INSURGENTES

This is the first official solo album by SW, althought he has already released numerous records under other pseudonyms or in other projects like Blackfield, No-man, Bass Communion and I.E.M. This one however is different, and significantly better (imo) than any of the other SW solo projects.

I actually bought this album just beacuse it's Steve Wilson, and I had heard the single Harmony Korine. It sounded like pretty standard SW, so I thought that the whole album would be just PT songs that never appeared on PT albums. How incredibly wrong that was. Already by the second track, Abandoner, I realized something completely else was going on. The music here is still clearly SW (dark, melancholic, etc), but it's like a fusion of everything he likes and has been doing over the past two decades. The most prominent inluences are ambient music, drone and noise, and post-punk.

While SW plays almost all instruments on the record there are many guests. Some notable of them are Gavin Harrison, Jordan Rudess and Tony Levin.

Nothing probably need to be said about the production, that is fantastic as usual. The 5.1 mix really adds some more depth to the album. The packaging also cotains a booklet with nice photos by Lasse Hoile, who apparently is working on a film project related somehow to this album. Interesting.

It's nice to see that actually an artists solo album is better than his main act, but I suppose that happes too. Nice to see a completely new side of SW, and hope he will be doing more solo albums. Album of the year (at least top 3), 5 very strong stars.