Rick Beato Interviews Steven Wilson

It was a nice interview, and it has some nice comments that he is right about, specially the fact that most of today's listeners have no idea of what an "artist" is, or what an "album" is, because they are all into one song, not anything else, or the way Taylor dress, or Miley undresses, and SW came from the era of the great EVOLUTION OF RECORDING, which had started in the later 40's and into the 50's and kinda stopped in the 60's with the RCA "Red Seal" albums (to be noted again with Alan Parsons later doping the same thing the classic folks were doing!!!), which were all using the greatest and the best recording techniques available at the time, and then ... by 1966 or so, places like Abbey Road kinda changed things under the hands of George Martin, although he was not the only one. You must watch the Tom Dowd special ... it will give you a massive history of American music after WW2, and cue in what made him ... he had THE EAR and one day he heard 2 guys goofing off, and what happened? Probably one of the best songs ever heard. And at the end of the special he gives you just the 2 guitars together, and yeah, it is impressive that someone not only heard it, but found it and was lucky enough to help make it better.

But there are some fine things ... choosing ZEIT (Tangerine Dream) is kinda strange. But it shows one thing in his mind that was happening and IS THE HISTORY of recording music in the 60's and then 70's ... which was all about the attention to detail, and in some cases, the lack of. ZEIT, is not exactly about "nothing" ... it is a fantastic "new age" album in most ways, but it is too simplistic and far out in its interpretations for it to be considered new age, and not be a "fake" idea of spiritual stupidity! And this even brings out Frank Zappa, because nothing got recorded without him conducting the recording ... he knew how to accent his music and did it very well, something that most musicians never know or learn. I call it "the touch".

In the early 70's when I got into the Europeans, it was because the American/English scene was crap and it was getting tired. Their attention to "detail" had deteriorated to riffs and hit music. The European scene was more widely varied and featured a lot of very different materials, mostly not well recorded but the excitement of the new material and music was far out ... and they had a lot of improvisation within it, which gave you many surprises that the English/American bands were already losing.

The advent of the improvisation added something to the music that was special, even if nowadays, most fans have no idea whatsoever what it means and how it's done, and can only imagine a riff or an idea to guide it ... and end it 15 minutes later!

From the early days, German music was about the quality of it, and there are several Klaus Schulze, Can and Tangerine Dream albums done in a "head" space style, which was a new recording technique that was very good for TD and KS, and also made Can's Tago Mago just blow out of the speakers like most things don't. From then on, the French did well with it, the Italians went super well (PFM, Banco and Le Orme) ... and also showed that they had "the touch", and by this time, I got tired of DSOTM which was wonderful, but not exactly a very good "concept album" and in fact, it was all over the place, but it used up the "featurettes" that PF had been doing in concert with their QUADRAPHONIC sound (in SW's words it would be the 7 setup!), which was done out of doors and stuff going around, and I remember telling you how disappointed I was when we saw The Wall (Roger's later in Portland) and the sound effects only went from left to right on stage ... and not like before when you were IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SOUND ... and that is the main difference between things 40 years later ... we're no longer a part of it all ... we've been separated or as one man might have said ... the father and I went apart a long time ago, when we have no idea what it all means and is!

Many fans will only KNOW about all this if you had a really good stereo that moved things and created an ambience in your living room that was far out. You could not get the living room space from the headphones no matter how hard you tried, because a lot of it is happening because of the sound waves MOVING THROUGH THE AIR!

Good interview, but for me, it was rather "shallow" as things often are with SW, even though he has mellowed out some more and has been more with it, though I think that his own touch is that the production of what he does is FAR BETTER THAN THE MUSIC he is putting together ... and to me that's sad ... because the development of the music will slow and not become as strong as it might otherwise become.

But in general, him trashing the "progressive" bullsh*t folks, is far out ... he could not have done that 10 years ago, trying to go solo ... he has earned that these days ... but his ability to hear different things is nice, and break them down ... but he still can not talk much about Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, who are, were, and will be for 50 more years, the greatest masters of mixing and putting music together ... they brought it all to the 21st century, and SW is just now coming to understand that, but I think it will hurt his own music ... because he is spreadout too thin, and not focusing enough on one or the other. Both together is rare, possible, but I think that it takes away from your individuality of expression ... a microphone 5 feet apart is not the reason why you sound good, bad or in between ... YOU ARE! Thus, the strength of detailing oneself in their work, is much more important than the time spent trying to make it better on the studio. This is my complaint about PT's new album ... it has far out production, probably one of the best for the time it was done, but I think that the development and strength of the music itself suffered. The strength was not developed on making the music stronger, thinking that the recording would do that!

WRONG!

Compare this to Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator, and PH's "style" is very simple, and let the voice carry the whole thing ... it's almost like the music is secondary, but it works. SW would not be able to do this, because his voice, ideas, and thoughts are not "centered" and focused on the "song" as PH is ... and this makes PH very difficult to listen to because folks are not used to hearing someone so honest, clean and strong at the same time, in what is not, a pop song per se! It makes for very tough listening, but it is one of the truest, most honest of all the things out there. He will be missed when he leaves us ... his quality is amazing in 55 years so far!