SPIRAL CIRCUS LIVE (LP)

This is a very interesting live release of early "Porcupine Tree" songs. The mood goes from symphonic, metal, spacey to fully psychedelic. You can find all these elements during the opener "Burning Sky". A great musical experience, I tell you. Most of the songs come out "Up The Downstair" (four out of six tracks).

"Voyage 34" their famous "trip" which is cut down here to only five minutes and which is really a good excerpts of the whole and "Radioactive Toy" one of their anthems from "On The Sunday Of Life" (but it was already featured on early tape material) do not come from this album. Beautiful spatial atmosphere for this track. This version is probably the best one available.

This release is really a good overview of their early work. On par with "Coma Divine" IMO and a perfect companion since only two songs are featured on both live releases. I wouldn't say that this is a masterpiece, but when you have six great PT numbers on a live album, you are very close.

Well, actually "Up The Downstair" and "Not Beautiful Anymore" are a bit weaker but fully belong to this "voyage".

Four stars for this excellent live effort and a very good idea to have released this one.

Porcupine Tree's live album "Spiral Circus" actually first came out in April of 1994 and was originally only available on cassette that was given away to subscribers to the information service available during 1993 ? 1996. It was later reissued (in 1997) on violet vinyl with 500 copies pressed. This is the first official live recording of Porcupine Tree as a 4 member band with Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri, Colin Edwin and Chris Maitland.

The recording is taken from 3 different sources; some tracks from a Radio One session and two live shows with those tracks made from desk recordings. Those two live shows were the first two PT live performances. The performances were all done before the album "The Sky Moves Sideways" was released and most of the tracks come from "Up the Downstair". There were 3 tracks on each side of the cassette/vinyl and the overall run-time was around 48 minutes.

Side A starts with "Burning Sky" from "Up the Downstair". This performance comes from two sources, the first half from Radio One live broadcast on December 6, 1993 and the 2nd half from the Borderline in London, England on December 7. 1993. The track is pretty much the same length as the original studio version at over 11 minutes. The sound, however, is not as good as the original studio version, but with the recording method, this shouldn't be too surprising. Next up is a very much shortened version of "Voyage 34" (originally from the EP of the same name) that only runs just over 5 minutes and only really has time to feature one of the themes and some dreamy effects of the much longer original. This one was entirely recorded at the Borderline in London. This isn't even the best part of the track, so it's kind of a let-down, and the sound quality is not so great. Finally, the last track on this side is "Always Never" from "Up the Downstair". This one comes entirely from the Radio One performance noted earlier. This is the first time you hear Wilson's voice on this album, and you can tell he isn't quite as confident in a live setting yet. And the sound continues to be sup-par. The performance are still decent however, especially for being their first performances live as a band.

All of side B was recorded live at The Nag's Head in High Wycombe on Dec. 4th, 1993. It starts off with a 9 minute version of "Radioactive Toy" which was available on their demo tape, a separate EP or two, and in a reworked and much better version on "On the Sunday of Life" album. Unfortunately, this live recording sounds more like the demo version, and even worse because of the low-fi recording. Since it is the demo version of the song, it is also missing the great guitar solo that's on the "?.Sunday?" album. Next comes the title track from "Up the Downstair", that excellent instrumental that on this live version seems to lose a lot of steam, mainly for the poor mix. The most interesting thing on the album is the last track "Not Beautiful Anymore", which still has a bad mix, but the synths are unevenly mixed, so they stand out a bit, especially at the end, almost giving the track a different sound.

As far as early live albums for Porcupine Tree, you are much better off getting "Coma Divine" which is recorded much better. The songs on "Spiral Circus" are good enough, but the sound and mixing is not so great, do either get the much better studio versions, or get the above mentioned live album. Otherwise, the only thing of value on this live album is the historical aspect, since it is their first live recording as a band, of their first shows together. That means, that only collectors or hardcore fans should seek this one out. And if you do decide you need it, get the vinyl remastered version.

Originally put out on cassette in 1994, the first Porcupine Tree live album extracts material from performances in the early December of 1993 - a period when Porcupine Tree was evolving from a Steven Wilson bedroom project into a proper band, and the group which would eventually bring us The Sky Moves Sideways was playing some shows as part of the process of getting on the same page.

As you might expect from its age, it comes from squarely in the band's space rock era, and since they'd only put out two "proper" albums at this point (On the Sunday of Life and Up the Downstair) they don't have a deep bench of material to draw on. You get a short take on Voyage 34, you get Radioactive Toy from On the Sunday of Life, and then everything else is from Up the Downstair - and since Voyage 34 had been considered for inclusion on that, you end up with a sound very much focused on the style of Up the Downstair, albeit with moments here and there where the band seem to be evolving towards the approach of The Sky Moves Sideways.

The sound quality is OK but not pristine, and given the tight focus of the setlist how much you enjoy this will likely hinge on how much you like Up the Downstair. I'm keen on it, so for me it's a four star release, but if you don't think Porcupine Tree got good until after this then shave a star off.

(Note that Porcupine Tree have subsequently put out a recording of the entire Nag's Head show - their very first live gig, from which the latter half of this is sourced - as a download.)