S. Wilson not progressive rock?

rdtprog wrote: Steven Wilson doesn't believe that there is bands that are making Progressive Rock music today. He believe that this concept of Progressive Rock music was relevant only in the 70's. He seems to think that Progressive Rock music had to be innovative to be called like this. He admits that himself take his influences from various styles and add his personal style to it. This subject has been talk here before and i was not sure if Mr. Wilson was right with those statements, but today i think he could be right. But it's not the essence of Progressive Rock music to be innovative or is it that there is not enough strong personalities that make this kind of music?

Mr Wilson can fart as much as he wants. The audience determines how an artist (and/or a band) will be tagged.
For me personally, as long as Mr Wilson recorded songs like Routine, he will be a prog artist.

Edited by Svetonio - June 28 2015 at 03:19

Whoever says that Steven Wilson is NOT Prog (I know he doesn't agree) needs their head read.......

Maybe in his mind there's nothing 'Progressive' in today's music. He may have a point, but his deft touch and gifted intelligence surely offers many current artists a crash-course in modern, innovative music. He certainly knows how to assemble a band of virtuosic musicians that understand what he's getting at.......

Dellinger wrote: sleeper wrote: Wilson has flip-flopped his views on what Prog is so many times, all most likely on a pretext of what he thinks will get him the most sales, that anything he says on the subject is to be taken as nonsens and not to be trusted. Over the 10 years I've been on this site I've seen many, many threads on the subject of what Steven Wilson considers prog and the only thing I'm left wondering is why anyone gives this midocre musician and song writers opinion the time of day? If Wilson wanted to work to get him the most sales, he wouldn't have done an album like The Raven... nor Hand Cannon Erase, or Grace for Drowning for that matter.

What other reason would he have fighting tooth and nail against the "prog" tag during the 90's, when it was still considered a dirty word and commercial suicide, only to do a complete 180 in the mid 2000's and embrace it whole heartedly when it was becoming seen as somewhat cool again.

Wilson knew how to grow his fan base to a reasonable level so that he could support himself as a professional musician without compromising his music, and that ment spending nearly 2 decades disancing himself from prog and it's fans, even if prog fans knew he was lieying through his teeth.

When I interviewed Steven Wilson a week prior to PT's U.S. tour for In Absentia, he stated that labels are just that, labels that people feel they need to classify music for themselves, but that he didn't believe in labels. Asked then, how he would describe his music in a few words to someone who'd never heard it, he mused for a few seconds and replied, "Intelligent rock."



Edited by progmatic - June 28 2015 at 11:01

sleeper wrote: Wilson has flip-flopped his views on what Prog is so many times, all most likely on a pretext of what he thinks will get him the most sales, that anything he says on the subject is to be taken as nonsens and not to be trusted. Over the 10 years I've been on this site I've seen many, many threads on the subject of what Steven Wilson considers prog and the only thing I'm left wondering is why anyone gives this midocre musician and song writers opinion the time of day?

If he is such a mediocre song writer why did your review state this......."Obviously, as with any social observation made by art, it paints all, or most, of modern youth with a wide brush to get across its points but the big success of the album, in my opinion, is that Wilson has succeeded in creating a series of songs, that all fit together into the larger concept, each exploring separate sections of the "problem", without having to judge it himself. In this way he has succeeded brilliantly in creating a piece of art that highlights an aspect of modern society without passing judgment and leaving that entirely up to the listener. This is not something that is easily done but lyrically Wilson pulls it off brilliantly creating probably the strongest album concept of the year"

micky wrote: dr wu23 wrote: progmatic wrote: When I interviewed Steven Wilson a week prior to PT's U.S. tour for In Absentia, he stated that labels are just that, labels that people feel they need to classify music for themselves, but that he didn't believe in labels. Asked then, how he would describe his music in a few words to someone who'd never heard it, he mused for a few seconds and replied, "Intelligent rock."   That works for me......'intelligent rock'.   Some one above said his comments were nonsense....imo that comment above is nonsense. Wilson is very intelligent and like all of us our ideas change and evolve. We can't even agree half of the time on this forum who and what prog rock is. And his music certainly is not mediocre (which is not  spelled with an  i btw  ) or he wouldn't be where he is with the prog buying public, his peers, and sales in general.   LMAO!!! I could be wrong.. but I would bet my paycheck Andy was  completely sh*t faced when he typed that earlier post.    Not that he was wrong mind you...  but he normally is an impeccable writer.  As soon as I saw that post, ahh...on a Saturday night.. I figured he just got back from the pub saw this thread... and finally well... you know.. lost it

Actually I'd only had the one pint of cider at that point!

I'm just tired of the incessent hero worship he gets and the fact people feel the need to discuss every view he spews forth as if it was remotely worth the time of day, particularly for someone that changes his opinion at the dop of a hat on a fairly regular basis and has a history of being less than sincere with them (I'm not jocking here, there were interviews from around the time of Fear of a Blank Planets release where he literally said that he was now happy to publicly align himself as a "prog artist" because it didn't hold the stigma it used to, whilst admiting he knew he was all along.).

For me the worst of it is that I would describe everything he's ever done (at least up to Fear..., I have sworn off wasting my money on him since) as decidedly average, In Absentia aside, and will never understand what others see in his music.

timothy leary wrote: sleeper wrote: Wilson has flip-flopped his views on what Prog is so many times, all most likely on a pretext of what he thinks will get him the most sales, that anything he says on the subject is to be taken as nonsens and not to be trusted. Over the 10 years I've been on this site I've seen many, many threads on the subject of what Steven Wilson considers prog and the only thing I'm left wondering is why anyone gives this midocre musician and song writers opinion the time of day? If he is such a mediocre song writer why did your review state this......."Obviously, as with any social observation made by art, it paints all, or most, of modern youth with a wide brush to get across its points but the big success of the album, in my opinion, is that Wilson has succeeded in creating a series of songs, that all fit together into the larger concept, each exploring separate sections of the "problem", without having to judge it himself. In this way he has succeeded brilliantly in creating a piece of art that highlights an aspect of modern society without passing judgment and leaving that entirely up to the listener. This is not something that is easily done but lyrically Wilson pulls it off brilliantly creating probably the strongest album concept of the year"

Nice of you to take a quote from an old review of mine out of context. He's not a bad lyricist, it's one of the few areas where I have no complaints about him (sound engineering/production being the other main one that he has absolutely nailed) but then lyrics are rarely high up my priority list when considering music. You will of course note and remember to tell everyone that it comes from a review of an album I gave 2 stars to and find mind numbingly boring, maybe I should have said lyricist/composer to avoid any misinterpretation but I would have hoped people on here would recognise that a "song" is more than just it's lyrics but the music that goes with them as well.

@Micky. I'm completely sober tonight, I promise! And thanks for the excellent meme, have saved that and will definitely be making good use of it!

progmatic wrote: When I interviewed Steven Wilson a week prior to PT's U.S. tour for In Absentia, he stated that labels are just that, labels that people feel they need to classify music for themselves, but that he didn't believe in labels. Asked then, how he would describe his music in a few words to someone who'd never heard it, he mused for a few seconds and replied, "Intelligent rock."

What a stupid answer was that "Intelligent rock"

Edited by Komandant Shamal - June 29 2015 at 01:05

has good as he may be he is ruining it by becoming very snotty.

There's a Nick Beggs interview where he says Wilson calls his music 'Post-Modern Industrial Jazz' (or words to that effect).