PORCUPINE TREE MUSIC and Dolby Atmos are nothing short of a mixing match made in heaven. To be more specific, the post-progressive British collective and the burgeoning immersive surround format are a match made in the height and side channels. Listening to Closure / Continuation (Music For Nations/Sony Music), Porcupine Tree’s first album of all-new music in over 12½ years by way of its unabashedly mind-boggling Atmos mix—a mix courtesy of Steven Wilson, the band’s leading force and the unchallenged king of 360-degree music-making and music-mixing—one can’t help but marvel at how this still-growing format now has an official milestone mix showcasing everything it can be, and more.
“Everyone is doing Atmos now, but we’re all still learning about it at the moment,” allows Wilson. “What works? What doesn’t work? Everyone has an opinion about what Atmos should be, but obviously—and you know this, from talking to me about it many times before—I like to be quite aggressive with my use of the surround field. That was always the case in 5.1, and it’s only been magnified now that I’m working with 7.1.4 in my studio. There are a lot of things to consider about trying to keep a mix cohesive, whilst also making it an incredibly three-dimensional experience for the listeners.”
With that statement, Wilson has succinctly described what he’s realized in Atmos for all 48 minutes of the seven songs that comprise the aforementioned (or , for short). This quantum aural leap beyond the outer limits of in Atmos (see “Steven Wilson Is a Hi-Res Man of the People,” April/May 2021, for more on how that mix came to pass), but how he tackled Tears for Fears’ February 2022 comeback album . Wilson feels the song “Rivers of Mercy” is “a future classic,” but based on what elements of that song appear in the height channel in Atmos—such as the myriad of voices singing the title phrase—and how well they reflect the track’s inherent emotional complexity, I happen to think the future is .
