OFF: Porcupine Tree "Even Less" Demo version vs. "Stupid Dream" rewritten version

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 03:36:43PM +0000, Amphetamine Embalmer typed out:

> I tried liking PT in the 90s on the Delerium label, got a bunch of
> stuff from BOC-L'er Randy Abeck (where is he now) on cassette after
> reading about Wilson in magazines like Freak Beat etc. Stuff like "Sky
> Moves Sideways" i thought was pretty boring. I got "Signify" on
> Delerium CD when it came out and it bored me AGAIN! I traded the CD
> off in rec.music.progressive, I never got beyond the long whoshes of
> Floyd numbness. BUT, when I started getting into music again after
> tossing all my HW and other CDs in the bin (i swore I was without need
> for any of it), around 2003-4, well I discovered that PT had turned
> METAL and gotten much attention and were huge in prog circles when
> Prog became cool (or uncool, if you think Radiohead has anything to do
> with Prog then hang yourself) again I started downloading PT on The
> Pirate Bay and thought they were a band I really had missed out on
> with stuff like "Stupid Dream" which i really liked. 

	Well, there's a difference; as is well-documented on here I 
think _Stupid Dream_ is their weakest, and certainly flabbiest, album. I 
do like the new style too, but that album still sings of an uncertain 
change in direction and contains some stuff that should never have seen 
the light of day, which up till then had not been something one could 
say of PT.

> So I now have most PT CDs on either CDRs and some remasters of the
> early Delerium and have taken a liking to them. I got "Nil Recurring"
> and was really disappointed in it. "Fear" and "Deadwing" were pretty
> cool though. I think its bizarre how they went metal but it works. Did
> they sell out, that is the question.

	Well, I remember the last PT gig I went to, when _Stupid Dream_ 
was not quite a new album any more and the material for _Lightbulb Sun_ 
was entering the setlist. They did two sets that evening, no support 
band. The first set was all old psychedelic stuff, plus `Russia on 
Ice' which was marvellous and `Tinto Brass' for the opener which also 
worked well. It reminded me of everything I thought was great about 
this band, the interplay, the arcane synth noise and the fantastic 
guitar sound most of all. Then the second set was basically singles 
hour. About half the songs were led off by Steven Wilson on an acoustic 
and Colin Edwin seemed to spend more of the set watching him than he did 
playing. It reminded me of everything I thought sucked about the `new 
direction'; it was self-indulgent, twee, didn't involve the band, wasn't 
even faintly altered-sounding and all the songs sounded alike. Now the 
middle three things they have cured, but the first and last even the new 
stuff still battles with.

	Mind you, I'm two albums behind, I haven't got _Fear of a Blank 
Planet_ yet even (and didn't like the Blackfield album much). What did 
you find wrong about the new one? It sounds like it might be either more 
interesting than the regular output, or else another _Metanoia_... 
Yours,
	Jon (who also doesn't yet have the last Drunk Horse album, which 
is far more serious a problem)

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk