VOYAGE 34 - THE COMPLETE TRIP

Porcupine Tree's first album, "On The Sunday Of Life...", was a chaotic collection of experimental tracks that Steven Wilson recorded throughout the years, just for fun, when he wasn't working on No-Man music (his main band at the time). This work IMO should be classified as real debut. It was originally released in 1992 as two E.P.'s, then remixed, remastered and transformed into one piece in 2000 (there is a new edition with different artwork coming out soon).

It feautes one 62-minute instrumental composition divided into four parts. Every phase is clearly different from each other, but the whole thing is still cohesive. How does it sound? Well, the easiest way will probably be to say that it's something like early psychedelic Pink Floyd (guitar parts are sometimes very remiscent of David Gilmour) meeting early 90's techno/electronica/trance scene. There are many other influences of course. What's important: all these influences were mixed very wisely with his own original ideas so it's really hard to accuse Wilson of copying anyone. It's not the most original piece of his work but far from derivative (except one nice rip-off he commited here).

You will not hear Steven's voice here (what some people surely will call a benefit :) ), instead there are samples of various 60's LSD propaganda albums telling us the story of Brian's deadly trip + some other observations about drugs, society, mind-altering etc... This, along with very interesting music, gives the album extraordinary atmosphere (makes it also a great background for drinking or smoking a weed with friends ;) ).

Let's analise phases one by one a bit: Phase One - probably most "rocking", after 2 minutes of ambient intro we hear a guitar lick that sounds awfully familiar (this is the rip-off I mentioned above) but somehow it's not anoying at all. Phase One ends with beutiful guitar parts build around perfectly programmed drum machines (something he wasn't able to achieve on On The Sunday or Up The Downstair) and spacey electronics.

Phase Two - the entire part is based on repetive electronic percussion pulse but what was build around makes it my favourite part of the album. There are keyboard themes and guitar solos that are exactly the same as on Phase One but the presence of various electronics is much stronger here. The ending is simply outstanding (btw, it's very similar to what Pink Floyd did on "Keep Talking" later), great drum machine pattern, atmospheric keyboards and this "Is this trip really necessary?" voice loop. Excellent stuff.

Phase Three - this where things are getting even stranger for prog-fan's ears. Why? This phase is just 19-minutes of techno. The guitar is present only in the middle and plays only a few notes repeated several times. The whole thing feautes just one theme. Sure it's a great theme but can last forever if you're not in mood.

Phase Four - after craziness of earlier phases this one is some sort of calm-down. Filled with ambient electronic soundscapes (Richard Barbieri guests on syntheser). I find it a bit overlong and definetely the weakest of all but not unnecessary.

To sum up, definetely worth a listen. I gave it three stars cos I think the best things for PT where yet to come and it's not a masterpiece by any means (it's one of PT weaker albums IMO). All I have to add is that I wish every band had weak albums like this one.