A 40-MINUTE JAM

"Moonloop" began as a roughly 40-minute studio improvisation. Wilson subsequently cut it apart, stripped sections down, rebuilt others and assembled the version that appeared on The Sky Moves Sideways.

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SIGNIFY WASN'T ACTUALLY RECORDED LIKE A NORMAL BAND ALBUM

Even though Signify was the first proper band album, the four musicians couldn't all fit into Wilson's small studio at the same time. Wilson therefore made detailed demos and the others replaced his programmed or played parts with their own. "Intermediate Jesus" was the major exception, growing out of an actual group improvisation.

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INTERMEDIATE JESUS WAS RECORDED OUTSIDE

The basic improvisation that became "Intermediate Jesus" was recorded outdoors. It was one of the few moments on Signify where the musicians genuinely created the music together in the room rather than working from Wilson's finished demos.

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THE BAND WERE ALREADY TRYING TO ESCAPE THEIR OWN SOUND

Wilson has repeatedly said that he didn't want Porcupine Tree to simply repeat what they had done on the previous album. Each record was deliberately different. The move from the psychedelic, ambient sound of the early albums towards the shorter songs of Stupid Dream was a conscious change of direction.

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THEY WERE SOMETIMES CALLED “THE PINK FLOYD OF THE NINETIES”

The comparison became common after The Sky Moves Sideways, but Wilson wasn't particularly happy about it. He later admitted that he had perhaps indulged the Floyd influence too much because Porcupine Tree were attracting listeners who were looking for a new Pink Floyd.

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THEIR EARLY MUSIC WAS PARTLY INSPIRED BY DANCE MUSIC

The early Porcupine Tree sound wasn't simply progressive rock. Wilson was listening to ambient and electronic artists such as The Orb and The Future Sound of London, and Up the Downstair deliberately mixed those influences with psychedelic rock and Pink Floyd-style atmospherics.

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THE BAND'S FIRST LINE-UP LASTED LONGER THAN YOU MIGHT EXPECT

Once the classic four-piece was established — Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri, Colin Edwin and Chris Maitland — it remained intact until 2002, when Gavin Harrison replaced Maitland. That was the band's only line-up change until their eventual split and later return.

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PORCUPINE TREE ALMOST DIDN'T HAVE A BAND AT ALL

Wilson has said that the original Porcupine Tree project was intended as a joke and a diversion from his main project, No-Man. The joke became unexpectedly successful, eventually forcing him to choose between keeping it as a studio experiment and turning it into a real band.

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WHY PORCUPINE TREE DISAPPEARED FOR 12 YEARS

Porcupine Tree's long break began after their 2009 album The Incident and the tour that followed. When the band played London's Royal Albert Hall in October 2010, Steven Wilson had already decided that he needed to step away from Porcupine Tree. The unusual part was that Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison didn't initially know that Wilson regarded the show as the end of the band.

Wilson later explained that Porcupine Tree had become much bigger and more important to his career than he had ever intended. What had started as a side project had become the thing people expected him to continue making, and he felt trapped by those expectations. He wanted to work with different musicians and explore completely different styles of music.

Wilson also felt that the band had become too associated with the heavy guitar-driven sound of their later albums. He said he had "painted myself into a corner" with that style and wanted to move somewhere else musically.

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WILSON'S SOLO CAREER TOOK OVER

The years after The Incident were far from quiet for Steven Wilson. His solo career became increasingly important, while he also worked on projects including Storm Corrosion and continued his extensive work remixing and producing other artists.

Wilson eventually released several solo albums during the Porcupine Tree hiatus, including The Raven That Refused to Sing, Hand. Cannot. Erase., To the Bone and The Future Bites. By the time Porcupine Tree returned, his solo career was considerably larger than it had been when the band stopped.

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THE REUNION STARTED WITHOUT A REUNION PLAN

The first steps towards the eventual comeback happened around 2011, when Gavin Harrison invited Steven Wilson to his house for a jam. Harrison had a bass and Wilson picked it up. The two began creating long, spacious grooves and polyrhythmic ideas without initially thinking they were making a Porcupine Tree record.

Wilson suggested that they might have something new, but Harrison immediately recognised what it was. His response was essentially: "Nah, this is Porcupine Tree."

The material then developed incredibly slowly. There was no record-company deadline, no contract forcing them to make an album and no timetable for finishing it. Wilson later said that sometimes two years would pass before they had another opportunity to work on the music.

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COVID-19 HELPED BRING THEM BACK

The COVID-19 lockdown unexpectedly accelerated the process. With Wilson's touring cancelled, he, Harrison and Richard Barbieri returned to the material that had accumulated over the previous years.

Barbieri had also been sending Wilson musical ideas during the years apart. Some of those ideas were eventually turned into songs for the new album.

The three musicians recorded the album remotely, working from their own homes. In fact, the members had not physically played together since the Royal Albert Hall show in 2010 until they eventually met to rehearse for the comeback.

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THE ORIGINAL BASSIST DID NOT RETURN

Colin Edwin, who had been the band's bassist since the 1990s, was not part of the reunion. The new Porcupine Tree was a three-piece consisting of Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison.

Wilson played bass on the new material himself. This also changed the sound of the group considerably, with the bass becoming much more prominent and the heavy, multi-layered guitar sound of some of the band's earlier albums becoming less dominant.

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CLOSURE / CONTINUATION

Closure / Continuation was released on 24 June 2022. It was Porcupine Tree's eleventh studio album and their first since The Incident in 2009, creating a gap of almost thirteen years between studio albums.

The album was actually completed in September 2021, although the band kept its existence secret until announcing the return in November of that year.

The official album credits list Richard Barbieri, Steven Wilson and Gavin Harrison as the performers. Wilson described it as a genuinely collaborative record, saying that he finally felt able to let Porcupine Tree function as a "true band unit", with much more of Barbieri's and Harrison's personalities coming through.

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THE ALBUM WAS MADE WITHOUT PRESSURE

One reason the new album sounded different was that the musicians weren't trying to satisfy a record company or fulfil an existing Porcupine Tree contract. Wilson said there were no deadlines, advances or expectations hanging over them.

That gave the three musicians the freedom to work on the material whenever they wanted. Some ideas were almost a decade old by the time they became finished songs, while other material was written much later.

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CHIMERA'S WRECK HAD A VERY LONG HISTORY

"Chimera's Wreck" can be traced back to the early Wilson and Harrison sessions. The opening section preserves the feel of those original sessions, when the two musicians were playing together without a click track.

The track eventually became the closing piece on Closure / Continuation, meaning that music created near the beginning of the attempted reunion ended up providing the album's final statement.

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THE TITLE WAS DELIBERATELY AMBIGUOUS

Closure / Continuation was deliberately chosen because nobody knew whether Porcupine Tree were returning permanently. Wilson said that the album could represent the end of the band's story just as easily as the beginning of another chapter.

At the time of the album's release, Wilson even suggested that it might be the last Porcupine Tree album and that the accompanying tour might be their final tour.

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THE RETURN WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE A NORMAL REUNION

Wilson was keen to avoid simply recreating the Porcupine Tree of the 2000s. He wanted the new music to reflect what the three musicians had learned and experienced during the years apart.

That is why Closure / Continuation can sound recognisably like Porcupine Tree while still being noticeably different. There is less emphasis on huge multi-tracked guitar sounds, while bass, keyboards, electronics and Harrison's intricate drumming have more space.

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THE LAST PORCUPINE TREE SHOWS

The band returned to the stage in October 2022 for a limited series of concerts. The tour included their largest audiences to date, culminating in a major London show at Wembley Arena.

Wilson had already warned that there were no plans for further Porcupine Tree concerts beyond the 2022 shows, although he deliberately avoided saying that the band could never return.

In a later interview, Wilson said that when the band stopped in 2010 there had never really been an intention to stop permanently. The break simply became one year, then two, then five and eventually ten. He admitted that he was largely responsible for the length of the hiatus because, for a long period, his solo career interested him more than Porcupine Tree.

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A BAND THAT ENDED WITHOUT REALLY ENDING

That makes Porcupine Tree's history unusually circular. The band began as Steven Wilson's fictional project, gradually became a real group, spent years developing into a four-piece, effectively disappeared after The Incident, and then returned more than a decade later as a three-piece.

Closure / Continuation therefore works as both a comeback album and a possible final chapter. Even its title refuses to say which one it really is.

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PORCUPINE TREE STARTED AS A FICTIONAL BAND

Porcupine Tree wasn't originally intended to become a real band. Steven Wilson invented the name and created a fictional history for the group as part of the artwork and booklet for his early home-recorded material. The imaginary members even had names and personalities. What began as a joke gradually became a serious musical project when people started taking the music seriously.

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THE BAND DIDN'T REALLY EXIST AT FIRST

For several years Porcupine Tree was essentially Steven Wilson with other musicians appearing when required. Even the first albums were largely Wilson's work. Richard Barbieri and Colin Edwin first appeared on Up the Downstair, while Chris Maitland became the drummer for The Sky Moves Sideways.

It wasn't until Signify in 1996 that Wilson had a proper Porcupine Tree band around him from the beginning of an album.

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THE SKY MOVES SIDEWAYS WAS A HALF-SOLO, HALF-BAND RECORD

The Sky Moves Sideways is unusual because some of it was still essentially Steven Wilson working alone, while other tracks involved Colin Edwin and Chris Maitland. "Moonloop" and "Stars Die" were among the pieces that helped move Porcupine Tree towards becoming a genuine band rather than a solo project with guests.

Wilson later described the album as a turning point because he realised that having a real band could change the way Porcupine Tree worked.

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THE FIRST PORCUPINE TREE GIG WAS PUT TOGETHER VERY QUICKLY

When the proper band finally began playing live, the musicians barely knew each other. Colin Edwin later recalled that they had rehearsed for only about a week before their first gig. Despite that, he said the band sounded surprisingly complete almost immediately.

That chemistry became one of the reasons Porcupine Tree developed so successfully as a live band during the following years.

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SIGNIFY WAS RECORDED IN AN UNUSUAL WAY

Although Signify was the first album made with a proper Porcupine Tree band in place, the musicians weren't always able to record together. Steven Wilson's studio was too small to accommodate everyone, so he often created detailed demos and the other musicians subsequently replaced his programmed or played parts.

"Intermediate Jesus" was a notable exception. Its basic performance grew out of an improvisation made by the musicians playing together, making it much closer to the way a conventional band would record.

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MOONLOOP STARTED AS A 40-MINUTE JAM

"Moonloop" began as an approximately 40-minute studio improvisation. Rather than simply releasing the whole performance, the band edited it, stripped sections away and rebuilt it into the piece that appeared on The Sky Moves Sideways.

One section was left relatively close to the original improvisation, while other parts were assembled from different performances. It became one of the clearest examples of Porcupine Tree's ability to turn spontaneous studio playing into something much more structured.

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THE BAND WANTED EVERY ALBUM TO SOUND DIFFERENT

Steven Wilson deliberately resisted making the same Porcupine Tree album twice. He later explained that he wanted each record to have its own identity rather than simply following whatever style had worked on the previous album.

This explains some of the dramatic changes in their career. The psychedelic and electronic sound of the early records gradually gave way to shorter, more song-focused material on Stupid Dream, before the band moved towards the heavier progressive-rock and metal sound of In Absentia and the albums that followed.

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STUPID DREAM WAS A MAJOR CHANGE OF DIRECTION

Stupid Dream marked a major change for Porcupine Tree. Instead of concentrating primarily on long instrumental pieces and psychedelic soundscapes, Steven Wilson began writing shorter songs with stronger melodies and more personal lyrics.

Wilson later described the album as dealing with his own insecurities and feelings. It was a more personal record than much of the earlier Porcupine Tree material.

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IN ABSENTIA CHANGED THE BAND AGAIN

In Absentia, released in 2002, marked another major turning point. It was the first Porcupine Tree album with Gavin Harrison on drums after Chris Maitland's departure, and it pushed the band much further towards heavy progressive rock and metal.

The change wasn't simply about playing heavier. Harrison's intricate, highly controlled drumming became a defining part of the band's sound, while Wilson's songwriting retained the melodic and atmospheric elements that had developed during the Stupid Dream period.

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THE CLASSIC LINE-UP LASTED LONGER THAN MANY PEOPLE REALISE

Once Richard Barbieri, Colin Edwin, Chris Maitland and Steven Wilson were established around the time of Signify, the line-up remained remarkably stable. The only major change came in 2002, when Gavin Harrison replaced Maitland.

Wilson, Barbieri, Edwin and Harrison then remained together through In Absentia, Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet and The Incident.

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DEADWING BEGAN AS A FILM IDEA

Deadwing wasn't conceived purely as an album. Steven Wilson and filmmaker Mike Bennion had developed a screenplay for a horror film called Deadwing. The music was partly created alongside the idea for the film, although the movie was never made.

The album therefore became a kind of soundtrack to a film that existed mainly as a script and an idea. Several of its songs were directly connected to the story.

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ALEX LIFESON PLAYED ON FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET

Porcupine Tree brought in some very unexpected guests during their heavier period. Alex Lifeson of Rush played the guitar solo on "Anesthetize" on Fear of a Blank Planet.

Robert Fripp also contributed soundscapes to "Way Out of Here", giving the album two very different connections to the history of progressive rock.

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FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET WAS BASED AROUND A TEENAGER'S DIGITAL EXISTENCE

The concept behind Fear of a Blank Planet was influenced heavily by Bret Easton Ellis's novel Lunar Park. Steven Wilson imagined a bored teenager spending his days isolated in a bedroom, surrounded by video games, mobile phones, the internet, pornography, downloaded media and prescription drugs.

The album explored information overload, technology, isolation and the increasingly blurred distinction between real life and digital life.

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PORCUPINE TREE WERE SOMETIMES CALLED THE "PINK FLOYD OF THE NINETIES"

After The Sky Moves Sideways, comparisons with Pink Floyd became almost unavoidable. The long instrumental passages, atmospheric production and psychedelic textures made the connection obvious.

Steven Wilson wasn't entirely comfortable with it. He later admitted that he may have allowed his Pink Floyd influence to become too obvious during that period and was keen to move Porcupine Tree somewhere else.

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THE BAND'S MUSIC COULD JUMP FROM AMBIENT TO METAL

One of Porcupine Tree's defining characteristics was the extreme range of styles within the same band. Steven Wilson has described his own listening habits as ranging from Abba to extreme metal, and he didn't see the contrast as unusual.

That attitude became part of Porcupine Tree's identity. A quiet ambient passage could suddenly give way to distorted guitars and extremely heavy drumming, without Wilson seeing those styles as incompatible.

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GAVIN HARRISON'S DRUMMING BECAME A DEFINING PART OF THE SOUND

Gavin Harrison joined Porcupine Tree in 2002 and quickly became much more than a replacement drummer. His intricate playing became one of the band's most recognisable musical characteristics, particularly on the increasingly complex material from In Absentia onwards.

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Harrison was also becoming highly regarded outside the band. He won Modern Drummer magazine's readers' poll repeatedly from 2007 through 2010, while continuing to tour extensively with Porcupine Tree.

THE INCIDENT WAS ALMOST AN ALBUM WITHIN AN ALBUM

The Incident, released in 2009, was a double album. The first disc consists largely of the 55-minute title suite, made up of interconnected sections that flow into one another.

The album was much more inward-looking than Fear of a Blank Planet. While that record dealt heavily with society, technology and teenage alienation, The Incident was much more personal and dealt with themes of loss, grief and emotional disconnection.

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THE INCIDENT WASN'T REALLY THE END WHEN THEY RECORDED IT

When The Incident was released, there was no public announcement that Porcupine Tree were about to disappear. They continued touring through 2010, including their Royal Albert Hall performance.

But behind the scenes, Steven Wilson was becoming increasingly convinced that the band needed to stop. Richard Barbieri later said that they probably should have stopped after Fear of a Blank Planet, because by the time of The Incident they were working and touring constantly without feeling that they were progressing.

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THE BAND'S CAREER WAS ALMOST THE OPPOSITE OF A STRAIGHT LINE

Porcupine Tree went from a fictional psychedelic project made in Steven Wilson's bedroom to a proper four-piece, then moved through psychedelic rock, electronic music, pop-influenced songwriting, progressive rock and metal.

They eventually became an internationally successful progressive-rock band, disappeared for more than a decade, and returned in 2022 as a three-piece with Closure / Continuation.

The official Porcupine Tree catalogue currently lists eleven studio albums, from On the Sunday of Life in 1991 through Closure / Continuation in 2022.

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THE FIRST PORCUPINE TREE ALBUM WASN'T REALLY AN ALBUM

On the Sunday of Life..., released in 1992, was actually a compilation of material Steven Wilson had previously released on two cassette-only recordings: Tarquin's Seaweed Farm from 1989 and The Nostalgia Factory from 1991. The material that didn't make it onto the album was eventually collected on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape.

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STEVEN WILSON WROTE MOST OF THE EARLY LYRICS WITH AN OLD SCHOOL FRIEND

Many of the lyrics on On the Sunday of Life... were written by Alan Duffy, a school friend of Steven Wilson's. Wilson had lost touch with Duffy several years before the album appeared, but Duffy's lyrics were still being used on the early Porcupine Tree recordings.

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UP THE DOWNSTAIR WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO BE MUCH BIGGER

Up the Downstair was originally intended to be a double album. Steven Wilson planned to include Voyage 34 and other material that eventually appeared on the Staircase Infinities EP. Instead, Voyage 34 became a separate release and the album was reduced to a single disc.

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THE 2005 VERSION OF UP THE DOWNSTAIR ISN'T THE ORIGINAL RECORDING

When Up the Downstair was reissued in 2005, Steven Wilson remixed and partially re-recorded the album. Gavin Harrison recorded new drum parts to replace the electronic drums used on the original version. So the 2005 edition doesn't simply reproduce the album as it sounded in 1993.

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PORCUPINE TREE'S FIRST DRUMMER WAS REPLACED BY GAVIN HARRISON

Chris Maitland was Porcupine Tree's drummer through the band's formative period and played on albums including The Sky Moves Sideways, Signify, Stupid Dream and Lightbulb Sun. He left before In Absentia, with Gavin Harrison taking over in 2002.

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GAVIN HARRISON HAD ACTUALLY ENCOUNTERED STEVEN WILSON YEARS EARLIER

Gavin Harrison and Steven Wilson had crossed paths before Porcupine Tree. In 1988 they were both involved in a band competition in Hemel Hempstead. Harrison was performing with a bizarre group called Sainsburys, whose members went on stage with bags over their heads. Wilson was also performing at the event with Tim Bowness.

Neither knew at the time that they would eventually become bandmates.

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THE BAND'S EARLY ELECTRONIC SOUND WASN'T JUST ABOUT PINK FLOYD

The early Porcupine Tree sound drew on psychedelic and progressive rock, but Steven Wilson was also listening closely to contemporary electronic music. Up the Downstair was influenced by artists including The Orb and The Future Sound of London, alongside Pink Floyd and psychedelic rock.

This mixture of ambient electronics, psychedelic music and progressive rock was one of the things that made the early Porcupine Tree sound quite different from conventional prog bands.

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ON THE SUNDAY OF LIFE... HAS AN EXTREMELY LONG RADIOACTIVE TOY

The version of "Radioactive Toy" on On the Sunday of Life... runs for ten minutes. It had originally appeared in an earlier form on the 1989 Tarquin's Seaweed Farm cassette, making it one of the oldest pieces in the Porcupine Tree catalogue.

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THE BAND EVENTUALLY MOVED AWAY FROM DRUM MACHINES

The early Porcupine Tree recordings relied heavily on programmed drums because the project was essentially Steven Wilson working alone. As the musicians became a genuine band, real drums became increasingly important. Signify was a major step in that transition, with much less reliance on drum machines.

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THEY COULD STILL START WITH A DEMO MADE ALMOST ENTIRELY BY WILSON

Even after Porcupine Tree had become a proper band, Steven Wilson often created extremely detailed demos before the other musicians became involved. He would program drums and bass, record guitars and keyboards and sing the vocal, then give the demo to the band so that they could gradually replace his parts with their own performances.

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COLIN EDWIN'S BASS STYLE WAS VERY DIFFERENT FROM WILSON'S

Steven Wilson later explained that Colin Edwin had a very distinctive approach to bass, influenced by reggae and dub and by players such as Bill Laswell. Wilson himself tends to approach the bass more like a guitarist, often playing melodic and aggressive parts higher up the neck.

Wilson said that difference was one reason Edwin's playing had been such an important part of Porcupine Tree's sound.

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THE INCIDENT CAME FROM A TRAFFIC JAM

The idea for The Incident began when Steven Wilson was caught in a motorway traffic jam caused by a road accident. He noticed a sign reading "Police - Incident" and was struck by how emotionally detached the word sounded compared with the terrible event that had caused the delay.

He began thinking about other "incidents" reported in newspapers and on television, and those stories eventually became the basis for the album's central song cycle.

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THE INCIDENT IS BUILT FROM REAL STORIES

Several of the stories behind The Incident came from news reports. Wilson wrote about events including the evacuation of teenage girls from a religious cult in Texas, a family terrorising its neighbours and a body discovered floating in a river.

Rather than simply retelling the stories, he wrote from the perspective of the people involved, attempting to give human emotion to events that had been reduced to detached news reports.

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OCTANE TWISTED DOCUMENTED THE INCIDENT LIVE

The live album Octane Twisted captured Porcupine Tree performing The Incident in its entirety in Chicago. It also included five older Porcupine Tree songs recorded at the same shows, together with three performances from their earlier Royal Albert Hall concert.

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THEIR ANESTHETIZE FILM WAS SHOT AT TWO CONCERTS

The Anesthetize concert film wasn't taken from a single show. It was filmed over two Porcupine Tree concerts in Tilburg, the Netherlands, on 15 and 16 October 2008 during the Fear of a Blank Planet tour.

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THE BAND KEPT MAKING SURROUND SOUND A BIG PART OF THEIR WORK

Porcupine Tree became particularly associated with high-quality surround-sound releases. Steven Wilson's interest in multichannel audio became increasingly important during the 2000s, and The Incident was even nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Surround Sound Album.

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THEY HAD A LIVE ALBUM FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF THEIR BAND ERA

Coma Divine, recorded in Rome in 1997, captured Porcupine Tree at a crucial point in their transformation from Steven Wilson's studio project into a genuine touring band. It was recorded around the Signify period and contains both the band's long-form psychedelic material and the newer full-band sound.

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THE FINAL RETURN WAS SECRET FOR MONTHS

When Porcupine Tree announced their return in November 2021, the existence of Closure / Continuation had been kept remarkably quiet. The official announcement described the album as twelve years in the making. The first new single, "Harridan", arrived at the same time as the announcement.

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THEY RETURNED AS A THREE-PIECE

The reunion was deliberately different from the classic line-up. Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison made Closure / Continuation without Colin Edwin. Wilson handled the bass himself on the record.

Wilson later described the creative core of the modern band as the three of them: Harrison bringing the rhythmic and polyrhythmic side, Barbieri the atmosphere and sound design, and Wilson the composition.

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THE RETURN WAS BIGGER THAN THEIR OLD TOURS

Porcupine Tree's comeback concerts included some of the largest venues they had ever played. Their 7 November 2022 performance at Amsterdam's 17,000-capacity Ziggo Dome was recorded and released as Closure/Continuation.Live.

It is a striking end point for a band that had begun with Steven Wilson making music at home and sending out tiny batches of privately produced cassettes.

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THEIR ENTIRE HISTORY IS PRESERVED IN THE DELERIUM YEARS BOX

The band's early development has been collected in The Delerium Years, a 13-CD box set covering Porcupine Tree's recordings released by the Delerium label between 1992 and 1997. It brings together material from the period when the project was changing from Wilson's solo creation into a genuine band.

Few bands changed identity as dramatically as Porcupine Tree did: they began as a fictional 1970s rock band invented as a joke, became an experimental home-recording project, developed into a psychedelic and electronic group, then a progressive-rock band and eventually a major touring act — before disappearing for more than a decade and unexpectedly returning as a three-piece.

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