Please note: a lot of this information comes directly from Stephen Humphrie’s The Delerium Years 1991-1993 box set (if something reads like it was written by someone who seems like they know what they’re doing it probably wasn’t me!). This should not be seen as a replacement for his work, merely as a way for people to read this fantastic insight and history now that the box set is out of print.

In the early 1980s Porcupine Tree began as a joke between Steven Wilson and friend Malcolm Stocks, who Steven had met by placing an ad in a weekly music paper. Malcolm was one year older than Steven and lived one town over in Berkhamsted.

SW: “Malcolm wasn’t trying to be a career musician… but what he did have was a fabulous record collection. He got me into things like Van der Graaf Generator and Gong, because I didn’t about bands like that until I met him. He was a very good friend and someone who encouraged me.”

The two shared a sensibility for absurdist humour, and were taken with a fictitious band The Dukes of Stratosphear, a pseudonymous side project for the band XTC, and an affectionate homage to 1960s psychedelic music. Inspired, the pair dreamt up their own fake psychedelic groups; Malcolm created The Incredible Expanding Mindfuck and Steven? The Porcupine Tree. They even went as far as to create elaborate backstories for each “musician” in the groups, including several trips in and out of prison. Sadly, the antics of Sir Tarquin Underspoon, Mr. Jelly, The Expanding Flan, Timothy Tadpole-Jones, Master Timothy Masters and their loyal crew members Sebastian Tweetle-Blampton III and Linton Samuel Dawson have largely been lost to the annals of rock history.

SW: “We were basically creating an amalgam of many of our favourite musicians… We would take inspiration, for example, from Daevid Allen’s life. He was an Australian hippy who had started Soft Machine and Gong and spent time as a life coach. We would take stuff from The Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey and the Acid Tests. Syd Barrett and Peter Green would’ve been in there too. We would borrow elements from the lives of many of the musicians we listened to in order to create our own imaginary band’s mythology.”

It should be noted that none of these rock legends were accidentally shipped off to Africa inside a gorilla suit, which was the unfortunate fate of one of the musicians in the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck.

By the mid 1980s Steven had been forced to put some of his musical projects on hold as he entered adulthood and was hired to work for the computer company McDonnell Douglas. However, he still spent “every spare minute” he had to play, write and record as much of his own material as he could. Around this time Steven had just met and began writing with northern singer Tim Bowness, who Steven also met through the paper classified section. The two bonded by a shared love of pop music, art rock, British folk music, and Scott Walker, and began recording music as No Man is an Island (Except for the Isle of Man), which would later be shortened No-Man.

With No-Man as his new serious project, Steven needed an outlet for messing around! Steven began to create music to fit the mythology that he and Malcolm had created a few years earlier. Although Stocks provided a few passages of treated vocals and experimental instrumentation, his role in the project was mostly offering occasional ideas, with the bulk of the material being written, recorded, played, and sung by Steven Wilson.

SW: “I would ring him and up and say, ‘Hey Malcolm, I’ve recorded the first Porcupine Tree album’ and I’d bring it over and play it for him. Out of that came early songs like Space Transmission and some of the other things which are on the first record. Malcolm was really the person I was making that music for, just to amuse us both.”

Porcupine Tree’s music utilized lyrics written by Alan Duffy, who had posted an ad in a weekly music paper in the early 1980s. At first his lyrics were used for Steven’s high-school band Karma, when Steven was just 14 and Duffy was 26. Duffy’s lyrics touched on the following topics: a magical island where people can fly, a fish that pops its head above water and witnesses Armageddon, Merlin the magician casting spells for Marilyn Monroe, and that time when a toad gave sixteen kangaroos a lesson in water ballet. His words would be brought back by Steven to be used in material featured on On The Sunday of Life…, Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape, Up The Downstair and Staircase Infinities.

SW: “Alan was very much into the whimsical, surrealist children’s literature of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear… It’s one of the bedrocks of psychedelic music. If you listen to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ or any of Syd Barrett’s stuff, those influences are in there. Alan wrote lyrics in that style… I started writing songs with those lyrics because I wasn’t really interested in being a lyric writer or a singer. I haven’t seen him since the mid-80’s, but I assume he still gets the publishing royalties!”

“How did you team up with Alan Duffy and why is Porcupine Tree on the Delerium label and not on Alan’s own Imaginary label?” SW: “Actually, all of Alan’s lyrics for the Porcupine Tree date from the period 1983-85, long before I started recording Porcupine Tree music. We wrote the songs for an entirely different project that never came to much – I was very young – about 16 years old. Then in the late 80s when I started recording Porcupine Tree music, I had little confidence in my own lyrics so I went back to Alan’s and found they fitted very well. In one or two instances (‘Jupiter Island’ and ‘Nine Cats’ spring to mind) I even used the original music that I had written for the words many years earlier. When I started recording the cassettes I wasn’t really looking for a record deal at all. It was purely to satisfy my own musical whims. Porcupine Tree began entirely as a studio project without any CD/vinyl release in mind. I was not particularly interested in a record deal at that point and it was only after Delerium approached me and offered me the opportunity to record for them, that I finally began to see the possibilities of reaching a wider audience with CD releases. Although I briefly communicated with Alan to sort out the publishing rights for his lyrics, I still don’t know what he thinks of the Porcupine Tree or if he likes what I’ve done to his work. Having heard some of the material that he signed to Imaginary, I don’t think we would have fitted anyway.”

SW: “In the early days, Alan’s lyrics were very abstract, surreal, kind of divorced from reality, almost dreamlike. Very drug influenced lyrics. Because they were so abstract it didn’t feel like I was singing someone else’s soulful lament. If you take the lyrics from recent PT albums, for instance from the Lightbulb Sun album, which is a very personal album about relationships and the breakup of relationships, to give them to someone else to sing would be very odd. But when you sing about more abstract things or about subjects I used to in the early part of my career such as war, religion, drugs and more abstract concepts, they are easier for other people to interpret them in their very own way. Alan’s lyrics were never personal, they were always very surreal and he would very rarely use the words I or me. He didn’t write about emotions but more about state of mind, consciousness, drug influences. So it wasn’t hard for me to sing them with conviction, but it would be really hard for someone else to sing my more recent lyrics.”

“How do you write your songs or compositions, I mean, do you start from the lyrics or do you start from a piece of music?” PT: “I don’t actually write the majority of the lyrics. One of my collaborators in The Porcupine Tree, I was a big vague about who actually takes part in the project, but there is at least one other person who contributes the lyrics, a chap called Alan Duffy, who actually runs his own record label, called Imaginary Records, up in Manchester. He’s contributed the lyrics to most of the material, so in that sense I always have the lyrics first. But having said that, I never actually sit down with the lyrics and write the music to go with it; I write the music and then look through my folder of lyrics, and actually pick out the lyric that I think suits the mood, or the feel, or the direction that I want to take with a particular song. That’s certainly been the case of up till now, it’s a case of marrying the two elements up when they’re both fairly near completion.” “Mm. I see. So you couldn’t say that your songs were very personal?” PT: “I always produce the tapes and records myself. I’m very much in control; as I’ve already made the point I very much know how I want to record the sound. So I have this idea in my head, this overall conception of how the record should sound, so really I’m sitting there in the producer’s chair and I’m responsible for trying to realise that sound, the sound I hear in my head, putting it onto tape. I’m very lucky that I have my own sixteen track recording studio; I said I’m very lucky, I’ve actually built it up over a period of time, by working, working hard to make the money to actually buy that equipment, but I always saw that as a major priority, to build my own studio, because I knew that was the only way I could actually realise the ideas that I had. Because some of it, as you can probably realise by listening to the record, is the result of a lot of experimentation.” “Yeah.” PT: “And you get to hear the end results of that experimentation, but I also make a lot of mistakes along the way, and I’m in the fortunate position where I’m not paying to make those mistakes I can make those mistakes and discard them, without having to worry about the financial implications of doing that. So, for a record like On The Sunday Of Life I would record maybe twice as much material as I actually eventually use, and that will apply to all the future recordings as well.” “Since you’re getting your lyrics from Alan, would you say that it’s possible for you to reflect your own dreams, your own thoughts in your music?” PT: “Absolutely, yeah, I mean I think the performance, on guitar particularly, is just as expressive, from my own point of view, as actually singing a lyric. I mean, okay, you don’t have an actual narrative there, you don’t have words, but it’s possible for you to be just as expressive when you play the guitar, or a keyboard solo, or anything like that. I don’t feel that personal expression is the sole property of a singer or a lyricist.” “I see.” PT: “Also, I should make the point that I do write some of the lyrics, if I do have a particular idea that I want to get across, which has been the case with ‘Radioactive Toy’: there was actually something I wanted to get across very strongly, so I did write my own lyrics to ‘Radioactive Toy’. So there are exceptions to the rule.”

The first time Steven had incorporated Duffy’s music into his own music was during the summer of 1983, when Steven worked with fellow Tangerine Dream fan Simon Vockings, who lived down the road and owned a modular synthesizer, to make electronic music. Their project became known as Altamont.

SW: “When you’re at that age and have a passion for music, you just get together with anyone else in your vicinity that has a musical instrument… I was always the one editing things into ‘albums’. He just came over for the fun of making some music, but then a week later I’d present him with a cassette with artwork and track titles. ‘Hey, here’s the album we made last week.’ I’d edited and overdubbed various sections to create 20-minute pieces. I was the one who was always interested in the architecture of music.”

Aided and egged on by Malcolm Stocks, Steven Wilson had recorded many more Porcupine Tree songs, frequently borrowing the psychedelic tropes of other groups like Soft Machine, Pink Floyd and the Dukes of Stratosphear. Malcolm also had a go at creating music for The Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, but shortly afterwards he relocated to Devon in 1988 and The Incredible Expanding Mindfuck consequently dissipated from lore to legend and from legend to myth (that is, until Steven later resurrected the fake band’s name for a side project of krautrock-inspired albums in the mid-1990s).

Porcupine Tree, too, might have been relegated to the dustbin of history if not for a burgeoning underground scene of neo-psychedelic music. Steven noticed a potential audience for his playful recordings.

SW: “There was an artist called The Bevis Frond, who was pretty visible in the late ’80s–and actually still going strong to this day–making psychedelic music, quite lo-fi and all made at home. He was getting a fair deal of attention for it. I remember sending a tape to him. Nick Saloman is his real name, and he very kindly called me up and gave me a list of people he thought I should send my tape to. One of the people was Richard Allen, editor of Freakbeat magazine.”

When Richard Allen wasn’t co-editing the psychedelic music publication, he could typically be found at underground festivals, watching bands play in a field until the sun came up. The free festival scene, frequented by New Age travelers, gypsies, and hippies, merged with the dance-music rave scene in the late 1980s. One band, in particular, epitomised the blend of the various factions. With its blend of space rock, techno and ambient music, Ozric Tentacles became, in Richard’s words, “the house band of free festivals.” Their cassette tapes sold thousands of copies. Other groups tried to emulate their success. Freakbeat not only reviewed cassettes by upcoming bands, but also included flexidiscs with the magazine. Richard and Freakbeat co-founder Ivon Trueman decided to capitalise on the nascent scene by starting a record label named Delerium.

Richard: “At the time, I was getting lots of tapes… A tape turned up with a really boring insert. It just had two balloons on it and it said ‘Play Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm by Porcupine Tree.’ It had a really neatly handwritten letter. At the time, I was only in my early 20s and I was still living at home with my parents and so the tape kicked around my bedroom for months, along with many other demos and promo cassettes. Fate highlighted Steven’s tape when Tim Preece, a dear friend of mine–who appears as a fake member of Porcupine Tree in the very first promo photoshoot–was heading to a free festival and wanted a tape to play in his car. I grabbed a tape from the pile and gave it to him and it just happened to be Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm. When I arrived at the festival in another vehicle, Tim came up to me and said ‘That tape you gave to me is amazing! I though, ‘I’d better listen to that then!’ I remember listening to it for the first time on my Walkman when I was cycling to work and I specifically recall listening to ‘Radioactive Toy’ and then rewinding it and playing it again. I could see some commercial potential in it, particularly in America.”

When Richard got home that evening, he called Steven to see if anyone had shown any interest in the tape and offered him a slot on a planned Freakbeat compilation album. “I had been holding onto the tape for a while and, at the time, I thought it was amazing that nobody had already offered him a record deal but, in retrospect, I can’t imagine there were many labels queuing to sign a band that played that kind of music.”

The first Delerium release, a compilation titled Psychedelic Psauna, featured underground stalwarts such as Ozric Tentacles, The Bevis Frond, Magic Mushroom Band and also lesser-known groups such as The Coloured Plank, Cosmic Kangaroos, The Jasmine Love Bomb and Marshmallow Overcoat. Needless to say, Porcupine Tree’s music didn’t seem out of place in such hallucinogenic company.

Richard’s mail order company, Freak Emporium, produced a limited re-print of 1989’s Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm and 1991’s followup The Nostalgia Factory (…and other tips for amateur golfers).

Richard: “I hit on the idea that if we put out the tapes with a weird-looking sleeve, people who were buying Ozric Tentacles tapes would buy it… It was a bit of a con, because I packaged Steven’s music to look like a festival band. But they weren’t. I think in the minds of people who bought it, Porcupine Tree were a bunch of way-out hippies living in a farm somewhere and making this amazing music. In some ways, it was manufactured, but that fits in with the spirit with what Steven had done. We managed to make his joke into a reality.”

The tapes each sold several hundred copies. Richard then proposed releasing the material as two separate double LPs.

SW: “He said, ‘We’ve had a really good response to the compilation and the cassettes, so we would like to put out your cassettes as an album’… I said, ‘To be honest, I don’t think a lot of the stuff is good enough. Let’s instead collect the best music from both cassettes and make one double album.’ And that album became On The Sunday of Life…”

Steven set about compiling and re-sequencing the best of the cassette music. Richard Allen came up with a list of potential album titles on an A4 piece of paper for Steven to choose from, while Steven’s friend Mike Bennion created the album art of a woman diving through an orange landscape, seemingly suspended high up in the sky.

“The two cassettes that were released last year on the Delerium label, Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory, were they recorded in the same period?” PT: “No, in fact there was a difference in time between them; they came very soon after each other. Tarquin’s was started in late ’87 and finished in early ’89, and The Nostalgia Factory was begun immediately afterwards and finished in late 1990. As you know On The Sunday Of Life draws fairly heavily on those two cassettes. We sat down and we selected what we felt were the strongest, most successful pieces from those two tapes. And remember those two tapes actually amount to the equivalent of four LPs worth of material, so we selected the best 80 minutes of music, but we also did substantial remixing. In the case of this one track, ‘Radioactive Toy’, we completely re-recorded and re-constructed the music, and in fact we doubled its length in the re-recording from about 5 to 10 minutes” “Why were there booklets with the cassettes?” PT: “Why were there booklets? Well, originally, when I did the cassettes, they were very much just the projects that had been realised in a studio by one person – myself, and I thought it was a shame there wasn’t any particular history to go with the cassettes, kind of like one guy, in his studio, making the music he loves. So I created this complete history from scratch, this imaginary band, which I thought was fun at the time; I didn’t have particularly high expectations of the tapes at that point, I just thought it’d be nice if they sold, you know a hundred copies, of these tapes, and I was quite happy for that to happen, so I created this booklet just to give something for people to actually read when they’re listening to the tapes, you know. Some sort of bogus history of this imaginary band.” “Yeah, it confused a lot of people.” PT: “It confused a lot of people, and I think that’s quite positive in a way as well, because it gets people talking about you, and actually thinking about you. Nothing would have been worse for me than for people to have maybe played a track of the tape on the radio, and said, ‘Oh, well, that’s Porcupine Tree, and that’s all I can tell you about them.’ So it’s kinda nice that there was actually some kind of information for people to talk about; whether some of it was entirely true or not was another matter.”

Named after the 1965 French movie directed by Jean Herman (“Le Dimanche de la vie” or “The Sunday of Life”), On the Sunday of Life… includes a number of off-kilter interludes such as a daft science-fiction soliloquy (“Space Transmission”), a tape machine unspooling into chaos (“Message from a Self-Destructing Turnip”), and audio literally played backward (“Queen Quotes Crowley”).

“One of the questions a lot of people are asking themselves is ‘What’s the real name of Porcupine Tree?'” PT: “The real name of Porcupine Tree? Em. What makes you think that Porcupine Tree is a pseudonym?” “All the information that was available about Porcupine Tree so far seemed to point towards one person behind it all. But on the other hand it could be wrong of course…” PT: “You could be very wrong, and I’m gonna leave it fairly vague for the time being, yeah. Porcupine Tree for the moment certainly is gonna remain as a title of a project rather than referring to anybody individual or a group of individuals; it merely serves as a title of a project, and that project may well be a solo project at the moment, but it could equally become a group project in the future, so I’m kind of reluctant to set down any rules as far as who is or may not be The Porcupine Tree for the time being.” “But I can assume that you play a very important part in this project?” PT: “You can assume that, yes. You can assume that the project has a mastermind behind it and that person is myself, for the moment, although, again, that may change in the future.” “Okay. The music that’s available at this time can be found on two cassettes and one double album, right?” PT: “That’s right, yes.” “It has, let’s say a quite special form for these days.” PT: “Mm.” “And why did you choose this form. Is there a story behind it, I mean is it just your own personal choice, an old childhood dream come true…?” PT: “You could say that yes, I mean I obviously listen to a lot of music that I suppose you would consider to be in the same genre (psychedelic music and/or progressive music), but I think one of the reasons why possibly Porcupine Tree’s records are being perceived of as slightly more adventurous, and having slightly more scope than some other records in the field (at least that’s the way I feel about them), is because I also listen to so many other types of music as well, including jazz, classical, and also a lot of contemporary popular and rock music as well. You’ll notice that all the things I put out, whether they be the cassettes or the albums, have always been quite long; in fact the two tapes are both double album length, and I feel that that particular format suits the Porcupine Tree music, because there’s incredible diversity in the styles that I actually move through when I’m working on a Porcupine Tree record. So you are moving from complete ambient soundscapes to almost cheap psychedelic pop, and then moving through a jazz improvised instrumental section and then on to something completely different. So I find the double album format suits that range quite well.” “So could we say you have a preference in music towards the, let’s say, the early seventies type of progressive because in those days double concept albums flourished like flowers in a field.” PT: “You could say that I have a preference for that principle, that idea, the idea of a double concept album is one that appeals to me. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a great fan of a lot of the records that came out in that particular area. I mean, obviously there are a few excellent ones, but there were also a few that I would consider to be very, very poor indeed.” “Yeah, some of the worst ever made, like Tales From Topographic Oceans.” PT: “Tales Of Topographic…; I think The Who’s Tommy is a very poor record, but then of course there are great masterpieces in that field as well, things like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which is a great record, and also there are the double albums that aren’t necessarily concept albums, which I think are great records, like Can’s Tago Mago; the first Pink Floyd double album, Ummagumma, is a very, very big influence on my music. In fact I always used to tell people that the main reason for The Porcupine Tree coming about was an unnatural obsession with that particular Pink Floyd record, because I did have an incredible obsession with that record, when I was young, and still do, to an extent.” “I’m glad to hear it, because it’s one of my favourite albums of all times.” PT: “It’s certainly in my top 10 of all time, yes.”

As Richard Allen had predicted, “Radioactive Toy” had crossover appeal. BBC Radio DJ Mark Radcliffe regularly played it on his show.

SW: “I remember the first time my mum heard my music on BBC radio she was really excited. Much more than I was in fact! I think that she was beginning to understand that maybe I did have something that could develop into a career.”

The same year that On The Sunday of Life… was released, Steven’s band with Tim Bowness, No-Man, were signed to One Little Indian Records and received a publishing deal. Steven made a decision and resigned from his IT job.

SW:” I ended up working for them for five years. I thought it would only be five months! I could finally go to my mum and my dad and say, ‘I’ve got a record contract and I’m giving this up.’ I didn’t hesitate for a second. I think a lot of people might have said to themselves, ‘OK, I’ve got a good career here. I’m earning a good wage. I’ve been doing this five years now and I’ve got a lot invested in this. Wouldn’t it be wiser to stick with it?” But I still knew that my destiny was to be a professional musician.”

Both Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory were reissued on cassette the year before in a limited edition of 300 copies. In 1994, Delerium released Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape, a limited-edition compilation of material from the cassettes that hadn’t made it onto On The Sunday of Life…

Tracklist

A: “First Love”

“Music For The Head” – 2:42 “Jupiter Island” – 6:12 “Third Eye Surfer” – 2:50 “On The Sunday of Life” – 2:07 “The Nostalgia Factory” – 7:28

B: “Second Sight”

“Space Transmission” – 2:59 “Message From a Self-Destructing Turnip” – 0:27 “Radioactive Toy” – 10:00 “Nine Cats” – 3:53

C: “Third Eye”

“Hymn” – 1:14 “Footprints” – 5:56 “Linton Samuel Dawson” – 3:04 “And The Swallows Dance Above the Sun” – 4:05 “Queen Quotes Crowley” – 3:48

D: “Fourth Bridge”

“No Luck With Rabbits” – 0:46 “Begonia Seduction Scene” – 2:14 “This Long Silence” – 5:05 “It Will Rain For a Million Years” – 10:51

Total length: 1:16:18

Cassettes

Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm (Words From a Hessian Sack) – 1989

Side One: “Studio LP”

“Music for the Head (Here)” – 2:44 “Jupiter Island” – 6:09 “Nun’s Cleavage (Left)” – 2:45 “Clarinet Vignette” – 1:18 “Nun’s Cleavage (Right)” – 1:09 “Space Transmission” – 2:56 “Message from a Self-Destructing Turnip” – 0:28 “Radioactive Toy” – 5:49 “Towel” – 3:33 “Wastecoat” – 1:10 “Mute (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)” – 8:06 “Music for the Head (There)” – 1:24

Side Two: “Live LP”

“No Reason to Live, No Reason to Die” – 11:09 “Daughters in Excess” – 6:46 “The Cross” – 8:17 “Hole” – 1:34 “Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape” – 10:48

Total length: 76:52

The first Porcupine Tree release. Although Porcupine Tree was officially active since 1987, some of these songs can be dated back to 1986 according to the liner notes of the 2000 vinyl reissue of Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape and the Delerium Years 1991–1993 box set.

Tracks 1 through 7 and a re-recorded version of “Radioactive Toy” would be released on On the Sunday of Life…. “Nun’s Cleavage (Left)”, however, was renamed “Third Eye Surfer”, with tracks “Clarinet Vignette” and “Nun’s Cleavage (Right)” being indexed as one track called “On the Sunday of Life”. The rest of the tracks, including the original version of “Radioactive Toy”, would be released on CD for the first time on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape in 1994. In 2000, this was re-released on vinyl, with “The Cross” and “Hole” being replaced by “Out”, track 8 from Love, Death & Mussolini.

The studio side was recorded in 1988/89 at Periscope Station, Devon.

The live side was recorded at the following venues on tour in October/November 1988:

“No Reason To Live, No Reason to Die” – Elysee Monmatre, Paris (Recorded direct to cassette tape)

“Daughters in Excess” – Dingwalls, London (Recorded on 4 track tape and remixed in Devon)

“The Cross / Hole / Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscpe” – Greenpeace Fayre (Recorded on 8 track using the No Man’s Land Mobile. Overdubbed and remixed in Devon)

The liner notes also includes:

Tales From Jupiter Island It was about 9:30PM… and I had just finished spraying myself silver and brown with a bicycle pump fitted to a tin of mushy peas. I was feeling a little dejected and needed some solitude, so (naturally) I decided to hire a dolphin and go solo in my bedroom. As I lay on my bed clutching a selection of testicles to my breast I began to feel as though I was being watched… paranoia set in. “GET OUT !!!” I thought and ran for the door. I pulled on the door handle and it came away in my hand and turned into a stomach pump which tried to force its way down my throat. The faint sound of “The Professionals” theme tune was echoing in my head – Lewis Collins whispered into my ear “The Aspidistra’s need a drop more potassium dear”. What Was Going Down?? Ha! You Would Not Understand! I SLOWLY LOOKED AROUND ME… to my amazement pictures and photographs on the walls had begun to move – one of these, a lithograph entitled “Donkey’s Tool Kit” began giggling hysterically. Soon all the pictures were laughing… AT ME! I grasped a nearby giraffe and flung it towards the hysterical items of visual stimulation. It missed and plummeted through a pot hole that opened in the wall. Out of this hole a large fridge-freezer flew and began to hover above my bedroom window – the door of the freezer blew open and out walked two creatures that I will describe thus… They stood three feet high with human legs but piano keys for feet… a stomach but no chest or head and their arms grew from their pelvis! Each was equipped with a copy of Marjorie Peep’s “5,000,001 Uses for a Hessian Sack”, a work with which I was not familiar but which held a curious fascination for me (you will understand this). Snow White and Bambi Had Never Prepared Me For This! The creatures moved with the speed of a thousand gazelles and their prey stood no chance. Their giant hands scooped the helpless pictures and photographs into giant hessian sacks. “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” I screamed. One of the creatures referred me to page 2,523 in “5,000,001 Uses for a Hessian Sack”. It read: No. 4,299,325: Scooping Hysterical Pictures (also wall mounted photographs) into a Hessian Sack At this point it took out a ballpoint pen and placed a tick at the bottom of the page… then it and its companion were gone. I WAS FLABBERGASTED! The whole thing was over in the time it takes for something that doesn’t take very long to happen to happen. Then… I noticed that the fridge-freezer was still hovering by my window. The door opened again and this time a banana walked out and peeled itself to reveal a lemon sewing box which exploded into millions of bluebottles who flew out of the window to the sound of Wagner’s unpublished “Ode to a Half Eaten Yoghurt – Opus 68989”. Doctor, Do You Think I’m Going Mad??? What you have just read is an episode from the life and times of the people of Jupiter Island as seen through the eyes of an earthling called Nigel. These curious creatures have but one aim in life: to tick off every page in the gigantic volume “5,000,001 Things To Do With a Hessian Sack” by Marjorie Peeps. They journey the universe with a copy of the book and a large supply of hessian sacks hoping to chance upon situations of which the likelihood of occurrence is somewhere in the region of a trillion-billion to one. For example: No 1,892,674: Using a Hessian Sack to quell 258 billion rioting swahili quantity surveyors intent upon moulding a statue of an ant’s foot from a thirty seven tonne lump of guario COME ON LET’S FLY TO JUPITER ISLAND……………………

Personnel (fiction) / “Tripping Musicians Extraordinaire”:

The Porcupine Tree – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, flute, koto and vocals

Sir Tarquin Underspoon – organ, electric piano, synthesisers and vocals

Mr Jelly – bass guitar

The Expanding Flan – drums, percussion, drum computer and spoken word

Timothy Tadpole-Jones – acoustic Guitar, percussion

Sebastian Tweetle-Blampton III operates the delay circuits and mixing desk

Solomon St. Jemain – guitar on ‘Wastecoat’, drum computer on ‘Towel’ and spoken word

Master Timothy Masters – oboe, cor anglais

Linton Samuel Dawson operates the light show

Alan Duffy unwittingly provided lyrics and tales from Jupiter Island

JC Camillioni kindly lent us the No Man’s Land mobile

Also featured – about 30 years of musical history and some illicit substances

Love, Death & Mussolini EP – 1990

Side One: “The Extended Player”

“Hymn” – 1:22 “Footprints” – 5:56 “Linton Samuel Dawson” – 3:04 “And the Swallows Dance Above the Sun” – 4:12 “Queen Quotes Crowley” – 4:40

Side Two: “The Long Player”

“No Luck With Rabbits” – 0:47 “Begonia Seduction Scene” – 2:34 “Out” – 8:59 “It Will Rain for a Million Years” – 4:05

Total length: 35:39

The song “Out” was later included on the vinyl edition of the compilation album Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape and the 2013 CD reissue of the album.

Love, Death and Mussolini is an E.P. E.P. stands for ‘extended player.’ An ‘extended player’ is longer than a single but not long enough to be called an L.P. (a long player). Here then are 3 songs and 2 instrumentals, new material from the band Porcupine Tree. These 5 tracks last for about 20 minutes in total. 20 minutes is a good duration for an ‘extended player’. However, Love, Death and Mussolini takes advantage of the cassette medium by including an additional 17 minutes of music taking it to L.P. (long player) length. This is known as ‘value for money’. In the music industry it is known as ‘marketing’. Do your accounting to the sound of Porcupine Tree.

The release also includes a page with purchasing information of the (at the time 2) Porcupine Tree releases.

Porcupine Tree – Objects of Whimsy Porcupine Tree are a 5 piece band dedicated to preserving the spirit of sixties psychedelia and the progressive music of bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine in a more contemporary setting. They work from their Periscope Station studio in Devon and lace their music with a distinctive personality and sense of humour. Porcupine Tree – Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm – £3.50 A double LP on a chrome cassette, this is one of the most exquisitely crafted psychedelic/progressive crossover LPs ever recorded. One LP features a variety of short pieces ranging from psychedelic pop to swirling atmospheres and voiceovers, the other features longer compositions including the apocalyptic 21 minute ‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’. The quality and execution are superb throughout. Comes with a 15 page booklet. ‘One of the most beautiful pieces of modern psychedelia I have ever heard.’ – ISMO magazine ‘The best thing I’ve heard in ages.’ – RAT distribution Porcupine Tree – Love, Death and Mussolini – £3.00 A cassette E.P. of Porcupine Tree’s exquisite experimental pop music recorded at No Man’s Land and Periscope Station during the Autumn of 1989. ‘Footprints’ is a majestic fusion of acoustic guitars, power pomp, and dreamlike vocal. ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’ is psychedelic whimsy and ‘And the Swallows Dance Above the Sun’ is a chaotic electric backdrop to a hypnotic and extremely beautiful song. In addition there are two instrumentals, the tape collage of ‘Hymn’ and the classic ‘Queen Quotes Crowley’ featuring a variety of studio processing to create reverse guitars, speed guitars and varispeed voices set against a pulsing rhythm. As if this wasn’t enough the cassette features an additional 17 minutes of out-takes, demos and live material to take the tape up to LP length. A classic. Porcupine Tree Cassettes Are Available From: No Man’s Land

82 Cowper Road

Boxmoor

Hemel Hempstead

Herts

HP1 1PF

Personnel (fiction):

The Porcupine Tree – vocal, electric and acoustic guitars, bass

Sir Tarquin Underspoon – organ, mellotron, keyboards

The Expanding Flan – drums, percussion

Solomon St. Jemain – glissando guitars and vocals on “Queen Quotes Crowley”

JC Camillioni – programming, soundscapes

The Nostalgia Factory (…and other tips for amateur golfers) – 1991

“Hymn” – 1:22 “Footprints” – 5:56 “Linton Samuel Dawson” – 3:04 “And the Swallows Dance Above the Sun” – 4:12 “Queen Quotes Crowley” – 4:40 “No Luck with Rabbits” – 0:47 “Begonia Seduction Scene” – 2:34 “Colours Dance Angels Kiss” – 3:00 “Prayer” – 1:50 “The Nostalgia Factory” – 8:15 “This Long Silence” – 6:51 “Sinatra Rape Scene” – 0:39 “Hokey Cokey” – 5:05 “Landscare” – 3:16 “Delightful Suicide” – 1:12 “Nine Cats” – 3:51 “Split Image” – 1:58 “It Will Rain for a Million Years” – 10:50

Total length: 69:29

Tracks 1 through 7, an edited version of track 10 and tracks 11, 16 and 18 were released on the official debut album, On the Sunday of Life…, in 1992. The rest of the songs, besides “Sinatra Rape Scene”, were later released in 1994 on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape (although “Colours Dance Angels Kiss” was retitled as “Track Eleven”, and “Hokey Cokey” was retitled as “Execution of the Will of the Marquis de Sade”). An edited version of “Sinatra Rape Scene” was released on Up the Downstair, the second album, in 1993 under the title “Monuments Burn into Moments”.

Production

Steven Wilson – production, remix and remaster [1997, 2004, 2007, 2016 versions]

Mike Bennion – cover design

Andy Cleal – photography

Label: Delerium Records

Release: 12th May 1992

Publishing: Published by Hit & Run Music Publishing, later Hands Off It’s Mine Publishing

Released on May 12th 1992 as a gatefold 2LP and CD

“Recorded and mixed on various home studio setups 1984-91” – 91-93 yhd section

Richard: “Steven came up with the idea for the album art… He and Mike Bennion the designer ‘borrowed’ the concept, funnily enough, from a 1930s railway poster of a woman diving in a swimming pool. They then transposed the pose of the swimmer onto a skyline above a town. From the outset Steven wanted Hipgnosis quality album cover artwork, which was a bit of a headache for a small label with no budget, but his vision was the right one.”

“On The Sunday Of Life is the tile of your first vinyl release.” SW: “Yes.” “On The Sunday Of Life. It’s a joyful title.” SW: “Mm.” “And the cover of the album is a bit sombre, is a bit gloomy.” SW: “Yes. I can give you a very good analogy for that: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. The title is very, very… ‘Wish You Were Here’ is an expression associated with people who are having a great time on holiday and they write back to their friends ‘wish you were here’, so it’s a very joyful expression. But you look at the sleeve and it’s a very very peculiar, very alien atmosphere that’s presented by the sleeve, and I wanted that same juxtaposition between the very joyful title and this kind of out there, otherness quality to the record, and the Pink Floyd sleeves, particularly the work of the artist Hipgnosis, or the group of artists who work under that title of Hipgnosis, always had that quality, and I love that quality. I want to try and bring that back, because again I get a bit tired of this kind of psychedelic and progressive music having these wacky psychedelic…” “Splashed out…” SW: “Splashed out things…. It’s very typical, it’s very boring. It was great in 1967, but really, that area of using photography in the way Hipgnosis do, has been very underused I think, in the last 10-15 years, and I’d like to see it used again, and that’s why I’m kind of championing…” “You could use computer graphics…” SW: “Computer graphics, we thought about that; unfortunately computer graphics is very much associated with…” “New wave…” SW: “The new wave, and the dance craze, certainly in Britain. Bands like The Shamen, and some of the other rave bands are using computer graphics, so it’s become associated very much with the extreme use of technology. I’m kinda trying to fuse the two, the psychedelic, the more organic quality that psychedelic and progressive music had, and the modern use of technology. So I’m looking for a middle ground, and I thought that style, the use of photography, but distorting that photography… the photograph on the front of the album is obviously made up from two photographs, so you’ve got this interesting juxtaposition of two different photographs, that you wouldn’t normally associate with each other, in the way that you… look at the front cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals, you’ve got a pig floating over a power station; that’s not something you would see walking down the street, so it’s something when you see it, it really makes you think, or makes you laugh, or whatever, but it provokes a response. And that’s why I’m particularly fond of that particular style of artwork, and I think I will continue to use that style. I’m very lucky that I also know a graphic designer who’s very good and who designed that sleeve; he’s very good at designing those kind of sleeves.”

nostlagia factory – Writing Credits: All tracks written by Steven Wilson except “Footprints”, “Linton Samuel Dawson”, “And The Swallows Dance Above The Sun”, “Colours Dance Angels Kiss”, “The Nostalgia Factory”, “This Long Silence” and “Nine Cats” written by Steven Wilson / Alan Duffy, “Queen Quotes Crowley” written by Malcolm Stocks, “Begonia Seduction Scene” and “Landscare” written by Steven Wilson / Malcolm Stocks and “Split Image” written by Steven Wilson / Michael France

seaweed farm – Writing Credits: All tracks written by Steven Wilson except “Jupiter Island” written by Steven Wilson / Alan Duffy, “Clarinet Vignette” and “The Cross” written by Prince

mussolini – Writing Credits: All tracks written by Steven Wilson except “Footprints”, “Linton Samuel Dawson” and “And The Swallows Dance Above The Sun” written by Steven Wilson / Alan Duffy, “Queen Quotes Crowley” written by Malcolm Stocks and “Begonia Seduction Scene” written by Steven Wilson / Malcolm Stocks

2016 CD: When I purchased my first digital tape machine in 1989, I copied the Porcupine Tree analogue mixes onto DAT and used these digital copies as the source for all releases from then on. None of this really mattered when I was just duplicating the music onto cassettes, but when it was later released on CD and vinyl I carried on using the 16 bit DAT copies in the belief that they faithfully represented the original analogue tapes. I also felt I needed to do something about the tape noise / hiss on many of the tracks, so the music was subjected to various denoising processes, EQ and filtering to minimise it. Consequently previous editions of the album were never exactly satisfactory to me, but I always assumed that this was down to the sonic limitations of the recordings. That was until I listened to the original analogue tapes for this edition, and was surprised to find that the tone of the music was much richer and the stereo image wider, and I now realise how poor the analogue to digital convertor must have been on that first generation DAT recorder. Anyway, the upshot of this is that while I’m certainly not going to claim that this album is some kind of sonic masterpiece, this is at least the best On the Sunday of Life… has ever sounded, with a wider stereo image, greater dynamic range, and much more vibrant and natural sonics. YHD waas remastered 2012 btw

talk about Tape Experiments 85

delerium box set

“How much of a band is Porcupine Tree and, how much of it is your singular vision and can you tell us bit about some of the other musicians that have passed through or contributed to Porcupine Tree’s music?” SW: “For the first two albums and the Voyage 34 single, Porcupine Tree was Steven Wilson and Steven Wilson was Porcupine Tree. My friend Malcolm Stocks appeared on certain tracks on the first album, and on the Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape collec­tion. He can’t really play that well – he won’t mind me say­ing so! – but he adds a certain bizarre flavour to whatever he con­tributes to. Malcolm has been important to Porcupine Tree in other ways, particularly early on, because a lot of the early tracks were recorded for his amusement only – he also helped me invent the fictional history printed with the cas­sette releases. In fact at one stage we were going to make the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck his project and record some albums under that name with him on vocals and guitar.”

Song Details: Album Tracks

Due to the sheer number of instruments I’m sure Steven used, and the incredibly varied and psychedelic sounds on the album (making it hard to discern what is what), I will simply say “all instruments” (however, the 91-93 Delerium box does include detail for the Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape instruments used, so this is just for the main album). Additionally, I do not include the fictional personnel below. You can find this information in the “Cassettes” section above instead. Additionally, I have not included the cassette versions of these songs as “demo” versions, I have simply included the original names alongside the final versions on On The Sunday of Life and Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape. As such the track lengths may differ very slightly from the cassettes to final releases (ie. “Prayer” being 1:50 on cassette but 1:38 on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape).

01. “Music For The Head (Here)” / “Music For The Head” – 2:42

Steven Wilson – all instruments

“Some journeys never end……” tarquin

02. “Jupiter Island” – 6:12

Steven Wilson – all instruments

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

You’d never suspect that On The Sunday of Life… wasn’t made under the influence of anything stronger than a cup of PG Tips. Not after hearing “Jupiter Island” and “Linton Samuel Dawson”, psychedelic ditties with helium vocals that sound like the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz.

“The tales of the strange creatures from Jupiter Island and their quest will be serialized on future Tree records. This is just a brief taster to set the scene and is a delightful invitation by one of the Hessian Sack Bearers to join it on a flight to its planet.” tarquin

“‘Jupiter Island’, for example, which is very joyful, is a completely different kind of song [to ‘And The Swallows Dance Above the Sun’].” PT: “Mm. Well, ‘Jupiter Island’ is one of those songs that I would put into the category of pure psychedelic pop. And the lyric is not particularly meaningful, there’s no deeper meaning there, it’s really just an exploration of various psychedelic images, and if you read the lyric it reads just like a kind of a series of images, that again you might experience under the influence of some drug. So it’s really just a psychedelic poem set to music, which I have to say is very inspired by the very early Pink Floyd, you know like the kind of nursery thyme quality that pieces like ‘Scarecrow’ and ‘The Gnome’ had to them. A kind of Syd Barrett nursery rhyme quality. Also, I remember when I did that piece, I’d just been listening to a track by The Dukes Of Stratosphear, called ‘Bike Ride To The Moon’, which you may know…” “Yeah.” PT: “Which obviously in itself is a pastiche of another type of…” “Very well done!” PT: “Very well done, I mean I love XTC as well, they’re one of my favourite bands, very clever; and I just listened to ‘Bike Ride To The Moon’ when I came to do ‘Jupiter Island’, and I think they’re quite related actually.” “Aren’t you afraid a bit… I hope you don’t care, but aren’t you afraid a bit that with all these psychedelic lyrics etc. you’re going to be categorised among, let’s say, the old monsters, I mean, that people are just gonna write you off as an old hippie…” PT: “Yes, that does worry me, I mean, I will be honest: that does worry me, but I would also say that there is an element of that in the past, which you shouldn’t necessarily take it as granted that that will continue in the future. As I must confess that when I started The Porcupine Tree it was very much a fun thing, it was just making music because I loved the idea of making music. I’ve reached a point now, about four or five years on, where the records are beginning to be taken seriously by the people who listen to them. I’m obviously aware of the fact and I’m beginning to take the music seriously myself, so you could draw an analogy between The Pink Floyd story again. You could say that on the early Pink Floyd albums the lyrics were fairly meaningless, they were just nursery rhyme lyrics; when you look five years on you got works like Dark Side Of The Moon, which are incredibly politically aware, and also very, very dark in their imagery. I’m also looking to explore the area more fully in the future, but without losing a degree of that tongue in cheek quality. I always thought it Pink Floyd ever had one fault, it was that they took themselves a bit too seriously.” “They got a bit humourless.” PT: “They got a bit humourless, and I don’t want to lose that sense of humour, but on the other hand, it’s a case of striking a balance between, I think, pieces which people can just listen to for pure pleasure, and pieces which people can listen to to make them think, which will actually provoke thought, provoke comment, or confront people’s preconceptions or expectations. Pieces like ‘Radioactive Toy’, you know, and I think they can they can coexist on the same record, a piece like ‘Jupiter Island’ can coexist with a piece like ‘Radioactive Toy’. I like that diversity; some people might not like that diversity. People might come and say, ‘I like ‘Radioactive Toy’, but what’s this psychedelic pop crap you’ve got on the record’, or alternatively people might say, ‘I love the psychedelic pop, but what’s all this pompous serious crap you’ve got on the record’, so I realise I’m never gonna satisfy everybody, but I’m out to satisfy myself primarily, so if I like making diverse records then I will continue to do so.”

03. “Third Eye Surfer” / “Nun’s Cleavage (Left)” – 2:50

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

John Marshall – sampled drum solo

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 as “Nun’s Cleavage (Left)” before inclusion as the title track on On The Sunday of Life

original cassette kept old name

SW: “I took a fabulous John Marshall drum solo from the Soft Machine album Six and played over the top of it… Later on, when I became better known, I had to clear all that with John. But at the time, of course, I didn’t think it was going to be an issue. I just used to steal stuff from records. I stole flute motifs and drum rhythms. But, in my defence, this was the golden era of sampling. The Beastie Boys, DJ Shadow, and Del la Soul were constructing entire records from samples. So it wasn’t like I was doing anything particularly unfashionable. Quite the opposite, I was doing something that was quite hip. I was just sampling from records to give my records a broader musical palette and a wider vocabulary of sound. It was only later that I had to go back and replace all that stuff.”

04. “On The Sunday of Life” / “Nun’s Cleavage (Right)” / “Clarinet Vignette” – 2:07 / 1:09 / 1:18

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 as “Clarinet Vignette” and “Nun’s Cleavage (Right)” before inclusion as the title track on On The Sunday of Life (both tracks were put together into one)

“The clarinet on this piece is actually an oboe but it didn’t rhyme. That’s poetic justice for you.” – taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes

05. “The Nostalgia Factory” – 7:28

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on On The Sunday of Life

SW: “One thing I’ve tended to experience with the British music press is that if you try to talk to them about the history of music, their knowledge often doesn’t go back beyond the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays.”

The title track from the second cassette. According to the Stars Die compilation, Steven’s main inspiration for the song was The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

“The Nostalgia Factory, the title track of your second cassette…” PT: “Yes.” “I think there’s a story behind this.” PT: “There is a story behind The Nostalgia Factory: the title of The Nostalgia Factory was not the title that Alan originally sent me the lyric with. I wanted to call the album The Nostalgic Factory, or the second cassette, rather, The Nostalgic Factory, kind of as a …. it’s a little dig, if you like, at what I consider to be a rather empty form of psychedelic and progressive music, that’s tended to exist basically from the late seventies onwards, particularly prevalent now. While I don’t necessarily dislike the music, what I do find a little bit disappointing is the reluctance to move into new areas. Now obviously that element is in my music as well, but I’m looking to take it one step forward, I’m looking to actually make it relevant in 1992, so that I can appeal just as much to the person who goes out and listens to dance music and goes to clubs as I can to the old hippies, who probably, you know, just have been massive fans of Pink Floyd and collected records of Hawkwind or whatever. So I’m kind of trying to bridge that gap. Now I think it’s always a cop-out when bands don’t do that; they’re kind of happy to rest on their laurels, and preaching to the converted, they’re preaching to this very small circle, and it is unfortunately a fairly small cult audience we’re talking about here. I mean, The Ozric Tentacles I guess are probably the most successful psychedelic or progressive band, whatever you want to call it, for quite a long time, but I think even they are gonna find it very difficult to improve on their current level of sales, because their music doesn’t speak to people in the way that it should. Firstly, they don’t use lyrics, which unfortunately is a …. I mean I don’t object to that, I think there are a lot of very important instrumentals around, but the lack of using vocalists and lyrics is gonna be a problem for them in increasing their audience. And also the fact that all their records tend to sound like new age approximations of a Gong record from 1973. Okay, now that might be very pleasant to listen to, and I , you know, I do enjoy listening to the Ozrics, but I don’t particularly think it’s important in the overall scheme of things. It’s not making any important statements at all. It’s just like merely satisfying an appetite for nostalgia, and so, when I called that cassette The Nostalgia Factory, it was very much a tongue in cheek… it was an ironic title to give it, because I felt I was actually bringing something fresh to the music. I’ve always been a very strong advocate of the use of technology, that’s really one thing that really separates The Porcupine Tree from other artists in the field, who really would be quite happy to turn out 13th Floor Elevators or Hawkwind pastiches, I think, for evermore. That’s my personal view.” “It’s up to them, of course.” PT: “It’s up to other people, yeah. But that’s the way I hear, hear that particular music. I like something to be a little bit fresh and a bit more experimental.”

Lyrics from “The Nostalgia Factory” that are sung with heavy fx rendering them almost incomprehensible but are still included in the liner notes seem to be taken from the original Karma version of “Nine Cats” (thanks to Thuur Michels for this tidbit of information and the following transcription):

Part 1: A caterpillar crawled to me and said:

What goes on inside your head?

You can see as much as me

Close your eyes, what do you see? I watched nine cats dance on the moon

A blue [?] stalked into my room

He bowed his head to me and knelt

To reveal the cards that had been dealt The queen of harts and four black kings

He turned them in to burning rings

[unclear 2 lines] Four clouds appeared outside my door

And through the window saw four more

And on the back of a peach [?] cloud sat

Rainbow smiles in wizard’s hats They threw five clocks down on my bed

[unclear]

And turned into footprints on my wall

Sequined tears began to fall The caterpillar stared at me and said:

If that’s what goes on inside your head

You can see much more than I

And turned into a butterfly Part 2: The butterfly sailed on a breeze

Passed a field of barbed wire trees

Where golden dragons chased around

Pampered puppies on the ground Two silver trout set way on high,

and watched a royal samurai

Put two black orchids in a box

And strap it to a laughing fox The pharaoh brought a crooked spoon,

and gave it to a blue baboon

Who filled it full of virgin snow

And wandered in the afterglow [unclear]

Remembering all the yesterdays

Now they’re knocking on the door

I looked around and [unclear]

As you can see, this similarity (see below for the “Nostalgia Factory” lyrics) implies a connection; the caterpillar that crawls to the protagonist in “The Nostalgia Factory” becomes the butterfly that “sailed on a breeze” in “Nine Cats”.

Lyrics:

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06. “Space Transmission” – 2:59

“Re-writes the bible a little.” – taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes

07. “Message From a Self-Destructing Turnip” – 0:27

“One day in our garden a turnip spoke to me. It said that it had tired of its futile existence and it was going to destroy itself. Naturally I tried to make it aware of the joys of life, read a little poetry and sang a few songs. It felt better for it, thanked me for my time and looked forward to a long and fruitful life. I dedicate it to all vegetarians.” – taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes

08. “Radioactive Toy” – 10:00

Recording: Original version (found on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape) recorded in 1987 on 8-track, mixed to 1/4 Revox; this version re-recorded specifically for On the Sunday of Life… in x

“Politics has always bored me. This piece could be about peace, love and harmony. Or it could be about nuclear genocide. You decide.” – taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes

“You already mentioned the song ‘Radioactive Toy’…” PT: “Yes.” “It’s something special to you… I mean… I got the impression there was some, let’s say, a hidden form of politics, political comment in it..” PT: “Yes, there were. That piece was very much about something that’s probably not so relevant these days, but, you know, even as recently as three or four years ago the nuclear weapons situation was quite serious, certainly I was quite concerned about it, and I’d also been very influenced by the later Pink Floyd records, which are very obsessed with war, and the threat of nuclear war. And also some films along the lines of Apocalypse Now, and there was a film that was shown in Britain, I don’t know if you had it in Belgium, Threads…” “Yes, I know, I remember it.” PT: “Threads, excellent film about the aftermath of a nuclear war. And I found that quite terrifying. That’s why I wrote the lyrics to ‘Radioactive Toy’, which originally formed part of a very long suite of pieces, called ‘Precious Memories in Freefall’, but that particular suite of music was abandoned a long time ago. I felt that particular lyric was quite strong, however, quite powerful, so I took it forward and I adapted it for that piece of music. And that piece is no exception, in the fact that the music came before I necessarily felt those lyrics should go with the music. When I heard the music back it was quite sombre, quite dramatic, and the lyrics seemed to fit very well over the top.” “I’m glad I got it right, anyway.” PT: “Yes, it sounds like you did.” “Yeah, because when I heard it for the first time on cassette, for a moment I saw the face of Reagan on top of it.” PT: “Yes. Yes. Well, I’m glad that I actually got that point, or that mood across.”

09. “Nine Cats” – 3:53

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

“Do you prefer to record musically more consistent records as opposed to On the Sunday of Life”? SW: “I enjoy doing both. I love the idea of making a sprawling mess of an album and this is my favourite aspect of On the Sunday of Life; it covers a very wide range of moods and ideas. It is not always successful musically, or a constant listen, but it will always be one of my favourites. In making that album I discovered the direction I wanted to take, at least for a few years. If I was to make another album like On the Sunday… it would be because I was closing a musical chapter and searching for some new paths to take. I’m sure I will do this again at some point, though for now I am still happy with the current direction and sound.”

10. “Hymn” – 1:14

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Release: First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and On The Sunday of Life in 1992

11. “Footprints” – 5:56

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

Release:First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and On The Sunday of Life in 1992

“Do you play all the instruments?” PT: “I can play all instruments. As I said, I do like to involve collaborators from time to time, and there are collaborators on the record. There are other guitarists, other instrumentalists, but on some tracks, yes, I do tend to overdub all the instruments myself.” “Drums as well?” PT: The drums are not really drums, for the most part. They’re programmed, using samplers and drum machines.” “Of course, some people prefer live drums on a recording…” PT: “I know a lot of people prefer live drums. I like live drums in some contexts; in other contexts, I do prefer the programmed drums. I think it’s very important, particularly in view of … in the spirit of which progressive and psychedelic music was originally made. And I feel that in the nineties and the eighties it’s lost some of the spirit which it was originally made in, in the sense that you’re continually absorbing the new technology, the influences of the day, and trying to use them in your own musical scenario to make something fresh, and that’s why I embrace technology, to try and use it in a psychedelic format and create something completely new out of it, by combining the contemporary technology with the sixties and seventies ideals of progressive and psychedelic music.”

12. “Linton Samuel Dawson” – 3:04

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

Release: First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and On The Sunday of Life in 1992

SW: “‘Linton Samuel Dawson’ and ‘Jupiter Island’ were trying to tap into the vibe of tracks like ‘See Emily Play’, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Bike Ride to the Moon’–psychedelic pop tunes with weird sonic stuff going on… Maybe I’m proud of them because they’re not things I’ve subsequently refined. I never really did anything like them again and I’m actually still very happy with them.”

“It was good to hear ‘The Nostalgia Factory’ and ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’ being brought into the live set on the last tour. I know these went down extremely well. Will we be seeing other songs being performed live which to date you have not done and if so which would you envisage?” SW: “As time goes on it would be great to bring in some more tracks from previous albums – the problem is always having to concentrate on learning and playing the new material. I would be keen to try ‘Footprints’ and ‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’. Any other requests?”

This upbeat psychedelic banger was strangely revived by the band for the Signify tour (as well as “The Nostalgia Factory”, and featured an extended drum solo ending.

Lyrics:

g

13. “And The Swallows Dance Above the Sun” – 4:05

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

Release:First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and On The Sunday of Life in 1992

“And The Swallows Dance Above the Sun” is a groovy rock track influenced by Madchester bands such as The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays. The track concludes with the rather alarming non-sequitur of a voice that says, “I want you to put Felix’s penis on me.” The sample was taken from an old sexploitation B-movie directed by Doris Wishman, the “female Ed Wood”, whose filmography includes Nude on the Moon, Keyholes are for Peeping, A Night to Dismember and Dildo Heaven.

SW: “There was a TV programme on Channel 4 in the late ’80s called something like The Incredibly Strange Film Show. For me it was essential viewing because I discovered Luis Bunuel, Russ Meyer, John Waters and Sam Raimi. At the time you couldn’t even rent Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies because they’d been branded ‘video nasties’. It was the equivalent of discovering underground music. Because I wasn’t really confident as a singer, I was always looking for other narrative elements that I could hang instrumental music on. A lot of that was using found voices and snatches of dialogue. ‘And the Swallows Dance Above the Sun’ is a great example. Compared to a lot of other pieces on that record, the lyrics are a little more serious, so I punctured the atmosphere with a moment of absurdity.”

“Another song which intrigued me a lot is ‘And The Swallows Dance Above The Sun’.” PT: “Yes.” “It’s something completely different, well, not only from the point of view of the music, but is there any particular point in the lyrics, basically?” PT: “Well, that’s a lyric that I wasn’t responsible for, but I can tell you how I feel when I sing those words, or when I actually interpret them with the music. It’s a song very much about loneliness; it was originally called ‘Like Ice On The Sun’, when Alan first sent it to me but he retitled it later, ‘And The Swallows Dance Above The Sun’. I think it’s very much about being drowned, drowned in a kind of a banal, uninteresting life, just this feeling of sitting at home while the world goes on around you outside. And it’s like this image, of ‘And The Swallows Dance Above The Sun’, there are these incredible things happening outside in the world, and I’m just sitting here, drowning in boredom. And if you actually read a lot of his other lyrics, they are about this sense of drowning in the mundane. There’s a song called ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’, and the final refrain of ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’ is, ‘he aids escape to tranquillity from the boredom of mankind’. Now, what is the … to be be in this situation in this particular song, well in that situation it’s a kind of release from boredom through taking a drug, in this case LSD, ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’, LSD, it’s the old ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ trick. So not particularly on original idea, but I felt that it was a quite interesting lyric, it was this idea of escaping from the mundanities of life by exploring use of drugs, and so that final line ‘he aids escape to tranquillity’, the ‘he in that sense is the drug or this fictional figure ‘Linton Samuel Dawson’. So a lot of Alan’s lyrics are about this escape from boredom, and I think ‘And The Swallows Dance Above The Sun’ is very much that theme again.”

Lyrics

14. “Queen Quotes Crowley” – 3:48

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Malcolm Stocks – voice

Writing Credits: Written by Malcolm Stocks

Release: First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and On The Sunday of Life in 1992

“Was there any significance in the words “cream cakes”, “pate” and “cream cheese” as heard backwards on ‘Queen Quotes Crowley’ or was it just your shopping list?” SW: “Ah – is that what the words are? I suspect that Malcolm Stocks [who did the voice] was just coming up with the most ludicrous words he could think of so that people couldn’t read any significance in to them! Perhaps he failed on that count.”

The song is one of the very few PT songs not written by Steven Wilson.

15. “No Luck With Rabbits” – 0:46

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on On The Sunday of Life

“Recorded at Periscope Station Spring 1989. The entire sound content of the piece is a recording of a musical box. This recording is then speeded up, slowed down, reversed, and overdubbed several times to create the final musical experience.” – taken from the Nostalgia Factory liner notes

16. “Begonia Seduction Scene” – 2:14

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Release: First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and On The Sunday of Life in 1992

“A fragment lifted from a 4 track demo recorded at Periscope Station in October 1987. Tree plays the guitars while Underspoon cranks his mellotron up.” – taken from the Love, Death & Mussolini liner notes

17. “This Long Silence” – 5:05

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on On The Sunday of Life

18. “It Will Rain For a Million Years” – 10:51

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on On The Sunday of Life

Song Details: Outtakes and Non-Album Tracks

“Music For The Head (There)” – 1:24

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation, voice

Recording: Recorded on 8 -rack in 1989, remixed in 1991 to DAT

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape (as just “Music for the Head”)

“One tree and his flute; absorb and assimilate.” – the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel [taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes]

“Towel” – 3:33

Steven Wilson – guitar, bass, keyboards

Malcolm Stocks – voice, drum programming

Recording: Recorded 4th February 1989 on 8-track, mixed to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

“So named because of the band’s obsession with pieces of paper with the word towel written on them. So far we have a collection of 14 and Solomon used one of them to write the words he speaks in this song” – taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes

“Wastecoat” – 1:10

Steven Wilson – processing

Malcolm Stocks – guitar

Recording: Recorded 4th February 1989 on 8-track, mixed to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

“A new version of Solomon’s guitar vignette which employs a variety of guitar tunings, effects and methods of playings.” – taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes

“Wastecoat” was intended as Malcolm’s pastiche of the guitar style of Henry Cow’s Fred Frith and consisted of prepared guitar sounds created by placing batteries and nails under the guitar strings.

“Mute” – 8:06

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation, voice

Recording: Recorded on 8-track in 1989, remixed in 1991 to DAT

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

“It’s in three parts and features a poem.” – the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel [taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes]

The main melody of “Mute” was also used in No-Man’s 1991 single “Days in the Trees”.

SW: “I was always playing stuff to Tim. Porcupine Tree was all going to be my retro, psychedelic band. No-Man was all about modern break beats and dance rhythms and arty pop. I think ‘Days in the Trees’ was an exception. There hasn’t been a great deal of crossover over the years.”

“No Reason To Live, No Reason To Die” – 11:09

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording: Recorded in 1987 on 4-track, mixed to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

“At the Paris concert they wouldn’t let us on stage unless we played some short ‘commercial’ numbers. So we agreed to this and then proceeded to play a 40 minute long psychedelic improvisation. This was captured on cassette tape by Tweetle-Blampton and 11 minutes of it are released here in all its glorious folly. You can hear the audience booing if you listen carefully.” – the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel [taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes]

“Daughters in Excess” – 6:46

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording: Recorded in 1988 on 8-track, mixed to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

“During all previous tours the band always included at least one Pink Floyd classic from the Ummagumma period in the live show. During the Autumn 1988 tour we played an original piece evoking the same sense of random wonder and energy. It differed greatly from night to night. This version was captured live on stage at Dingwalls, London.” The Porcupine Tree with the aid of the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel from Tarquin

“The Cross” – 8:17

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording:

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape (but removed on subsequent issues)

“Let it be said that Prince is God. When that is said all else follows. ‘The Cross’ is his song and is bared around a two chord thrash which reaches a frenzied climax during which it is common for the audience to see celestial beings accompany us on stage.” – the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel [taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes]

“Hole” – 1:34

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording:

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape (but removed on subsequent issues)

“‘Hole’ is merely suggestive, an extract from a longer work of exquisite beauty and space.” – the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel [taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes]

While not indexed on the 1994 YHD cd it is part of the Cross

according to the wiki for Tarquin, “Hole” starts at 8:17 of The Cross/YHD

“Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape” – 10:48

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Malcolm Stocks – “MC” voice

Recording: Recorded 4th February 1989 on 8-track, mixed to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm cassette in 1989 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

“‘Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape’ begins with the realisation of a dream that Solomon had in which the whole world joins hands and becomes an enclosure into which no evil can penetrate (or something like that). It ends with him introducing the band and a musical vision of the future – whatever that may be.” – the Ghost of Henry Ducanbowel [taken from the Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm liner notes]

“Hymn” – 1:22

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording:

Release: First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 and Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape in 1994

“Out” – 8:59

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation, vocals

Recording: Recorded in 1987 on 8-track, remixed to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990 before inclusion on the reissues of Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape starting in 2000 (replacing “The Cross”)

“Recorded live in Paris July 14 1989 and overdubbed and remixed at No Man’s Land October 1989.” – taken from the Love, Death & Mussolini liner notes

SW: “That Hawkwind pastiche might even be the first Porcupine Tree song that I ever recorded. It was half the riff of ‘Magnu’ and half the riff of ‘Masters of the Universe’. It literally combines the two. That would’ve been purely for Malcolm’s entertainment; we both loved Hawkwind.”

“It Will Rain For a Million Years” [original] – 4:05

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording:

Release: Only released on the Love, Death & Mussolini EP cassette in 1990

“It Will Rain for a Million Years” shares its name with a track in On the Sunday of Life… but is a totally different song and is not available anywhere else. It’s quite great, so it’s a strange choice for this to be left behind!

“Colours Dance Angels Kiss / Track 11” – 3:00

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation, vocals

Alex Slater – “Alex Slater” [literally the credited “instrument”]

Writing Credits: Written by Steven Wilson and Alan Duffy

Recording: Recorded in 1990 on 16-track, mixed to DAT

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 (as “Colours Dance Angels Kiss”) before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape (as “Track 11”)

Steven sampled fellow classmate Alex Slater’s laugh for this track while in high school.

According to a letter written by Steven to Richard Allen (see above in the history of the album), he intended “Colours Dance Angels Kiss” to be included on the “next album”, which would become Up The Downstair.

“Prayer” – 1:50

Steven Wilson – flute

Simon Vockings – organ

Recording: Recorded in 1986 on 4-track, mixed in 1990 to DAT

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

Altamont guy

“Sinatra Rape Scene” – 0:39

recording

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on Up The Downstair (as an edited version, renamed “Monuments Burn Into Moments”)

“Hokey Cokey / Execution of the Will of the Marquis de Sade” – 5:05

Steven Wilson – guitar, bass, keyboards, voice

Howard Jones – drums

Recording: Intro recorded in 1986 direct to 1/4 Revox, remainder recorded on 16-track in 1990, mixed to DAT

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 (as “Hokey Cokey”) before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape (as “Execution of the Will of the Marquis de Sade”)

bit about bio of marquis irl

“Landscare” – 3:16

Steven Wilson – electronics, piano

Simon Vockings – synthesizer

Malcolm Stocks – guitar

Recording: Recorded on 22nd December 1994 on 4-track, mixed to stereo cassette

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

Simon Vockings from Altamont and malcolm Stocks helped Steven record “Landscare”, an instrumental that sounds like a would-be soundtrack to a poltergeist movie.

“Delightful Suicide” – 1:12

Steven Wilson – all instrumentation

Recording: Recorded in 1990 on 16-track, mixed to DAT

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

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“Split Image” – 1:58

Steven Wilson – organ, electronics

Seamus Teale – organ, guitar

Recording: Recorded in 1985 direct to 1/4 Revox

Release: First released on the Nostalgia Factory cassette in 1991 before inclusion on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

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“An Empty Box” – 3:12

Steven Wilson – guitar, bass, organ, drum programming

Malcolm Stocks – guitar, voice

Recording: Recorded in 1989 on 4-track cassette, mixed to DAT

Release: Only released on Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape