In Ascendia
As Steven Wilson looks out over the floor of the Middle East Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts from the stage, he can’t help feeling a little depressed. Thirty pairs of eyes stare back at him. This is the sum total of people who’ve turned up to see him and his band Porcupine Tree play this hip East Coast club…
It’s Monday, July 22, 2002, and this is supposed to be a tipping point for Porcupine Tree. Over the last decade, these British oddballs have existed on the fringes, becoming a rallying point for anyone with an interest in shape-shifting, vaguely psychedelic sounds without ever quite extending beyond cultdom.
But recently, things have changed. In a fairly astonishing turn of events, Porcupine Tree have been signed by Lava Records, a subsidiary of music industry powerhouse Atlantic. They have suddenly found themselves on the same label as rap-metal superstar Kid Rock and platinum-dusted MORgrungers Matchbox Twenty.
The dream Porcupine Tree have been sold is that their new album, In Absentia, will push them to the next level. If it succeeds, Wilson and his bandmates will be sipping cocktails around guitar-shaped swimming pools in newly purchased Beverley Hills homes. But all that looks to be a long way away on this Monday night at the Middle East Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“You suddenly realise that you’re facing an uphill battle trying to convince a lot of people who don’t know you to start caring about you,” says Wilson today. “That’s not just the fans but it’s partly the industry too.”
In Absentia would be released two months later, the first of two albums Porcupine Tree made during their dalliance with the majors. In music industry terms it was a flop, even though it outsold all of the band’s previous releases by a wide margin. It certainly never bagged them any guitar-shaped swimming pools. Yet at the same time it reshaped the band entirely, opening them up to a new audience, and by extension ushering in a brand new era for progressive music.
“It opened up a whole new audience for them, and it helped open up a whole new audience for progressive rock. You suddenly heard a lot of bands who sounded like them.”
Mikael Åkerfeldt
Almost 20 years on, stands as a landmark. It was the first great progressive rock album of the 21st century, one whose marriage was a gamechanger for Porcupine Tree, but it would ultimately herald the beginning of the end for modern prog’s greatest band.
