NIL RECURRING

In the second half of 2007, Porcupine Tree released the Nil Recurring EP, featuring four songs recorded during the Fear of a Blank Planet sessions. As with many Porcupine Tree releases, the title track opens this release. Robert Fripp plays lead guitar here, and drummer Gavin Harrison contributes some guitar as well. It's an interesting instrumental, but I can see why it was excluded from the album. "Nil Recurring" stands fine on its own, but there's no obvious spot for it on the album. "Normal" is a gloomy, mostly-acoustic piece with a chorus which is a further development of "Sentimental" which fails to otherwise stand out. "Cheating the Polygraph" shares significant DNA with "Nil Recurring" and "Fear of a Blank Planet": it's heavy, weird, and thoroughly engaging. "What Happens Now?", meanwhile, directly quotes a riff from "Anesthetize" and features some electric violin, but it ultimately fails to do much for me. The last two or three minutes are dramatic, but it takes way too long to get going.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/11/24/deep-dive-porcupine-tree-steven-wilson/