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Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun CD (album) cover

LIGHTBULB SUN

Porcupine Tree

 

Heavy Prog

4.03 | 1700 ratings

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Gatot
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars MODERN PSYCHEDELIC! This probably the right basket on where to categorize the kind of music this album is. What is psychedelic? Well, my prog guru, Andy Julias, put it simply as a kind of music that when you listen to it you'll experience the feeling of being "into the other world". I buy this definition; it's simple but it's about right, I think. You may have different definition, but I feel this definition is good enough for me to digest what kind of animal psychedelic music is. Why I put a "modern" word? Because the original root of psychedelic was dated back mid of 60s with limitation of sound technology. This album is produced with the state of the art sound technology. Yes, Porcupine Tree has a strong competence to produce "incredible sound" of their music.

The opening track "Lightbulb Sun" proves the modern psychedelic music category as it has an acoustic guitar rhythm opening similar to the style of 60s psychedelic music. The only different is in the sound production which is much more advanced than the early psychedelic. This song flows naturally and nicely with great acoustic guitar rhythm dominating the music, accentuated by piano play.

"How Is Your Life Today" is a mellow track with piano as main instrument. Even though this track is drum-less but I believe this is very good one to check your stereo system sound as it has a perfect sonic production sound. The acapella style on vocal line has made his track is unique. You would hardly hate this track, it's excellent!

"Four Chords That Made A Million" is heavily influenced by the Beatles. I'm not a Beatlemania or sort but I think there is a similarity of a track in White album or Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. "She'smovedon" is a medium beat track with soft acoustic guitar and drumming. The solo guitar interlude in the middle of the track is so stunning and is NOT similar with a kind of old style psychedelic music. If I could put it simply, this song is like a BEATLES kind of song but performed in a modern PINK FLOYD way. Great job, Mr. Steven Wilson!

"Last Chance ." is an excellent song opened with a mandolin and acoustic guitar rhythm and melody followed with nice vocal "If you fall asleep with me ." . wow .!!! What a great voice! And you see the nuance? It's inviting you to a journey to "the other world"....!! The interlude part of this song is really stunning - simple music that flows naturally accompanied by a narration sung in a PA way (using public address microphone or sort of that . typically used by PINK FLOYD). It then connect to next track "Rest Will Flow" which to me it sounds like a normal pop song with some influence of RADIOHEAD or MUSE music. This song is too poppy for me and bit boring ..

"Hatesong" is absolutely excellent track opened with a dynamic yet straight forward bass line followed by drum and strange guitar sound at background. Well, I have to admit that no one does better than Mr. Steven Wilson in creating strange and incredible sound effects in their music. Two thumbs UP for him on this. (I sometime imagine how if PINK FLOYD The Dark Side of The Moon was engineered by Steven Wilson in the making of it? It must have sounded much different than we have now, I think. Sorry, Mr. Alan Parson, I don't mean to say yours is not good enough. In fact you did a great job.). There is an interesting segment roughly in the middle where there is a silence followed by solo acoustic guitar with eastern music style and continued with sort of riffs. When the solo keyboard comes into play, it helps in enriching the music. Excellent interlude!

"Russia on Ice" is another fabulous track with its intro a bit or reminding me to the intro of "Sheep" of PINK FLOYD. No no no .. it's not the same. It just gives similar nuances, I think, especially at couple seconds of intro. The first half of this track is purely mellow and the rest is an uplifting instrumental piece with great guitar, keyboard, sound effects and dynamic drumming. This album is RECOMMENDED. - Gatot Widayanto, Indonesia.

Gatot | 4/5 |

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