YELLOW HEDGEROW DREAMSCAPE

Please do not waste your money on this one. I know the record is no longer in print and believe me there's a reason why. It's just a collection of early demos of the period prior to the release of "on the sunday of life". The soundquality is really bad. I heard some people are willing to pay a lot of money for this album. It's obvious they haven't heard it. Try any other Porcupine Tree album and you'll be better off. For fans only

Porcupine Tree - Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

I agree with most reviewers that this is a collection of (ambient) musical experiments and that therefore this is a substandard release when compared to the more familiar studio recordings by this British band. However, perhaps because of my liking of the sound of the older Porcupine Tree albums, I can enjoy this album too much to simply pass it of as being of horrid quality.

"Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape" is a collection of songs taken from the "On the Sunday of Life" era, but were regarded as not good enough to be allowed to appear on that debut album. The majority of these songs are ambient structures, borderline psychedelic music. These 'songs' are what seems to put most of the people off when it comes to this release. I, however, see this album as an ambient trip and it works surprisingly well as background music while reading a novel! So I've discovered.

There are however a few songs included amongst all these soundscapes. I have to admit that some are a bit tedious, but a few of these are actually really quite good. Opening track Mute has some good keyboards and decent guitar playing, yet the voice over ruins the mid section of the song (the music is muted a bit -how ironic?! - so we can hear mister Wilson's babbling more clearly. Too bad this "narration" ruins the built-up of the first part of the song.

No Reason to live, no Reason to die is a song alike It will rain for a Million Years which was the closing track of the "On the Sunday of Life" album. I can imagine this song being left off, because of its likeness in 'feeling'. Yet, it still is a rather excellent song! With its length of approximately eleven minutes it is the album's second longest track, and my personal favourite as well. I really like the improvised playing of both guitar and keys on this one. Very spacey and ambient as well, though this one show structure in its composition. Too bad it wasn't given a second chance.

The title track is also worth mentioning, though compared to the reworked and remastered version that ended up as a track on the "Staircase Infinities" EP (later included as a bonus disc to the re-release of the "Up the Downstair" album) it is of far lesser quality. This could be down to a decent job mastering and editing the song though, for many elements are identical. The extended introduction of this version adds something though (the narration in which instruments are introduced).

The other songs are a shortened version of Radioactive Toy, which is amusing as always, though lesser psyched-out; The Execution of the Will of the Marquis de Sade, which has a great rhythm section, but the "Hockey Pockey something" soundsample bit should immediately be deleted from the song! There are a few more tracks along these lines included, though they're not overly too special to mention.

I can imagine that as a whole this will probably never be reissued, yet there are several good works included here. A song like No Reason to live. is in my opinion better than some of the stuff included with the final debut album! Overal, a nice collection of early Porcupine Tree recordings, but I as a fan would not even consider paying the insane amounts of money for which this release sells on E-bay!

YHD : For hardcore collectors only!

Porcupine Tree started out as an imaginary band from the seventies created by Steven Wilson and his friend Malcolm Stocks. To back up the story they made up non-existent band members and an absurd discography. To back up the story behind the band Steven made a homemade Music Cassette called "Tarquin's Seeweed Farm" and sent out some copies to people who might be interested. One copy was sent to Underground UK Magazine Freakbeat, run by Richard Allen and Ivor Trueman who were in the process of setting up their own record company. This company would be DELERIUM, the label where it all started for Porcupine Tree.

When signed to the label Richard Allen suggested to release PT's first two MC's "Tarquin's Seaweed Farm" and "The Nostalgia Factory" on CD. Steven Wilson decided otherwise. He preferred to put the superior tracks on the CD "On The Sunday Of Life" and the inferior tracks on the limited CD "Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape". A limited edition would probably fit him best, because he wasn't particularly proud of the YHD material. This is exactly the reason why SW prefers this CD not to be re-issued again. The YHD made an incarnation on vinyl and that has probably been the last of it. A shame? For collectors probably yes, because prices of the CD have gone up to incredible high amounts on auction sites. For people who really are interested in PT's better work the answer would be no. They can probably miss the material on YHD like a toothache.

So what's my opinion of this album? Actually I consider myself a PT collector, but not in the widest sense of the word. Yes, I really would like to have all the CD's, singles and Promo's that PT has ever issued. Then again, I was happy to pay around 80 GBP for an original XM and around 50 GBP for Recordings. But this was, and still is, essential PT music! YHD simply is not, at least, not to me. So after having had this album in my possession for just a couple of weeks I have decided to sell it off again on the Internet. If interested have a look on eBay quickly :-)

Well, if you compare this issue with 'normal' album of Porcupine Tree, you will find regret with this record because this one is totally exploratory in nature, full of sound experiments as well as sound effects. I find myself enjoyable listening this record when my musical mood is under 'wild' emotion where I can forget the concept of song melody in music. The music offered here captures the stream of music in jam session kind of stuff, so you should clear away your expectation of listening a collection of songs. Once you do that and try to enjoy whatever comes into your ears, no need to analyze or syntethize it, you might be OK with this ....

For me personally, I try to capture the subtleties of sounds being produced by this record. 'No Reason To Live, No Reason To Die' (11:07) is a good example where I can enjoy the offering here.

Yes, this is suitable for collectors only.

Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape is a compilation of those tracks from Porcupine Tree's early cassette releases which didn't make it onto their debut album, On the Sunday of Life. The first version of the album I heard was the 1994 CD issue, highly limited in its distribution, and I was only able to acquire an affordable copy of by searching high and low and being extremely patient; at the end of the day, I felt it was a wasted effort.

This, however, was due to that particular issue having a somewhat murky sound quality, which has been tuned up on the most easily-available rerelease, the 2013 CD from Headphone Dust. This has a cover of Prince's "The Cross" trimmed from it, due perhaps to copyright issues, but includes "Out", a track from one of the tape albums both this release and On The Sunday of Life were derived from.

This somewhat reconfigured version of the release reveals it to be something of a neo-psychedelic gem. It's pretty evident that when compiling On the Sunday of Life, Wilson erred towards somewhat more commercially palatable material - even then, the end album was deeply weird. This, if anything, is even more odd. It's more challenging both from a psychedelic perspective and from a prog perspective, with a more uncompromising focus on soundscapes and musicianship over well-formed songs.

I can quite understand why some gave this album a poor rating in the past, because the initial issue really did suffer in the sound quality stakes - but the Headphone Dust remaster really does correct a lot of this, and losing the Prince cover is a worthwhile price to pay in return for a much-improved album which, thanks to Wilson's diligent efforts in cleaning up the material, can now finally take its place as a companion piece to On the Sunday of Life. (The remaster was, according to Wilson's liner notes, prepared for the 2000 vinyl release of the album, though I have not heard that so I can't say for sure how well it sounds.)