Interviews

Mettler: What's the best kind of music to play on vinyl?

Wilson: There's something about jazz that's just perfect for vinyl. Sixties, '70s jazz—it just seems like it should be listened to on vinyl.

Mettler: Right—you've got to play Thelonious Monk on vinyl.

Wilson: Yeah, exactly. Or Miles, or Coltrane, or anything like that. I've got a lot of obscure free jazz on vinyl, like Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey. I feel like that music just belongs on vinyl. There's something so organic and so spiritual about it in the first place, and vinyl is the right format for it.

Mettler: Getting back to the 360-degree angle, what are the best Atmos demo tracks on The Harmony Codex?

Wilson: Oh, there's a couple. I would probably immediately go for "Beautiful Scarecrow," because it's a little mini piece of cinema in five minutes in its own right, and it's got so many different sections, too. It's got that big drum section in the middle where there are three things going all around in it. And then maybe the title track, because it's so simple and so sparse, yet it just immerses you in this glorious wash of sounds. I mean, there are no guitars, no drums, and no vocals. It's essentially a bunch of analog synthesizers all hooked up together, and the piece is, essentially, performed in real time. And—if I do say so myself [chuckles]—'it was quite brave of me to put it on the album as it is. I'm not sure if I would have put something like that on any of my previous solo records. But this time around, with the whole cinematic quality of the music and the record itself, it just felt like a worthy addition.

Mettler: Is The Harmony Codex "the most Steven Wilson" of Steven Wilson albums we've gotten to date? Is this one really the most "you" of you?

Wilson: I think in one respect it is, yes—and that is, it's an album which represents every aspect of my musical personality in some way. If you go back to albums like The Future Bites (footnote 3), The Raven That Refused to Sing (footnote 4), or Insurgentes (footnote 5), as much as I love those records and am proud of those records, they each had an agenda. The agenda was to focus on a particular aspect of what I do, whether it was post-punk, old-school prog rock, or electronic pop. This record has all those things—oh, and some new things, too! [chuckles] In that respect, it's the most diverse record, which sums up everything I've been about, and maybe some stuff you haven't heard me do before.

Mettler: Didn't you design an entirely new space for doing Atmos mixes in your home studio? You essentially converted a garage to do that, and it's also the same place you've done other Atmos mixes prior to this album. Do I have that right?

Wilson: That's correct. Just before COVID, I got married (footnote 6), and myself, my wife, and my stepchildren all moved into this house where I converted the double garage into an Atmos room/studio. For the first time, I actually designed a space I knew was going to be my studio and thank goodness it was finished just before COVID kicked in, because I don't know what I would have done for the two years that came after that! [laughs] I essentially disappeared into that room for the next two years, mixing stuff, recording, and writing. The Harmony Codex was one of the things—perhaps the most significant thing of all—that came out of that period of enforced isolation. Not everything I do is about Atmos—a lot of it's just about mixing.

Mettler: Was there something in that new studio space that felt different to you creatively, as opposed to how you felt when you were working in your earlier home studio?

Wilson: Well, I think the main thing was it was a space I specifically designed this time. I went out and bought myself a bunch of new gear for it as well. What I have in the studio that I hadn't really had before are all those analog synths to experiment with, and I finally had the space to surround myself with them (footnote 7).

The rooms I've had in the past have been very small rooms—very small. I'd been very limited in terms of what I could have around me. Finally, I had the space where I could have my little upright piano in the same room where I was recording. Before, it was always in a different part of the house. But now, I could literally reach over and work on the album and all those analog synths I picked up. A lot of the album came from just turning knobs and patching things, and I would occasionally get something that would become a springboard for a piece of music. That was the main thing I think was inspiring.

Also, the space is properly acoustically treated, and I've got the Atmos speakers in the ceiling. It's totally Atmos-ready, so all of that's going through my head when I'm creating the music.

Mettler: What's your show-off Atmos or surround mix for any other artist you've worked with?

Wilson: I've been doing some [Atmos/surround] seminars, and the first thing I asked myself was, "What do I want to play at these seminars that's going to give people a good idea of the mixing challenges I face?" The track I played to illustrate those challenges was [the Who's] "Baba O'Riley" (footnote 8). I'd explain to people, "This is what was on the tape, and this is what I had to work with. And this is how I made an Atmos mix out of it." But I would always start the seminar with Gentle Giant's "On Reflection" [from 1978's Free Hand], because of those four interlocking vocal parts. If you want to show off what spatial audio lends itself well to, then you pick something like that track, where there's a lot of what I would call vertical complexity going on. There are multiple parts going on at the same time. Gentle Giant were kings—kings!—of that. After playing just the first two minutes of "On Reflection," I would say, "This is an example of using surround sound to basically illustrate how to spread out a lot of detail in a track that perhaps you could argue was too big for stereo to contain."

And then I would go on and I would usually play "Rivers of Mercy" from the new Tears for Fears record [2022's The Tipping Point]. The reason I chose that one to play next was, I would usually say something like, "The Gentle Giant track is what you might call very gimmicky and very showoff, but here's an example of something that just sounds immersive. There's nothing gimmicky about it, and you are inside the song. You are inside it."

Mettler: Yeah, I would say you're literally inside Roland [Orzabal]'s heart, in that case.

Wilson: You're just completely bathed in this emotion, in this lushness. "Rivers of Mercy" is a great one to illustrate what is good about spatial audio that's used to create a more three-dimensional space for a track.

And then I would play something that hasn't come out yet—"Just What I Needed," from the first Cars album—and then I would play XTC's "Wake Up" [from 1984's The Big Express]. "Wake Up" is the first track on the album, and in stereo, it has this bouncing guitar in the left and right that goes [mouths the riffs]. In surround, that riff literally ping-pongs around the room. It's a use of surround in a more gimmicky way, but if the original stereo is a bit gimmicky, then it doesn't feel like an imposition.

Mettler: From your own CV, what else would you like to remix in Atmos? You once told me you have access to all the multitracks for the 2007 Porcupine Tree album Fear of a Blank Planet, so I'd humbly suggest that one as an option.

Wilson: Do you know what, Mike? I've got a long list of things to do from my back catalog. I mean, I would love to do Hand. Cannot. Erase (footnote 9). I'd love to do To the Bone (footnote 10). I'd love to do Raven. Those three are all solo records, but I'd also love to do Blank Planet, yeah.

In my studio, I have this whiteboard, and I write down all the things I need to get to doing in Atmos. They're all on there. The problem at the moment is stuff is coming in faster than I can get through it all, which is a great problem to have.

Mettler: What do you want the ultimate takeaway to be after people listen to your life's work?

Wilson: I want people to listen to my music and say, "This is the guy that kept conceptual rock, the idea of the album as a musical journey, and the idea of the album as a piece of cinema for the years alive. This is the guy that kept it alive—and not only did he keep it alive, but he took it forward."

Footnote 5: Released in 2008, on Kscope. Insurgentes was Wilson's first solo album.

Footnote 6: Wilson's spouse is Rotem Wilson, a marketing professional who contributed background vocals on The Future Bites and vocals on The Harmony Codex.

Footnote 7: According to The Harmony Codex credits, Wilson used the following synths on the album: ARP 2600, Cobalt 8, Moog Arpeggiator, Moog Sub 37, Prophet '08, and Solina String Ensemble.

Footnote 8: Wilson did the Atmos mix that appears on the Blu-ray that's included in the Who's Who's Next Life House Super Deluxe Edition 10 CD/1 BD box set that was released on Polydor/UMR in September 2023. "Baba O'Riley" is the core album's lead track.

Footnote 9: Released in 2015, on Kscope.

Footnote 10: Released in 2017, on Caroline International.