Greg Prato (Songfacts): How does The Harmony Codex compare to your earlier solo efforts?

Steven Wilson: It's different again. This is something that is fairly consistent with my career: not wanting to repeat myself and trying to find something with each album that will interest me as well as the listeners. What's the point of adding to the discography unless you're going to do something different with each record?

So, this is no different in that respect. It's possibly the most cinematic/diverse record I've ever made in the sense that it's got everything from 10-minute-long prog-jazz things to ambient music to acoustic ballads to proto-industrial music. It's all in there, but it's a real journey. I even describe it as a piece of cinema for the ears.

Songfacts: It seems like now more than ever, music listeners listen to a wide variety of styles.

Wilson: There are pros and cons of living in the age of social media, and there's pros and cons of living in the age of YouTube and streaming services, and what I call the "playlist mentality," which means that we don't really acknowledge the idea of the album anymore as a kind of musical continuum. We create our playlists on streaming services and we listen to individual songs compiled into our own sequences.

I'm saying "we" very broadly here because I still like to listen to albums from beginning to end. I think there is still a sizable minority that still like the experience of an album as programmed and sequenced by the artist. But largely speaking, we live in a world now where people listen to music online, curate their own playlists, and that means that there's a whole kind of layer of filtering that used to be there that is no longer there. And that layer of filtering is the marketing guise, the tastemakers – those people that used to perhaps keep us more focused on listening within a particular genre. It's no longer as relevant as it used to be. So, I think kids just listen across the board now to whatever interests them, whatever excites them.

Songfacts: What are the pros and cons of writing, performing, and producing an album by yourself?

Wilson: The con of course is trying to get people to engage with it as an album. One of the things I have to be aware of when I'm making a record is, yes, I can make it so that people will listen to it as I listen to albums: from beginning to end. But I also have to make it so that people can take out individual constituent parts of it, and those parts will still stand out in their own right.

I don't necessarily think that's a negative thing. It's not a con to have that kind of rigor in terms of the actual songs – that's actually a pretty good thing. But, I have to acknowledge when I'm making the record that very few people will actually listen to it the way that I intend them to listen to it, and the songs will end up being listened to out of context. But that forces you to be more rigorous about the actual quality of the individual songwriting. To be a bit less indulgent in that sense.

Songfacts: How did the songwriting process work mostly? Did you start with beats, or were they all different?

Wilson: All of the above. I mentioned right at the beginning of the interview that this album is possibly the most diverse album I've ever done. And one of the reasons for that is that a lot of the songs come from slightly different starting points.

Some came from messing about with analog synthesizers, some came from sitting down with an acoustic guitar in my lap in the age-old tradition, some came from messing around with beats, some came from lyrical fragments and ideas. So, the genesis of each one was very unique in that respect. I think that's one of the reasons why it has the sense of playfulness with regard to genres. Going from track to track, genre to genre. So, all of the above, really.

Songfacts: I've heard people say that the mark of a great song is that its melody sounds familiar. I got the same feeling when I heard the tune "What Life Brings."

Wilson: It's one of the more traditional songs on the record. It feels like it comes from the well of the singer-songwriter sensibility. Acoustic guitar, picking out chords, picking out vocal melodies, it has a more conventional structure. And there was a time when I was working on it when I was thinking, "I'm not sure this is going to go on the record because it feels too old-fashioned, in a way."

But in the context of the whole record, it works beautifully because it's like a doorway that you can walk through, that sounds more familiar. And then once you're "inside" the record, you've walked through this more familiar, inviting door, and you can explore some of the more experimental aspects of the record, too.

Songfacts: How did you begin remixing classic albums for other classic-rock bands?

Wilson: I started to get noticed for doing surround sound on my own music. And I want to say around 2008/2009 I picked up a Grammy nomination for best special audio/surround sound – whatever it was called at the time [Best Surround Sound Album for Porcupine Tree's Fear Of A Blank Planet], so I started to get invitations by a few other artists. Just a few to begin with.

But one door leads to another, and over the years it kind of built up, and I've made a name for myself doing these remix projects. But that's how it started, really - with the Grammy nod for one of my own records I mixed in surround sound.

Songfacts: Which ones have proven to be the most challenging? Which were your favorites?

Wilson: My favorites are my own records, honestly. Like for example, this new record, The Harmony Codex, I wanted to raise the bar in terms of what was possible to do within spatial audio. And over the last three or four years – I think it was just after lockdown started – that Apple adopted Dolby Atmos. And then pretty soon after, Amazon followed and Tidal, and all these websites really started to embrace streaming of spatial audio.

I felt it was about time I really tried to raise the bar with what's possible with spatial audio, and the best way I could think to do that was to apply it to my own records. So, my favorite spatial audio mix is definitely The Harmony Codex. That's the one I would play to anybody who wanted to understand what spatial audio was capable of.

Songfacts: It seems like you've done the most remixes for Jethro Tull and King Crimson.

Wilson: I think it's a case of they just had the biggest catalogs – they've got 50 years of catalog in the case of Jethro Tull. Some of the other artists I've done – like Tears For Fears, Chic, and Suede – they just have less records in their discography. But a band like Jethro Tull, for example, the first few we did were very well-received, and it's the gift that keeps on giving because Ian [Anderson, lead singer]'s made a record with Jethro Tull pretty much every year since 1968. So, there was just more and more albums that were available to be done.

And luckily, most of the multi-track tapes were available, as is often the case where the interest is there to do the remix, but then the record label, management, or the artist simply can't find the multi-track tapes. We've been very lucky with Tull that most of the tapes seem to be pretty well preserved. I've probably done more Tull than anyone else.

Songfacts: Recording technology has grown leaps and bounds over the last decade or two.

Wilson: One of the things that's wonderful about working in the age of computer recording is the ways we can twist sounds and process sounds and manipulate sounds now. There's never been more possibilities, and I embrace them completely when it comes to vocals, keyboards, and guitar sounds.

November 14, 2023

For more Steven visit stevenwilsonhq.com.

Further reading:
Steve Hogarth of Marillion
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull
James LaBrie of Dream Theater
Devin Townsend

Photo: Hajo Mueller

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