The Contrarian
No-Man’s Tim Bowness is back with his most experimental album to date and his first solo offering for Kscope. Powder Dry finds him retracing his early art-rock and post-punk steps and “following the enthusiasm” to create a spiky blend of haunting soundscapes and vibrant prog pop. Prog learns what role his son’s budget guitar and Peter Hammill’s pedalboard had in its creation, and why he still feels excited by music-making in the 2020s.
Words: Jeremy Allen Images: Anne-Marie Forker
Tim Bowness has been following his instincts.
If Steven Wilson is the busiest man in prog, then his longtime No-Man partner Tim Bowness might well be the second. As well as playing in a ridiculous number of bands, including Plenty, Henry Fool and the aforementioned No-Man, Bowness is also a serial collaborator (Peter Chilvers, Richard Barbieri, Judy Dyble) and a solo artist to boot. Moreover, when Prog meets him in a Central London pub one Saturday in early summer, it’s the day after he and Wilson have recorded their podcast, The Album Years, before a live studio audience, another facet to an impressive partnership that stretches back to the late 1980s.
The pub, as it happens, is full of Warrington Wolves fans on their way to lose the Challenge Cup to Wigan Warriors. As someone from the former town, it triggers memories of growing up there, learning ukulele because it’s what local legend George Formby did, and driving to Cornwall with his parents each summer in a boiling-hot, airtight hatchback filled with plumes of toxic cigarette smoke. He’s a natural raconteur, and this gift for verbalising the visual is one of the things that makes his songs so distinctive. Or as he puts it: “Like my fellow Album Years podcaster Steven Wilson, I find it difficult to shut up.”
We’re not here to talk about the podcast however, but rather Bowness’s eighth solo album Powder Dry, his first for Kscope and the first where he sings, plays and produces everything himself (Wilson mixed it, naturally). So why the change of label, from the classic prog stable InsideOutMusic back to Kscope, which released several No-Man albums during the 00s?