"I'm very proactive as a leader, because to keep the same guyswhich, through thick and thin, I try to insist uponwe don't have a lot of work and we don't make a lot of money, so the only thing I have is that they're playing with me, and the challenge of this music. Because it's for the music. I'm not trying to make it like we're carrying a cross here, but it is for the music. My job with these three guys is to make it so that there's a challenge and a reason to come out and play with me.

There was a time when progressive rock really meant what its name suggested: progressive music, music that pushed the boundaries of what rock music was, often by integrating elements of classical music and jazz into the mix. Milestone groups ranging from better-knowns like, King Crimson,andall provided the opportunity for musicians to apply their diverse musical upbringings to create something that Chuck Berry and Bill Haley couldn't possibly have envisaged when they first began playing the music that would come to be known as rock 'n' roll. Lesser-knowns like, Caravan, Soft Machine and Gong further explored the nexus of electrified music with the aesthetic and, in some cases, the language of jazz; even groups like Procol Harum and Fairport Convention were considered to be progressive artists, as they looked to incorporate classical music, in the case of Procol Harum, and traditional British folk music, in the case of Fairport Convention.Four decades later and, if anything, progressive rock has experienced a revival that may not sell the kinds of records it used to back in its late-1960s/1970s heydaybefore the advent of punk rock turned many of its fans fickle and they deserted it in droves and made it into a niche musicbut it has resulted in an unexpected resurgence of interest, thanks in part to the power of the internet in creating global communities joined together by common interests. This new golden age has seen, alongside a bevy of new acts, the revival of many legacy acts, some still capable of creating new music that stands alongside their 1970s classics, like Van der Graaf Generator, others capitalizing on past glories but ultimately proving to be mere bloated shadows of their former selves, like Yes. Rather than suggesting music that's progressing, in many ways progressive rock has fossilized into a series of subgenres that, rigidly defined and proprietarily protected by their fans, may be great music but all too often function with both feet firmly planted in the pastrather than having at least one of them stepping forward into the futureforgetting what the music is really supposed to be about.Steven Wilson, since going solo after 20 years of fronting Porcupine Treea group that began as a solo project in the most DIY sense of the word but later became a group when the guitarist/keyboardist/singer/writer needed a band to play his music livepines for the days when progressive rock music meant more than stylistic pigeonholing. Since his first solo recording under his own name, 2009's Insurgentes (Kscope), he's progressed in leaps and bounds. 2011's Grace for Drowning (Kscope) was a major compositional statement, one which also reflected Wilson's experiences as the de facto surround-sound remix "go-to guy" for groups like King Crimson, as well as his recent work with Jethro Tull, Caravan and Emerson, and Lake & Palmer.But Grace for Drowning was more than a leap forward for Wilson as a writer and performer; his subsequent 2011 and 2012 tours in support of his two solo recordings have seen the formation of a band that brings a whole new language, a whole new vibrancy and a whole new degree of unpredictability to his music. It isn't jazzit isn't even, as some fans say, "jazzy"; but with a group whose collective resume includes work with everyone fromto, Wilson has a group whose approach to the music irrefutably speaks with the language of jazz, albeit in a more progressive-rock context. If progressive rock has, for its fans, often been a gateway drug to jazz, then perhaps it's time to consider the reverse, and let jazz become a gateway drug to progressive music."The whole idea of the band was to try and bring back this idea of the influence of jazz on progressive music," says Wilson. "The reason I say this is because I've felt, for many years, that it's part of the history of progressive rock that's been written out. If you go back to the original wave of progressive rock and the so-called progressive musicians (though they never called themselves progressive musicians), you see the influence of two forms of musicjazz and classical musicbasically instigating that whole generation of musicians. And, of course, it makes perfect sense because there was no precedent for musicians of that caliber going into what was then pop music, throughout the 1960s. Of course, you have to look at Brian Wilson, and Paul McCartney and John Lennon, all aspiring to be great artists, but they didn't necessarily have the caliber of musicianship that you suddenly had come '68, '69 and '70."Suddenly, you had people who had been trained as jazz and classical musicians deciding that they were going to be pop musicians," Wilson continues. "That was a point in time that will never be repeated, because we all grow up noweven jazz or classical musiciansknowing thecatalog,' catalog. So this was a once-in-a-generation moment when musicians who had little understanding or knowledge of pop music decided they were going to experiment with electric music. I always felt that the post-'70s generation of progressive music kind of forgot that whole thingforgot that whole aspect of jazz music being a very important influence, particularly on bands like King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Magma and the whole Canterbury thing. But if you look at the post-'70s progressive-rock bands, bands whether it's a band like Opeth or a band like Marillion, it's just not there. It's not there, and one of the things that really came home to me when I was working on the Crimson catalog was, 'Wow, this is jazz music, in a way.' This is obviously musicians who've grown up completely enamored with and immersed, not in the world of pop music, but in the world of jazz music. And that's part of what makes that explosion of creativity and ambition so powerful and potent."The reason I say all this is that my idea, with this band, was to have musicians from both worlds," Wilson concludes. "I wanted to try and bring back that fusion. Fusion is a word that's got a different connotation now, but that's not what I mean. [Saxophonist/flautist]is someone I've known and worked with for many years, and there is a very strong element of woodwinds in the last record [Grace for Drowning]. [Keyboardist]was recommended to me on very short noticeand, of course, as soon as I heard he was Miles Davis' keyboard player, I thought, 'This guy could really get it.' I called him up, we talked a bit, and I saidbecause he was in the last Miles band, which was more synthesizer oriented'What I love is the more organic early '70s Miles: the Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970), the Fender Rhodes, the ring-modulated electric piano.' And he said, 'I totally love that; that's exactly what I love to play.'"In addition to recruiting Holzman and Travisboth leaders in their own right with their own discographies and the saxophonist also known for his duo work with Crimson guitaristand the Soft Machine alum group,Wilson brought in Marco Minnemann, a staggeringly powerhouse drummer whose own discography as a leader has been largely overshadowed by work with higher-profile artists like keyboardist/violinist, guitaristsand, and ex-Crimson alumni touch guitaristand guitarist/vocalist. Bassist/stick player Nick Beggs came to Wilson's band with a reputation for flexibility and groovehis first major group, Kajagoogoo, scored a massive 1983 hit with "Too Shy," and he also garnered acclaim for recent studio and live work with ex-Genesis guitarist. Every one of these players has proven himself to be an exceptional musician, documented on the limited-release CD Catalog | Amass | Preserve (Self-produced, 2011), which featured guitarist Aziz Ibrahim, and the just-released live DVD/Blu-Ray/CD Get All You Deserve (Kscope, 2012), with guitarist Niko Tsonev in tow.One look at the personnel on Grace for Drowning confirms Wilson's penchant for bringing players equally comfortable in the jazz and/or classical worlds into his own sound world. But, while Dream Theater keyboardistcontributes some fine piano work to tracks like the instrumental "Sectarian" and lengthy "Raider II," Holzman's contributions come from a completely different place. "The original wave of progressive bands was pretty much drawn from the jazz and classical worlds. Jordan comes from a classical tradition, and that is the difference between him and Adam," explains Wilson. "Adam definitely comes from the jazz tradition. What they have in common is that they both grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but at the end of the day, they come from two very different places. I like them both, but I think one of the things that I love about jazz is the spiritual quality that this kind of sensibility brings to rock music. I've always loved it; I don't think I was necessarily acknowledging it so much until I started working on the Crimson albums. Suddenly it all came home to me again that, other than in the very beginning, when it was more psychedelic, and there was a little bit of improvisation going on, Porcupine Tree had become quite regimented, quite clinical. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing. That's the sound of the band. But I realized that I was missing something in my own music, which made me fall in love with a lot of these bands. And not just progressive bands, but some of the Kraut Rock bands, for example, with that spiritual qualitythe improvisation, the living for the moment."The guitar spot has proved problematic for Wilson, though his recent recruit, Britain's Guthrie Govan, finally looks to be a player on the same exceptional level as Travis, Holzman, Beggs and Minnemann. "The guitar position has proved the only problematic one so far, but I think I got the right guy now," says Wilson, a feeling borne out by clips from Wilson's recent studio sessions, recording the follow-up to Grace for Drowning, due out in early 2013.That this core group has remained together since its inception speaks volumes. "I want to feel, when I get onstage, that my guysmy musicians, my bandare inspired by what I'm asking them to play. Not to blow my own trumpet, but there aren't a lot of things like this around for musicians of this caliber these days. One of the problems for great players is they do get stuck in this kind of, for want of a better term, 'jazz-fusion-guitar/drum-clinic ghetto.' And I think it's truer now than it was, certainly in the '70s. There were a lot more gigs where great players could play good material, also showing their own chops. There aren't many things like that around these days; maybe guys like Peter Gabriel, the kind of artist that musicians would love to play with. For years, Frank Zappa was, of course, the guy that everyone wanted to play with, but he's no longer around."So," Wilson continues, "while not putting myself on that level, in my own way I'm offering these guys a chance to show off what they can do within the context of what is, hopefully, good musical material. I can't think of anyone else that a guy like Marco [Minnemann] or Adam [Holzman] would be really, really inspired by, and I suppose that's one of the reasons why I've been lucky enough to get these guys. I would probably be having a lot more trouble keeping all of them if there were," Wilson says, chuckling. "But luckily for me, there aren't a lot of gigs for these guys."Wilson appreciates that it's a leader's responsibility to keep a band together, a sentiment that echoes's 2011 All About Jazz interview , where the saxophonist said:"I think one of the things we forget is that there are no musicians who get into the business to make money," Wilson says. "I've never met one; if there are any, I've still yet to meet them. People get into the music business because they have fallen in love with the idea of making music. They may ultimately become, by necessity, more financially minded, but the reason we all got into music in the first place is because we're in love with the idea of being able to express ourselves on these instruments."With the new record being engineered by renowned studio wizard Alan Parsonswho, in addition to his own successful career, engineered megahits like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (Harvest, 1973) and Al Stewart's Year of the Cat (RCA, 1976)this is the first time Wilson has written with this group in mind, and they'll be spending plenty of time together in 2013, when he embarks on a world tour for the forthcoming record that will take up much of the year.And Wilson couldn't be happier, though he had no idea, when he put this group together, that it would be as good as it has turned out to be. "I was surprised at how good it was," says Wilson. "Even removing myself from the equation, it was fantastic. I didn't really realize, until the first time we walked onstage for a show we did in Polandeven at that stage, having rehearsed with the band for two months, worked everything out ad infinitum with the lighting designer and the sound guy, planned everything, choreographed everythingeven at that point, I really didn't know if it was going to work or fall flat on its face."You can only rehearse so much," Wilson continues, "but when you walk onstage there are things that are still completely unknown and unexpected. I pretty much realized, by the end of the first show, that this was something special. But not just the bandthe whole concept; we did a dress rehearsal, and I thought, 'Do I look like a dick? Is this really ridiculous?' And you just don't know until you see the looks on the faces of the audience; then you know, 'OK, this is working.' You see the jaws drop, and you think, 'OK, they're really digging this.' It was scary, because at that moment I walked onstage, I'd put a lot of money into it. I'd put a lot of time into it, and my reputation was on the line. I'd hired people, but I had no idea if they were going to gel together, and I was lucky. I was lucky. You can plan, and you can rehearse, but there's always going to be 50 percent of it that's just pure chance."Wilson is no stranger to taking risks, but with Porcupine Tree's success growing almost exponentiallyfrom its debut, On the Sunday of Life (Delerium, 1991) through to its last studio recording, The Incident (Roadrunner, 2009)Wilson acknowledges that going solo under his own name has been a chancy proposition despiteor perhaps because ofthe popularity he's achieved with PT. "It's not easy; it's very hard," Wilson explains. "When I was going to do my first solo tour, I was told by Steve Hackettsomeone who has had very good experience with of this whole kind of thingthat when you go out on your solo tour, expect your audience to fall by 80 percent. So expect 20 percent of your audience to go with you, and it doesn't matter how much you are associated with it."Roger Waters found this when he left Floyd," Wilson continues. "In this business, brand name is everything. You can be the guy that writes everything, produces everything, plays everything, but the minute you stop using the brand name and go out under your own name, you lose so much of your audience. It was a brave thing for [Jethro Tull]'s Ian Anderson to do it with Thick as a Brick 2 (Chrysalis, 2012); he was probably tempted to do it as a Tull record, but he didn't. These kinds of thingseconomic things, commercial thingsin my situation, I did better than a lot of people expected; we probably had about 50 percent of the people that bought Porcupine Tree records buy my solo records. It was amazing. I was very pleased with that, but it's tough getting people to take it seriously, that this is not just a little side project. That's also a struggle, but I'm winning that battle, and I don't want to make it out like I'm not. I am winning that battle, but it's hard, and I'm constantly reminding people that this is not a side project; it's the most important thing I've ever done."In a way, it's history repeating itself, because that's exactly what happened with Porcupine Tree," Wilson continues. "The first three albums were de facto solo records, other than the occasional guest performance. The band came together in order to play live. I liked the way it sounded live so much that I decided to make it a band and started to write with the band in mind. So, in a way, it's simply the same thing again. The difference, this time, is I decided that I had the confidence to do it under my own name."And the other difference is that Porcupine Tree was, in many respects, an exercise in genre; this is not," Wilson concludes. "Porcupine Tree is something that was very much something designed to explore my interest in psychedelic and progressive music at a time when it was commercial suicide to even have a song that was more than five minutes long. Now I don't think that's true; actually, I think it's kind of a trendy thing now to be in a progressive band. The interesting thing here is that if you listen, particularly with my first solo album, there is as much the influence of my love of noise music, industrial music, electronic music and drone music. I think that's one thing that could never have happened with Porcupine Tree. When you have a group of musicians, you're inherently a democracy; the area you all meet on is, by definition, relatively small. By that, I mean the area upon which we can all agreethis is the kind of music that we want to playbecomes relatively small. And that, in a way, is what gives the band its identity. And I'm not knocking it. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing that makes us different."Grace for Drowning, and the material subsequently played on tour, is more intrinsically eclectic than anything Porcupine Tree has done. There are hints of fusion in the instrumental "Sectarian"references to recordings like King Crimson's Lizard (DGM Live, 1970) (which Wilson remixed in stereo and surround sound for the 40th Anniversary Series edition, released in 2009) or the 25-minute epic "Raider II," albeit filtered through Wilson's own prism, and one of his most flat-out beautiful songs on "Deform to Form a Star." But if the studio recording was a milestone for Wilson, live, the music has taken on more life, greater breadth and depth, even as the arrangements and overall length mirror the studio versions."It's different every night," Wilson confirms. "The arrangements are generally the same; there are the same number of bars for this and the same number of bars for that. But what happens is different every night; Marco is incapable of playing the same thing the same way twice [laughs]. Adam and Theo are similar; they come from the jazz world, where you don't repeat yourself. It's a really great combinationthe discipline and form of rock music but with the freedom and spirituality that comes from jazz improvisation. That is something that is still evolving, and now, with us finally making a record together, I'm hoping we'll be able to take things to the next level. This will be my music but played and contributed to by the band."Just as Wilson harks back to the spirit of progressive music of the '70s, his plans for recording the new album are similarly old-school, with the band recording the album live off the floor to capture its immediacy and interaction, and Wilson then using some additional time to layer overdubs. "We're going to LA for a week," says Wilson. "I've written seven pieces for the new record, four of which are ten-plus minutes, so it's quite a lot of material. We'll spend one day each, working on each track as a group, and then the band will go home, and I will spend another week overdubbing, and that'll be the record."It'll be quite old-school, and the reason I've hired Alan Parsons is because the way those guys made those records in the '70s is kind of a lost art," Wilson continues. "It's an art which is dying because we do have this new generation of producers and engineers who are used to ProTools and making records on computers. You get each musician in, in turn, they play to a click, and they don't interact with each other. You get separation, but I'm fed up with that. I've done records like that for 20 years, and now I realize one of the reasons I love those old '70s recordings: so much of it is because the drummer is speeding up and slowing down; there is leakage from the guitar into the drum mikes; some of the guitars are out of time and out of tune; not everything's perfect. And that's what make those records live and breatheor, at least, it's one of the reasons why they live and breathe. So the combination of Alan and this group performing the stuff live off the floor, this is another risky thing for me. But one thing I've learned from last year is that it's paid off for me, trying to challenge my established habits. It's worked great so far, so we're going to keep on doing it."One of the reasons why think it doesn't happen in the rock-and pop-music world is that the musicians are just not good enough, and I include myself in that category," Wilson admits. "If I was in a band of people all at my level, there would be no way we would consider making a record like this, in this way. I think that's another thing that was brought home to me by working on all those records [surround remixes]: how good the bands were and how they could do it. This band can definitely do it; I'm going to be in the control room a lot of the time for these sessionsI'm not even going to be playing. I'm writing the material, and I'll sing the material, but I'm going to be taking more of a director's role a lot of the time because they're way better musicians, and in a way, I have always dreamed of being in this position. Zappa was so good at it; his players were always much better musicians than he was. He had the ideas, and he wrote the music, but he got other people to play it who were better at playing it than he was. At the same time, it was kind of mutually beneficial; they all enjoyed playing music by the guy who had the ideasthose fantastic ideas."What this has done is make me raise my game as a writer," Wilson concludes. "Because the stuff I've written for this band to playI mean, it's not complicated, but it's more complex than anything I've written beforeI think that to be able to write for musicians of this caliber does make me start to think, really, at the very peak of what I'm capable of imagining and writing. That's been great to challenge myself. What can I write that Marco will actually find difficult to play? Not a lot. I'm not trying to suggest I'm writing difficult stuff just for the sake of it, because I really loathe that whole concept of complexity for its own sake. But at the same time, I like stuff that works on both levels. I like good songs that also have a level of intricacy, which means you can appreciate them from a musical perspective as well. And that's something I'm definitely doing for this record that I've never been able to do before. I mean, Gavin [Harrison, Porcupine Tree drummer] is extraordinary, but myself, Richard [Barbieri, keyboardist] and Colin [Edwin, bassist], are all more restricted in terms of our musical technique, so we have to limit ourselves in terms of what we can play and what we can pull off in a live context. With this band, it's a whole different ballgame, and I'm loving that."But beyond the issue of whether or not Porcupine Tree could play Wilson's current music is the question of would or should it do so. Back to Wilson's discussion of brand name, there may be more risks in going out under his own name now, with Porcupine Tree's 20-year history, but there's also more freedom and, paradoxically, more control. "I think the difference is that I would never ask the guys in Porcupine Tree to play music that I did not feel they would enjoy playing" says Wilson. "Whereas the difference, when you're hiring guys, is that although you still want them to enjoy playing the music, because they know it's my thing, they are more willing to try their hand at something else. Sort of like, 'You know, it's not what I'm into, but you know what? I'll go with it and I'll play it.'"When you have a band that's been together as long as Porcupine Tree, there are all sorts of internal politics, and I simply wouldn't want to be performing something with them if I didn't think they were enjoying it," Wilson continues. "By definition, that then becomes the band sound, and although that is limiting, I use the word in the sense that it can also be positive. Porcupine Tree has a very distinct sound which people instantly recognize, and that sound comes from what we can all agree to play. Another way of putting it might be to say, if you took an artist like Frank Zappa, can you imagine a catalog that eclectic being made ever by the same group of musicians? That sort of democracy is just not possible. Only a solo artist could create such an eclectic catalog. In many respects, he's been my role modelto be able to be in a situation where I can surprise people with my next move. I think that's the difference. I mean, this is a band, but it's not a band [laughs]; and this time I'm going to keep it that way."So where does that leave Porcupine Tree? On discussion boards, there are those who still see Wilson's current work as a side project away from PT and expect that he'll reconvene the group at a later date. Wilson has, in the past few years, stretched himself with projects also including No-Man, with singer Tim Bowness, Blackfield, with Israeli singer/guitarist/keyboardist Aviv Geffen, the solo drone/electronic music project Bass Communion and his recent Storm Corrosion (Roadrunner, 2012) duo with Opeth singer Mikael Akerfeldt. The success of Grace for Drowning and his new band is leading to, if not less work, then certainly a greater focus on what he considers most important to him."For me, right now, the things that are really enjoyable are the solo project and continuing to work on remixing classic records," Wilson says. "Those things have become the most enjoyable over the last three or four years. I never wanted to feel like that my career was becoming a machine, and the problem with the rock music world is that happens a lota lot of my friends are stuck in this tour-album, tour-album rut. That's not why I became a musician. I became a musician because I love making music, I love making different kinds of music, and I love making different kinds of music with different people and traveling and meeting people. That's what I love the most. Doing the remixing work has enabled me not only to work with a lot of people but also to meet and get to know a lot of the people who inspired me to make music in the first place. And doing the solo thing, for me, has been so inspiring, has made me confront a lot of my own habits and break patterns that I could easily have fallen into."I think one of the worst things I could've done would have been to go straight off the back of the last Porcupine Tree record into another album, another tour," Wilson continues. "It was just beginning to feel like it was becoming repetitive, like a sausage machine. I'm probably about halfway through my career; I've been doing it for 20 years, and let's say I've got another 20 years. Time to get into some different things, you know? And it's funny, again, how much resistance there is from the fan base. You know, I've done this for 20 years, I've made plenty of albums with this band, and I want to do some different things now, and really, there have been some quite hateful and offensive responses, though fortunately in the minority."It's a cliché for an artist to say that the new album they're working on is the best thing they've ever done," Wilson continues, "but in a way it's logical because whatever you're doing at the moment is the thing that reflects most closely where you are in your life and your emotional state in that moment. I feel very remote from things I made five years ago, let alone fifteen years ago. I don't recognize the person that made them, and the reason I don't recognize that person is because I'm not that person anymore, so it makes sense that whatever you're working on now is closest to your heart."But the fans' relationship to the music is very different from your own relationship," continues Wilson. "Some people take it very personally and are taking the Porcupine Tree thing very personally. I'm not particularly inspired to make a record with Porcupine Tree right now; therefore, the worst thing I could do would be to make a Porcupine Tree record. Who wants to hear a Porcupine Tree record made by people who are not really inspired to be making a Porcupine Tree record? The answer: a lot of people; there are a lot of people who would rather I made an album with Porcupine Tree that I'm not really into than an album under my own name, which I'm really inspired to make. I can't change that fact."Thankfully, this is a minority," Wilson concludes. "And I think most people do get it. I think I've engendered a career in which people expect the unexpected; certainly, with Porcupine Tree, we've reinvented the band several times, and so people have come to expect that. But, again, it's amazing how much the brand name is in some ways more important to people than even the sound changing. If you do something with a different name, it's more upsetting than if you completely change your sound. It's very strange to meall the politics that go on. Anyway, I'm working hard; I'm almost trying to overachieve, I think, even with the tour. I'm going out with a production that's even bigger than Porcupine Tree. I'm overachieving to try and convince people to take it seriously. And I think I'm winning the battle."When Wilson took his Grace for Drowning tour to Montreal in the fall of 2011, beyond an exceptional band performing exceptional music were equally exceptional production values, despite the performance hall's being roughly one-quarter the size of the 3,000-plus-seat venue that Porcupine Tree would normally have played in that Canadian city. The 800-seat Corona Theatre may have been smaller, but the visuals, the sound and the overall concept spoke of something much larger. Wilson may be focused on the art, but he's also aware of the practical realities, and with some modern technological help he was able to make a tour that felt big but on a small group budget. Things like using an iPad app so that his onstage guitar tech could adjust the monitor mix from the front-of-hall soundboard, rather than having a monitor-mix engineer onstage, meant one less body on the toura significant saving. And the use of a gauze-like curtain in front of the band for the first four songs added a unique visual at a relatively low cost."I think one of the things that modern computer technology makes possible is to do things that are not that different to what the big guys are going out doing," Wilson explains. "Right from the beginning, I've always been committed to the idea of the concert as a show and not just a gig; it's an audiovisual thing. Part of that came, from years ago, of being very self-conscious about the fact that I basically just stood there onstage and played. So you start thinking, 'Let's try and give the audience something to look at,' and you start experimenting with slides and lights and visuals. I got more into that while, at the same time, I've become more confident as a performer over the years; I started to enjoy performing a bit more. But, at the same time, the possibilities of presenting a kind of audiovisual experience became much easier because the technology made it possible."We are actually using quadraphonic sound," Wilson concludes. "It's not hard to get the promoter to install a couple of extra speakers in the back of the hall, but it does take some thought about what's really going to those back speakers, and not everything works in that context. These things are not hard to do if you just put your mind to it, and that's what I did: I choreographed the whole show on paper before even a note of music was played. And my kind of brief to the lighting designer and others was that we were going to do [Pink Floyd]'s The Wall (Harvest, 1979) on a budget. That was kind of my thing: we were going to try and present something in a small auditorium that had the same impact as going to see The Wall in an arenaand on a budget. It's surprising what you can do with a few laptops and the most important thing, of course: imagination."Wilson's Montreal showand Get All You Deservestarted and ended with music from Bass Communion, which has released nearly a dozen albums since its inception in 1998 with I (3rd Stone, 1998) through to the recent Cenotaph (Tonefloat, 2011). With a still rear-projection image from Lasse Hoile (Wilson's Danish visual-artist partner)a cloaked body that slowly, almost imperceptibly over the course of an hour, moved closer and closer as show time approachedrather than simply listening to some random music over the PA system to occupy time before the show, Wilson's performance actually began the moment the audience entered the hall, slowly insinuating itself first into the subconscious and then the conscious mind."That was one of the ideas right from the beginning," Wilson says. "I said, 'I don't want a support band.' The moment I walk into the auditorium, I want the show to have actually begun. But you're walking into a kind of environment-like installation or something, where you're part of it. But, again, it's amazing how much resistance I had from the audience. Some members of the audience hated it, saying 'Why are we having to sit here with this boring drone music and a static image?' And the answer is: 'You're not; you're not supposed to stand there and watch it,' but some people did. The idea is that you're a part of the environment; it's a textural thing for methe visual is part of the texture, the audio is part of the texture."It's amazing how many people hated it and said they were bored, that they thought they were supposed to stand there and watch it, but that was not the idea at all," Wilson continues. "That was, again, an attempt to get away from the traditional show with a support band or a DJ playing; I hate that. The idea is to make it so that the moment you walk in and the moment you leave, you've basically gone into a different world, making the transition from that into the performance and then out again. I even have an idea for the next tour that will take it to another level."