Absolutely love your comparison to the techno breakdown to Streets of Rage! I'm 40, and played all 3 SOR games on a mix of Sega Genesis, arcade and Game Gear. Classics, as is this PT album. Keep rocking, brother!
@@JustJPHaven't played SOR4 either, but had to mention I was randomly recommended this yt vid today by Charles Cornell (never heard of him). But he's a music composer and in this, is dissecting some of the SOR2 music, and properly geeking out at it's complexities! /watch?v=2cx73EOaGWU&t=486s
This is the era of PT that captivated me in 2000. I felt like I had discovered this secret. Of course PT and SW went on to greater acclaim soon after. They really allowed the music to breathe, and then they would hit you with these big, infectious grooves. You can sense the Tangerine Dream influence on Steven Wilson during this period.
This is my favourite period of Porcupine Tree (also check out 'Up the Downstair') when Wilson was at his proggiest. The juvenilia of Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape have been left behind but he's not yet gone full prog-metal and isn't embarrassed by any Floydian similarities, plus, he knows a good dance groove when he stumbles on one. I saw PT live on a tour to support this album and it was clear that they would go on to much bigger (though not necessarily better) things.
Justin, if you haven't already, take a listen to the track "heart attack in a layby" by Porcupine Tree, you won't regret it, great atmosphere and lyrics. Cheers.
I like this band although I’ve never taken a deep dive. Lately, I’ve been into the track “Shallow” from the album Deadwing. It will likely be a top 5 track on my Spotify Rewind this year. Deadwing will be my next PT album listen after In Absentia and now, this one. Thanks, JP!
I'd never noticed that one bit's similarity to Ozric Tentacles before, but you're spot on...! I especially love this era of Porcupine Tree... once you've explored TSMS, Metanoia is another superb offering in a similar vein. Cheers!
I would go even further. I think PT tricked the audience and left the studio at 10:50 , Ozric Tentacles came in and continued the song until 17:10 and then they switched again.😁 That part is nearly an Ozric copy.
Awesome! I hadn't listened to this track for a while now. Thanks for the reminder about how great it is. I particularly like that middle section where it changes gears. The transition is sudden and sharp but fits well.
Tada! Excellent choice! Early PT doing Amazing early PT things would be good if you could slip in ‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’ into your more general rotation from their previous album sessions (Up the Downstair) Brilliant instrumental. Floyd were a big and acknowledged influence on Steven Wilson in early PT.
More Porcupine Tree! Any of their songs would be nice, but I would recommend [Songs From Their Albums] Radioactive Toy, Nine Cats, Not Beautiful Anymore, Small Fish, Fadeaway, Raini Taxi, The Moon Touches Your Shoulder, Stars Die, Every Home Is Wired, Dark Matter, Pure Narcotic, Don't Hate Me, A Smart Kid, Stop Swimming, How Is Your Life Today?, Last Chance To Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled, Lips Of Ashes, Gravity Eyelids, The Creator Has A Mastertape, Heartattack In A Layby, .3, Strip The Soul, Halo, Arriving Somewhere (But Not Here), Mellotron Scratch, The Start Of Something Beautiful, Glass Arm Shattering, Half-Light, Anesthetize, Way Out Of Here, Sleep Together, The Incident (Whole Album), Rats Return, Chimera's Wreck, [Songs For Their EP's] Buying New Soul, Ambulance Chasing, Drown With Me (Demo Version), Futile, Chloroform, Nill Recurring, Normal, Cheating The Polygraph.
Would be great if you could review The Mekons. They are not well known in the US but they are a long-running UK band spanning 80s-90s. I'd start with Retreat from Memphis album, "Eve Future", "Insignificance", "The Flame that Killed John Wayne"
The Pink Floyd of the 90s and 00s! Brilliant, brilliant band. So glad they are back together again! Speaking of Pink Floyd, when can we expect to see you react to “The Wall”? I noticed you reached your 30K goal
Hi Justin. Dave from beyond the Boundless Ocean. Like you I really enjoyed this track, although it is really three. I agree it is terrific mood music (headspace, as you say), although I agree about the Floyd and Ozrics influences. My love of Porcupine Tree started with Lightbulb Sun, and while I've heard some of the earlier albums, I see them as part of the evolution of the band. IMHO, they reached a towering peak with the phenomenal In Absentia and Deadwing. P.S. my song ref Boundless Ocean is by Mostly Autumn (another band with Floydian influences).
"The Sky Moves Sideways Phase 1" is a beautiful piece but the only downside I would put is that for some unexplained reason, drummer Chris Maitland does not play on this studio version and is replaced by a drum machine programmed by Steven Wilson (weird since Maitland had been part of Porcupine Tree since December 1993, but maybe he wasn't available when this track was recorded...). Justin, I advise you to listen on your side to the excellent live version of "The Sky Moves Sideways Phase 1" on the album Coma Divine (recorded in rome in 1997) with Chris Maitland on drums and percussion. This will allow you to hear the glaring difference with this somewhat more artificial studio version. The only element missing in its live version is the superb ethereal coda, subtitled "Spiral Circus" (reminiscent of 70s Tangerine Dream). The 90s Porcupine Tree is my favorite era of the band.
This was the album that really brought PT to the attention of prog fans in the states. With this one the offers for live work started pouring in. Yeah, there was a lot of "sounds like Pink Floyd" reactions, but for many this wasn't necessarily the worst thing. After the dark days of the 80's the 90's was seeing a resurgence in interest in prog rock, but so far a lot of it was pretty lo-fi and sonically rooted in production techniques of the past. This album represented a much more forward-looking and sounding approach.
Early PT is very different to modern work, yet still has super listenable quality. Don't forget SW had been writing Pink Floyd-alike material; if PF had released this around 1970 (Meddle era) then people would have gone OK, now they play like this... In UK TSMS has a different track line up to US; the album I've got is a double-LP gatefold. Sides 2,3,4 are very listenable but don't include Stars Die, which was on US versions. Q: Why is the tardis red? :)
Very listenable in a trance kind of way; certainly reminiscent of the trance versions of Meddle and WYWH. Very theatrical music, not driving as hard as the later Porcupine Tree.
😁 Too ill today to type, besides Wilson and Porcupine Tree, deserve all the hype! This guy, grooves anyways! Peace & Love, and kiss a nurse today. (I keep trying but they keep denying! And the doctors are not my type).
Not a bad album by any means, but i prefer the psychedelic cohesiveness of their preceding and rather excellent "Up The Downstair" opus. I'm not the biggest fan of progressive rock, bar a few exceptions, so this album's shift into that direction came as something of a disappointment to me. At some point, i would definitely advise a listen to the trippy vibes of their sophomore release! ✨️
"Up The Downstair" is truly excellent from start to finish. The band was not yet formed, although Colin Edwin and Richard Barbieri appeared as guests on a different track, but the stylistic cohesion was already there (which in my opinion was missing from its predecessor On the Sunday of Life). I also really like the Staircase Infinities EP released in 94 which includes songs created during the UTD sessions and others recorded shortly after). It is somewhat in the same spirit.
This man can do no wrong. And that Steven Wilson's no slouch, either. As for the Pink Floyd influences, none are accidental. (And I'm pretty sure the Ozrics Tentacles influences are similarly deliberate. Also I think Mr Szabo might've paid a visit, here.) (Gabor, I mean). "They" (since in the very beginning, "they" were a fiction made up by Steven and his mate - not Colin Edwin, I don't think, but maybe even him, way back then) ... "they" started off as a "Pink Floyd genre" band. I think it's pretty much trite that there can never be enough Pink Floyd in the world, and these kids made tapes of new Pink Floyd music (by new musicians too, but that counts if it's good enough?) and distributed them by various non-Internet channels - what with there not being much of an Internet at the time. They made up names for the band members, and highly eccentric biographies. (That's with a "Ec", as in "Eck", not with an EEE, followed by everyone's favorite word, ccentric. ECK. then. centric. as in having some kind of center, but one that's a bit eck - a bit off.) Hmm ... it's a bit like the difference between "AY- see-Dental" baseed on the words, "a", and "ccident" ... and ... no, I'm talking crap now. Or carp if you insist that I wash my filthy mouth out with the blue soap and say sorry. I'm talking carp. Carp carp carp. Where was I? They created an elaborate "open hoax" of a Pink Floydian slip-band. Then they got popular, and had to turn it into something real. Point being, here, that there's a long history of deliberate influences "worn openly" displayed in many Steven Wilson songs. Well spotted, anyway.
Knowing the later works of PT sort of diminishes the earlier ones. I'm already familiar witht the fine overall sound of the band, so this composition seems aimless and repetitive, but still sounds very cool. I'd place it in the same basket as the Ozric Tentacles.
Oddly enough, I feel the opposite ... as much as I love the band, I always feel slightly underwhelmed by Porcupine Tree's 'faux-metal' era (post Deadwing).
@richardthresh3587 I've probably heard two thirds of their catalogue, and "Up The Downstair" has always been my favourite album! More psych/less prog, which is how i like it!
@@richardthresh3587 Agrees. In Absentia was a real surprise in 2002 but I was disappointed that Steven Wilson repeated the same 'prog-metal' formula on Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet and what followed. My favorite songs from this period are those that are more ethereal and close to the original Porcupine Tree (for example: "Lips of Ashes", "Heartattack in a Layby", "Collapse the Light Into Earth", "Lazarus" , "Mellotron Scratch", "Start of Something Beautiful", "Glass Arm Shattering", "Revenant", "Half-Light", "My Ashes", "Sentimental").
It might be controversial but I prefer all the bands stuff with Chris Maitland on drums. As great as the Gavin albums are, I felt like some magic was lost.
