Authors: Lasse Hoile, Carl Glover & Steven Wilson

Title: Index

Year of publication: 2015

Page count: 240



Index is a gorgeous hardback coffee-table-style art-book that illustrates the visual language of Steven Wilson’s music projects as brought to life by his long-time collaborators Carl Glover and Lasse Hoile—released as a deluxe edition (which is a misleading description—it’s not like there’s a standard one!) with a green cover (the one I have), and a red cover edition limited to 800 copies, sold at SW’s Royal Albert Hall shows back in 2015.

All the descriptions of it I’ve found online (on the publisher’s site and even Steven’s blog) assert that it covers the period from Porcupine Tree’s In Absentia up to Steven’s fourth solo album Hand. Cannot. Erase., his most recent at the time of the book’s release, but that’s not strictly true—pictures that were used for Bass Communion II are included, which was released in 1999. I think that’s the only outlier though; a lot of the musical projects covered predate In Absentia, but the photographs were shot for later reissues.

The book starts with an introduction by Steven, which is why the two photographers chose to add his name on the cover as well—and probably because he drives their artistic vision to a certain extent. He writes that as soon as he has a song in progress, he also “sees it”, but he lacks the skills to translate this vision into something tangible. That’s where Glover and Hoile come in; two very different personalities who have a knack for translating SW’s ideas into art that has a symbiotic relationship with his music.

Lasse Hoile (Porcupine Tree · Deadwing, 2005) Carl Glover (Bass Communion · Cenotaph, 2011)

The book is weird in that it jumps around in both projects and time, not following a linear presentation, but simply alternating the two photographers’ work—other than Porcupine Tree and Steven’s solo work, which is mostly Lasse’s domain, Carl’s work covers his other, lesser known side projects such as Blackfield, Bass Communion, I.E.M., no-man, and Continuum. Steven provides a short blurb for the Insurgentes and Stupid Dream reissue photographs, while each photographer otherwise introduces his own work. I’ll admit that Glover’s work doesn’t do much for me—I’m not a fan of his minimalist photographs of abandoned industrial structures, devoid of all life—but he has a way with words, and his short introductory sentences made me appreciate the art itself more than I otherwise would. His photographs, especially the ones for the ambient/drone/electronica projects (Bass Communion and Continuum) fit the music, but I don’t think they stand that well on their own; I can appreciate that the frames are well-composed and interesting in their own way, but they don’t evoke an emotional response in me, which is what I look for in art.

Lasse Hoile’s work, on the other hand, is simply breathtaking to me; it manages to perfectly capture the essence of the (more conceptual) music and adds an additional dimension to the sonic art it accompanies, and I’m much more drawn to his eerie, nightmarish visions that often include featureless or distorted people—his photographs tell stories and contain multitudes. He likes to experiment with unconventional effects or mixed media (such as the expired analog film used for the Grace For Drowning art, or the bold, colorful strokes of paint over the Hand. Cannot. Erase. portraits), and his art speaks for itself—his blurbs added little or no substance. There’s an interview in the form of an extended conversation between the two artists included at the back, which was interesting enough, but not really about the matter at hand—SW’s music—instead focusing on how they came to be interested in art and how their respective careers unfolded, their inspirations, challenges they’ve faced, and ponderings of what the future of photography holds.

It’s a beautiful book to have, and while it doesn’t exactly feel like a comprehensive retrospective, it includes many outtakes and never-before-seen pictures, making it a nice addition to the collection of any fan of SW’s music.

Author: Lasse Hoile

Title: Muzak: The Visual Art of Porcupine Tree

Year of publication: 2019

Page count: 240 (+48 in the ‘Live Muzak’ bonus book)

Muzak is a photography book by Danish artist and long-time Steven Wilson collaborator Lasse Hoile, which showcases his work for SW’s former band Porcupine Tree. Focused exclusively on the band’s final four albums—from their break-through 2002 record In Absentia to 2009’s final, Grammy-nominated The Incident—this book feels much more cohesive than the previous release Index, which covered a larger chunk of SW’s output, including various side projects, and work by his other long-time collaborator Carl Glover as well.

Deluxe Edition Signature Edition Collectors Edition

The book was released in three versions—Deluxe, Collectors (limited to 500) and Signature (limited to 150), which came in three variant covers. The regular, Deluxe edition cover is actually my favorite, but I went for the Collector’s Edition, which comes numbered and signed by Lasse (I got the aesthetically pleasing 50/500), with an additional 48 page book called ‘Live Muzak’, and presented in a stunning lenticular slipcase. The Signature Edition is essentially the same, except for the variant cover, and the fact that it’s signed by the entire band as well. In the very short introduction, Lasse suggests flipping through the book while listening to one’s favorite Porcupine Tree record, and that’s (almost) what I did—I took in each chapter and then sat down to write my thoughts on each while the respective album was playing.

Pages from the… …In Absentia chapter

In Absentia (2002) has what’s undoubtedly the band’s most recognizable cover art—a grotesquely altered portrait of Lasse himself. In an introduction with an interview-style conversation moderated by Carl Glover, Lasse recounts how he came to be first a fan, and then a visual collaborator for the band, with some added input by former manager Richard Allen and keyboarder Richard Barbieri, who cites this as his favorite album art. Inspired by Dave McKean’s collage-art (this was new information for me, and as a big Sandman comics fan it made me very happy!), the album art’s distinctive style was achieved with analog photography by scratching negatives, burning film, and adding dirt to processed film before scanning it—and no digital alteration. Lasse joined the band on parts of the tour in support of the album, and while they lacked the budget to film proper videos for the stage projections, he animated still photographs which were shown as slideshows. These live background “films” are presented in a fitting storyboard format that gives you an idea of the kind of atmosphere they attempted to evoke for the songs in question.

Deadwing (2005) is my favorite Porcupine Tree album, but I never much liked the cover and always found its art to be a bit all over the place—and Lasse sort of confirms that, saying that since the album was partly based on a movie script penned by SW and Mike Bennion, but not all the songs on the album related to the film’s narrative, he mostly just tried to capture a certain kind of atmosphere. I feel like he repeated himself with the artwork for this album and went a bit overboard with the “distressed” effects, so some of my favorite images from this era are the ones that are different from the bulk of it. The shots featuring ring-lights, which are normally used in portrait photography for even and diffused lighting with minimal shadows, in this case repurposed as halos hiding the models’ eyes—to show how religion blinds people, Halo‘s central theme—are among my very favorites of all of Lasse’s work. The budget was increased for this album, too, so they moved on to moving footage for the live projections—I liked the double-spread for Burning Sky, which features some instances of the model with mouths instead of eyes—I wonder if it was an intentional reference to The Sandman‘s Corinthian! The conversation-introduction includes some words by Mike Bennion and drummer Gavin Harrison, and goes a little into the challenges of shooting the dreamy, underwater Glass Arm Shattering video.

Deadwing (2005) Fear of a Blank Planet (2007)

Fear of a Blank Planet (2007), heavily inspired by Bret Easton Ellis’ novel Lunar Park, is, in my eyes, the band’s most accomplished proper concept album, and Lasse perfectly captured its central theme of teenage social alienation caused by technology and vapid media consumption. He moved on to digital photography for this project, and the pictures are often heavy on deeply saturated blue and green hues, most famously on the cover photo. This series of photographs and ambitious live films are different from anything he’d done before, relating to the lyrical content more literally than in any of the previous collaborations, but still retaining the eerie atmosphere he evokes so well, while perfectly fitting to the digital era this album and its companion EP Nil Recurring shine a critical light on—I’m personally quite partial to the shots featuring old school TVs broadcasting static noise.

The Incident (2009) was the band’s final double-album, with the first disc consisting of a continuous piece of music segmented into songs, which explored different kind of “incidents”—a cold, detached word used to describe all sorts of often very traumatic and life-altering events. This chapter takes up over a third of the whole book, since a lot more material was shot with the knowledge that a special-book-edition of the album would be released. Visually, it was a step backwards to using analog film and his signature manual alteration processes again, and it’s worth remembering that Steven’s first solo album Insurgentes was worked on pretty much simultaneously—the two projects are very different, but both were heavily documented, extensively featured masked models, and driven by a strong central visual narrative. I think The Incident is a brilliant concept album that perhaps worked better on paper than in its actual execution, but the art is overall my favorite Lasse ever did for Porcupine Tree (and second only to the superb work for Hand. Cannot. Erase.)—my favorite single images don’t come from these shoots, but I love the recurring hand motion, and all the photographs are incredibly evocative in their often blurry monochromes. It complements and interprets the music amazingly well, without being quite as on-the-nose as the (very different, but equally wonderful) work for Fear of a Blank Planet.

Finally, the Live Muzak bonus book included in the Collectors and Signature editions is a nice, but slightly disappointing extra. Contrary to what the title suggests, it doesn’t only feature live shots, but also documents various tours from the period covered in the book with behind the scenes and rehearsal photographs, as well as promotional portraits of the band. What made it a bit disappointing is that no text whatsoever supplements the material—no location or year is given, and a chronology has to be pieced together by the visuals caught on camera, the way Steven wore his hair, and other such context clues.

The visual presentation of the whole art-book is gorgeous, but I do have two qualms with it: Firstly, I would’ve liked for Steven and Colin Edwin to have been included in the conversations as well, as it feels rather one-sided with only half of the band chiming in. Secondly, I wish more care had been taken with proof-reading the text (it’s not like there’s very much of it, anyway)—the first few pages are riddled with little typos and grammatical errors that ought to have been caught before going to print. But despite these two small detractors, it’s a worthwhile investment and gorgeous addition to the shelf of any Porcupine Tree fan—there’s obviously some overlap with Index, but this book has a smaller scope with only four albums covered, and feels both more cohesive and complete as a result.