SIGNIFY

Another good album from Wilson and co. In my opinion this album has some of their best material, but filled with loads of uninspiring half-ass material as well. Although the previous effort 'The Sky Moves Sideways' proved to be a huge transitional album in their career, 'Signify' proves to be even more significant. The structure of the album goes back to a collection of songs, but the music itself is much more accessible then the formers. It seemed with this release; Steven Wilson was unsure of which direction to head into, making this release not as strong and to the point as some of the previous works.

This contains the same line-up as the previous album with Steven Wilson (composer, guitarist, tapes, production etc.), Richard Barbieri (keyboards, synthesizers), Colin Edwin (bass) and Chris Maitland (drums and percussion). The songs on this album start to maintain structure, which is something I prefer, but also has several pieces of ambience that doesn't sound as great as some of the previous ambient works. Again, I feel like they were just searching around at this point, but were still able to put out something pretty nice. Here are some of the better tracks.

'The Sleep of No Dreaming' - This song contains an excellent chorus which serves as the focal point in the song. The verses are very slow and minimalistic with some melancholic vocals. As the music gradually gets louder the chorus comes in with Wilson shouting the title of the track with some beautiful melodies after. The melodies are extremely eerie and haunting on this one.

'Waiting Phase One + Two' - These two pieces were also very nice. Phase one is an acoustic guitar driven piece. It is nice and slow with some catchy hooks thrown in. Phase two is an ambient rendition of it, complementing the former track.

'Sever' - This is my second favorite on the album. 'Sever' is the most mainstream track by Porcupine Tree in this point and time. The verses are shouted like in the song 'The Sleep of No Dreaming' and sung in some strange spaced out rhythm. The chorus is driven largely by the keyboards and some effects. The song was great.

'Dark Matter' - This is a fan favorite in Porcupine Tree's catalogue. This song had a huge impact on their career, especially on the two albums to follow this one. Very slow tempo with some acoustic work and pompous bass. The vocals also have their spot in this song too. A Porcupine Tree classic.

As for the rest of the songs, there is nothing really terrible to say about them. Most of the ones I didn't discuss were ambient pieces and a few uninspiring slow tracks. It just seemed to me that they were filling up some space.

A pretty good album overall, but I wouldn't call this excellent. The 'Insignificance' demo's added onto the re-master makes the CD a very worthy addition. Since there is another section to describe it, I will do it there.but it is pretty good. This is an album Porcupine Tree fans should own.

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