On his first Bass Communion album in 12 years, Steven Wilson pushes the boundaries of progressive music with what could only be described as a experimental noise record. The Itself Of Itself finds him taking inspiration from avant-garde composers and experimenting with studio sounds. Prog discovers how tape hiss and Stockhausen led to the creation of one of the artist’s most surprising releases.

Words: Jerry Ewing

Steven Wilson: capturing the ghost in the tape machine.

Images: Hajo Müller

Even by Bass Communion standards this is a pretty confrontational record.” Steven Wilson reclines on “Even a sofa in his north London home, sips his tea and seeks to explain to Prog exactly what Bass Communion is. How he makes the sounds that make up this project’s latest album, The Itself Of Itself. Where the ideas come from. And just what ambient drone noise music is anyway: is it even music at all?

The Itself Of Itself is a sometimes uncomfortable and confrontational record, he’s right. But it’s also a fascinating noise. Veering into territory more commonly occupied by the likes of Sunn O))) and Earth in today’s musical sphere, and previously by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno back in the 70s, The Raven That Refused To Sing… or The Future Bites, this is not.

“That’s why it’s called The Itself Of Itself. Because it is what it is,” he says, matter-offactly. “It’s unapologetically what it is.”

In some ways, it’s unlike any Bass Communion album you’ll have heard. Unlike 2011’s Cenotaph, whose four titular movements contained a sonic thread, that central throbbing hum, onto which the listener could grab hold to follow where the sound went, The Itself Of Itself’s seven tracks veer wildly from the self-explanatory A Study For Tape Hiss And Other Studio Artefacts through the exploration of radio static in Blackmail to the almost –and we stress, almost –calming ambience of Apparition 3.