Steven Wilson Reveals He’s Almost Finished With His Next “Very Strange” Solo Album

Progressive Metal virtuoso Steven Wilson has provided an update on his next solo album, confirming it’s almost finished and will take a different direction from his last release, The Overview.

Legendary progressive metal artist Steven Wilson has shared an update regarding his next solo album following last year’s cosmic venture, The Overview.

In a new interview with Jonathan Cornell of Immersive Audio Album, Wilson revealed that his new record is “almost finished” and that he’s gone in an entirely different direction from The Overview for this one.

“Yeah, it’s almost finished, actually. It’s a very strange record,” he’d share. “It’s still very experimental, and the pieces are – well, it feels like another single piece of music to me, in that sense. But it’s much more angular and experimental in a way that I’m really excited about. And that’s all I can really say at the moment.” (via Blabbermouth).

Given that Wilson was on a podcast discussing audio mixing, the conversation naturally returned to discuss the Porcupine Tree frontman’s approach to creating music in the studio,

“The way I make records is, by definition, pretty layered. I love the possibilities of the studio. I love overdubbing. Now, on this particular new record I’m making, there’s a lot of what I would call sound design elements,” he’d tease.

“That’s not to say they haven’t been on all my records, but let’s just say I’ve taken it to another level on this record. There’s a lot of sound design. There are a lot of sound effects that kind of place you in a particular place and a particular feeling,” he explained.

“Sometimes when you have things that have been tracked four or five times, they’re kind of coming from everywhere. But sometimes what’s also nice in spatial audio is having something that’s just mono and being able to place it very, very particularly in a particular place. And that can be just as effective in spatial sound as the big immersive sound. So I’m using a lot of mono reverbs, spring reverbs. It all kind of relates to the concept of the record, which I can’t really talk about at the moment, but keeping things sounding almost old and rusted.”

The Deadwing artist would also tease that he’s picked up new instruments for this one to add to the And I think those are gonna be really effective in spatial audio, because I’ve got a lot of those kinds of elements. I’m playing a lot of instruments I’ve never played before. I’m playing the drums on some tracks myself. I’m playing violins, oboes, and harmoniums. It’s a very – I don’t wanna say it’s a nostalgic-sounding record, because it isn’t. There’s a lot of use of modern technology, too. But, yeah, it’s gonna be a strange record, and I think it’s gonna be a really interesting,” he finished.

For long-time Wilson heads like myself, this definitely perks my ears up. While I’ve loved most of Wilson’s output, there’s no denying that for the last three solo albums, he’s stuck with a similar futuristic sound. From what he’s describing, I’m wondering if he’s veering into a more slowcore direction, or something resembling his second solo album, Grace For Drowning.

Regardless, a new Wilson album is always something for prog heads to look forward to, and I, for one, am beyond eager to see what he puts out next.

You can check out the full interview from Immersive Audio Album below.