SLAVE TO THE ALGORITHM
Steven Wilson is no stranger to controversy. Since the early days of Porcupine Tree, he’s refused to repeat himself and has followed the same mantra throughout his solo career. His latest release, The Future Bites, tackles consumerism, social media and the loss of individuality against an electronic beat. He tells Prog why he’ll never stop embracing change.
Words: Jerry Ewing Images: Lasse Hoile
“I understand it’s part of the deal that if you change what you do, you’re going to upset people. I don’t like that but I accept it’s part of the contract.”
“I’m not trying to upset people.”
S
teven Wilson is sat in the spacious lounge of his recently acquired north London home. One of his dogs, Bowie, jumps excitedly around his lap, as Wilson ponders a question concerning fan expectations. In the modern age of the immediacy of the internet, with everyone able to have their say in a public fashion, it’s something that now stares all artists directly in the face. Wilson perhaps more than most.
“I understand, in a way, that you walk through a door into a musician’s world and that’s what you fall in love with and that’s what you would always have, in some ways, the most affection for, the first time you discovered an artist,” he says. “And even then, you’re constantly waiting to recapture that buzz and that feeling you had when you first fell in love with the music. And I’m not a very good artist for catering to that.”
Change. Misconception. Expectation. These are the main themes that resonate throughout our conversation as we discuss his latest album, The Future Bites, his sixth solo release.
The change is obvious. Musically, Wilson has spread his wings further than ever before. Rooted in dark electronica, The Future Bites is probably his most intriguing album, yet it’s likely to be his most divisive. It’s undoubtedly progressive – the 10-minute Donna-Summer-disco-meets-Tangerine-Dream throb of Personal Shopper, the dark moody strains of King Ghost and 12 Things I Forgot, the latter displaying the most typical Wilson tropes from previous albums – all make this album, as Dave Everley wrote in his review in Prog 116, “one of the boldest and best albums Wilson has ever made”. But it’s not the kind of ‘prog’ album some of his fanbase want him to make. And thus the now predictable internet shitstorm has kicked off.