STEVEN WILSON
The Future Bites CAROLINE
SW serves up an OK Computer for the Amazon age.
Steven Wilson is allergic to expectation. The multitude of musical twists Hemel Hempstead’s favourite son’s career has taken have been matched in lockstep by eruptions of disgruntlement from fans taking umbrage at the fact he’s not made In Absentia for the 137th time.
The fulmination levels shot off the scale when Wilson sprang Personal Shopper on an unsuspecting public as a taster for his sixth solo album. Here was a pulsing, strangely sexy 10-minute hymn to modern consumer culture that sounded like it had been manufactured in some chrome-walled electronics lab, while a passing Elton John reeled off a long list of lavish but unnecessary items that he’d probably bought off the internet that morning. Slave To The Algorithm, if you will.