Cinema for the ears: Steven Wilson’s The Harmony Codex

Let me toot my own horn a little: in his memoir Limited Edition Of One, polymath musician, songwriter and producer Steven Wilson mentions me in a section about David Bowie (he traces his love of The Dame to the purchase, by my parents, of a copy each of The Laughing Gnome for our respective birthdays in 1973, which are only eight days apart, having known each other since infancy thanks to our mums meeting at post-natal clinic).

The only reason I mention this, apart from showing off, is that the same book contains a short story written by Wilson called The Harmony Codex. “Dystopian sci-fi,” he described it recently to the NME. “Like a lot of my music, it had a very dreamlike quality”. 

As the story was coming together Wilson was also working – in his customary restless manner – on his seventh full solo album under his own name. “As I was writing the story I was beginning to develop the initial ideas for this record [which has just been released and takes its name from the short story]. It felt logical to have a narrative feel to the songs, to match the cinematic quality of the music,” he continued in his NME interview. “It made sense to write an imaginary soundtrack for that short story, writing music based on its characters and ideas.”

The result is a multidimensional experience that is Wilson’s best solo record to date. But before I get into that, a little context: he has been at this game a very long time, producing his first music while still at school in Hemel Hempstead, and very quickly started building a music career via various projects and outfits like No-Man (with Tim Bowness) and Bass Communion. In the process he has explored myriad genres from trip-hop to jazz, ambient to prog rock (most notably with Porcupine Tree). His last solo album The Future Bites featured a spoken vocal appearance from no less than Sir Elton John, and its predecessor To The Bone included the ABBA-esque Permanating. None of this is pastiche, but a reverence and love for the panoply of popular music including, yes, pure pop (don’t get him going about The Rubettes…).

Despite all this, the standard line is to describe Wilson as one of those artists who people who know, know (implying that those who don’t, won’t). His reputation has been augmented further by becoming the go-to producer of multi-channel remixes of classic albums from everyone from King Crimson and Jethro Tull to Chic and ABC. And yet, if you sat opposite him on the Tube many probably wouldn’t recognise him as someone who has and does sell out arenas.

Die-hard fans, who packed out Wembley Arena last November (notably on my birthday) for a temporarily reformed Porcupine Tree concert indicated the level of fanaticism that follows Wilson around the world. “I’m in the enviable position of having a fanbase who almost expect me to do the unexpected,” he told the NME. “If they feel like I’m making concessions to the music industry, they spot it a mile off and rightly pick me up on it.”

A cute sentiment, but Wilson is also in the enviable position of being able to do exactly whatever he wants. With each solo album since 2008’s Insurgentes he has continually changed the complexion of his music, confounding those still of the stubborn view that he is a prog rocker in the tradition of bands like King Crimson and Genesis. In truth, Bowie has probably been his touchstone, just simply for never conforming to any one genre, and never standing still, either. And that’s quite a feat in itself.

“I always talk about people like Bowie and Zappa and Neil Young and Kate Bush as being role models, in the sense of how they conducted their careers - that constant sense of reinvention and confronting audience expectations,” he told that august organ The Spectator a couple of years ago (the interview’s standfirst contained the line “The most successful musician you’ve never heard of”). 

“At the same time, I’m also conscious that it was easier for them, because I live in the age of social media. The problem with social media is that you get a response within five minutes of doing anything. You release a new song into the world, which might be different to anything you’ve done before, and literally within minutes you have an incredible wave of feedback, much of which will be negative. And I’ve come to like that. Maybe I’m a masochist. I prefer that to the indifference that most bands who just recycle everything over and over again get. Like the fans will go, ‘We love this. More of the same’. I feel that’s too easy and too lazy.”

Lazy he has never been. Peter Gabriel has been working on i/o, his first album of brand new songs for 21 years and it still hasn’t seen the light of day as a complete work. I actually can’t count how much material Wilson has released in that time.

A limited edition of one - Steven Wilson
Picture: Hajo Mueller

You certainly wouldn’t call The Harmony Codex “more of the same”. Whereas The Future Bites took a knowing lurch into pop, it’s successor is still accessible but with more musical tangents, and arguably more interesting for it. Inclination opens the record with a pulsing drum beat reminiscent of the aforementioned Gabriel’s stunning work on The Last Temptation Of Christ soundtrack, and builds over four minutes into something similarly rooted in the desert heat of The Holy Land. It is more electronica than anything, with Slovak guitarist David Kollar performing a guitar solo that defies the laws of ‘soaring’ axe work in traditional rock music.

It is notable that for a musician who, in Porcupine Tree and the first part of his solo career drove an at-times heavy, metal-like thrash, electric guitars are used sparingly and texturally throughout The Harmony Codex. In their application, guitars are just some of the brushes in the artist’s jar, not driving songs but contributing to their palette.

Into this, Wilson has put together an extraordinary collection of guest musicians, contributing something distinctive to the different directions each song takes. Pink Floyd/David Gilmour alum Guy Pratt adds bass to the single What Life Brings (which also features longtime Wilson cohort Craig Blundell on drums). Another regular collaborator, keyboard player Adam Holzman (son of legendary Elektra Records boss Jac Holzman) pops up throughout the album, most prominently on Impossible Tightrope, a frenetic jazz-rock workout which harks back to Wilson’s third solo release, The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories). Another member of that album’s cohort, Theo Travis, provides a bonkers sax solo.

A calmer moment is provided by Rock Bottom, a duet with another of Wilson’s closest musical friends, the Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb (who also co-wrote it), and it is a beautiful, if slightly dark, love song which is also emblematic of the entire album’s exquisite production. It is in this regard that you recognise Wilson’s professed desire to create “cinema for the ears”. It’s no wonder, either, that he has invested a great deal of effort in the use of spatial audio technologies, and publicised the album’s release with a series of listening sessions around the world in which lucky punters were exposed to its full multidimensional effect.

I can’t begin to imagine what The Harmony Codex’s title song – for me an absolute highlight – must have sounded like in those listening environments. At almost ten minutes in length, it is a dreamlike experience, invoking the short story that inspired it. It reminds me greatly of Vangelis’s music for – yes, another film  - Blade Runner, and includes ethereal electric piano from Holzman as well as the first of two spoken word contributions on the album from Wilson’s delightful wife Rotem. It is as enigmatic as it is transporting. It is also unconventional, an ambient moment in the middle of an album, rather than the ‘slow one’ that traditionally ends it. “Part of this record is confidence from having done this for a long time now,” Wilson explained to the NME, “which means I can think ‘No, fuck it! I can put a 10-minute ambient piece on the same record as an acoustic song and an electronic pop song.’ It’s good to embrace that.”

The song that does end the ten-track album is Staircase, an epic, reflective track that warrants the involvement of Holzman and Blundell again, as well as Nick Beggs, another member of Wilson’s touring bands (and currently on the road with Howard Jones), who combine to create a song that both typifies past approaches (i.e. prog-ish) as well as Wilson’s drive to expand. 

It, too, is cinematic in its expanse, drawing reference to the Dutch conceptual artist MC Escher’s never-ending staircase (suggested in the album artwork). Written from a perspective that, I suspect, all of us in our mid-50s ponder on – the journey that has taken us to now – it also provides commentary on modernity: “Plagued by poor health/But you stockpile more wealth/Congratulate yourself/A sense of proportion/An act of extortion/There's too much distortion/You sink in stages/As you're approaching middle ages (You're up to here in debt)” trills its third verse. It ends with another appearance from Rotem Wilson, again speaking as the album oozes into another dreamscape facilitated by vintage synths (including the ARP 2600 that was a staple of the 70s).

For those who want more of The Harmony Codex there is more: an expanded edition includes remixes by, among others, Manic Street Preachers and Tears For Fears’ Roland Orzabal, underlining the point that for all of Wilson’s apparent anonymity, he can command the attention and involvement of some very heavy hitters indeed. 

It’s only what is deserved. He’s hardly flown under the radar these last thirty-odd years, and while some of that has probably suited him, to be at this stage of a career and still producing albums of this ingenuity, ambition and immersion, and not resorting to a lazy covers project, deserves commercial success as much as the acclaim that continues to come Wilson’s way.

The Harmony Codex is out now on Virgin Records

The secret's out - the Pink Floyd few people know

March the 10th. Almost a fortnight before lockdown in the UK formally began. It was to be the last time this year (to date) that I would sit in front of a cinema screen, having taken myself off to Richmond-upon-Thames for a socially distanced advanced screening of Nick Mason's - Saucerful Of Secrets Live At The Roundhouse. Nick Mason’s what?

The ‘Saucers’ are a supergroup of sorts, comprised disparately of former members of Pink Floyd, Spandau Ballet and Ian Dury’s Blockheads, to revive the early music of the Floyd themselves, the period when they anchored London’s psychedelic underground at student dives like the UFO club. It's the era when  Pink Floyd were infused by the sometimes childlike whimsy of the late Syd Barrett. Like Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, this was either a somewhat different Floyd or a very different Floyd, depending on your point of view - long before Dark Side Of The Moon or The Wall, long before the band went gargantuan, long before the inevitable dysfunction and acrimony that serves the Floyd narrative of later years - but revived, though not reimagined, in its new guise, thoroughly deserving of fresh attention.

Nick Mason

The idea came, not from Nick Mason - Pink Floyd’s constant drummer throughout its entire history - but from Lee Harris, the former Blockheads guitarist. He mentioned it to Guy Pratt - latterly Pink Floyd and David Gilmour’s touring bassist - who mentioned it to Mason himself. “Lee had this idea,” Pratt recently explained to Rolling Stone. "Nick said, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting.’” Things moved quickly. The band, says Pratt, just came together: “We didn’t even have to think about it. It’s like everyone was sitting in the ether waiting to do this.”

Before long, Mason, Harris and Pratt had been joined by Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp - a longtime fan of early Floyd - along with keyboard player Dom Beken, and within six weeks they were playing their first pub gig. Not before long they were touring, travelling (and sleeping) on a tour bus and toasting their own bagels in hotel lobby breakfast bars, a far cry from the rarified, private jet-carried life most of the Saucers would have been used to in their past lives. That it felt like a brand new band - even with Mason turning 74 at the time - was not lost on them, but it was a love of playing the material, some of which, the first time they’d been heard live for 50 years or more, that drove them.

This comes across strongly in the Roundhouse show, which is released today on Blu-ray Disc, DVD, double vinyl LP and CD. “Syd had a strange way of writing, which made it sound like a ‘normal’ pop song, and then it would lurch into something else," Mason told Billboard. "[That] makes it such a great vehicle for us.” All the Saucers have talked of their performances as having a punk sensibility, albeit in a more venerated form. “The trouble with the later [Pink Floyd] albums," says Mason, "is that we ended up with a tendency of trying to play them [live] as perfectly as they were recorded. But Syd’s writing is interesting, because it covers really quite a wide sort of genres, so this material is so much easier to wander off and do one’s own version of, say, the slightly bucolic, almost folk song-type rural idyll of Scarecrow, or the very free-form Astronomy Domine, or Interstellar Overdrive.”

Mason, one suspects, couldn’t wait to get out and play this rich catalogue of material, which largely comes from the Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets albums, the only records Barrett played on before leaving amid increasing struggles with LSD and, tragically, the eventual breakdown of his mental health. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of exploring the old catalogue,” Mason told Billboard, saying that he was always wary of “the tyranny of the ‘Big Four’” - The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall. “After the [Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains] Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, I was reminded how special and undervalued the early period of Pink Floyd is," Mason says. "Then Lee Harris came along with the suggestion of putting a band together. It had been 25 years since I’d been out with a band playing live, but it made me realise I wanted to play this music live again, so the timing was everything.”

Guy Pratt

“Confining the setlist to pre–Dark Side songs makes so much sense,” Pratt says in the same Rolling Stone piece. “Those songs are incredible and you never hear them. To me, it’s a new band. And a lot of them have never been played before, so it feels really fresh. It’s really punk-y and Krautrock-y. It’s got all sorts of different energies in it.”

Gary Kemp concurs: “The best review was our first review,” he recalled to Rolling Stone. “Neil McCormick [Daily Telegraph rock critic] called it ‘Punk Floyd,’ which I loved, because there is that energy Floyd had before they became posh. When we got the band together, it wasn’t like, ‘Well, let’s try and emulate those records.’ Also, we’re not trying to be a tribute band. Nick is the genuine article, so we agreed, ‘Let’s make this band as fresh as we possibly can.’”

Of all of Mason’s recruits, perhaps Kemp is the most surprising addition, especially as he takes on the Saucers’ lead vocal duties, a role never undertaken in his pop star days. Live At The Roundhouse also reveals him to be a far more gifted guitarist than his Spandau past let on (not to mention playing Ronnie Kray…). It shouldn’t be forgotten, though, that he was their  principle songwriter. “I’ve known Gary for a few years before, but I had no idea how passionate he was about it – and how well he knew the songs and knew the music,” Mason explained to Ultimate Classic Rock. “I think he’s been one of the great surprises and assets to this whole enterprise. Because everyone knows that he’s a great songwriter who has written a couple of really mega hits, and Spandau Ballet was seen as the New Romantics – hardly Pink Floyd territory – but he just seemed to slide straight into it.”

Gary Kemp

Kemp himself told Rolling Stone that his route into early Floyd came via David Bowie and even the Sex Pistols. “Syd [Barrett] was definitely an inspiration for both of those artists, and they were both hugely important to me. Also, as someone who comes from London, I kind of get where Syd’s head was at. Plus, there’s the unique style of storytelling that Syd had - never in the same voice twice. That as an actor myself helped me approach the songs in character.”

Returning to songs he hadn’t played on, in most cases, for almost five decades presented some challenges for Mason. “I remembered the basics,” he says, “but what I underestimated were the complexities that Syd had written into them. I’ve always feared becoming my own tribute band. The bands who do that, I’ve never wished to stop them. But for me, rock n' roll has always been about one’s own interpretation of the music, and Syd’s music is perfect for that.”

It’s something Mason muses on in an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, and a song dating back to 1967, Vegetable Man. Originally recorded as a follow-up to the semi-hit single See Emily Play, Mason heard it afresh as part of Pink Floyd’s The Early Years: 1965-1972 box set “It’s sort of an unfinished work,” says Mason. “In a way, it’s a nice little cameo of what Syd did. One of the strange things [about Syd’s work] is the variety of music styles. Because some people, I think, point at Vegetable Man as a sort of early punk thing in a way, which it is. It’s got that driving four-to-the-floor sort of beat. But also then there’d be the rural, almost fairy story – Gnome, Scarecrow-type of songs. Or Bike even. And then there’d be some wilder [songs like] Interstellar Overdrive, with improvised sections and, for rock 'n' roll, really unusual things where the rhythm breaks down and you’re left with a sort of soundscape for maybe five or 10 minutes.”

While Mason has found new joy in reviving the Floyd’s oldest music, there is also an underlying sadness for the man who played such an integral part to defining it, more so than Roger Waters or Richard Wright, the other original members, or Gilmour who joined as Syd Barrett was becoming ever more erratic and eventually replaced him. “I think there’s a lot of mixed emotions with the whole Syd thing,” Mason told Ultimate Classic Rock. “Because in some ways, he was so smart in so many ways. I think there’s a bit of sadness now looking back on it – and a little bit of guilt. Not really guilt, but we handled Syd very badly. We had no idea – and still don’t really know – what the real problem was, whether it was LSD or whether it was something in his character anyway. Or whether, in fact, he was probably clearer than we ever perceived and he just didn’t actually want to be in a band, necessarily. While we thought if he didn’t want to be in a band, it was a sign of madness – because we were all at that point, absolutely committed to doing it. But I think he maybe just thought, ‘Well, I’ve done that. I don’t really want to do anymore of it.’ But instead of just going ... we should have probably let him go much earlier or separated from him earlier. But as I say, we had no idea at the time.”

Picture: Facebook/Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets

Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets are, then, a strange outfit to characterise. They are, in some ways, the ultimate tribute act, but nor are they a revival band, either. Live At The Roundhouse is a joy to watch because there is a profound energy that comes through songs I’d largely never heard before. That is mainly due to my exposure to Pink Floyd having been almost exclusively the 1970s-era albums, and the continuation of that legacy through David Gilmour and Roger Waters’ separate, alienated, tours and albums that have drawn on the same songs, sounds and even themes of the “Big Four”. Mason and his band are right in positioning the Saucers as almost a brand new act, even playing brand new songs. It’s a timely reminder that sometimes it’s worth revisiting music that has developed an unfair stigma over time. Some of the early prog rock albums, for example, should be listened to objectively, and you’ll hear song structures and landscapes that appear on much more recent, acclaimed material by Blur or Radiohead. Some, of course, is less easy to listen to.

And that’s the fun of Live At The Roundhouse. Far from being a snapshot of another time, the 22-song set - which includes as many obscurities as better known Pink Floyd tracks like Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, Arnold Layne, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun and One Of These Days - should serve as an introduction. Even, a resetting of prejudices about a band that once flew the flag for commercial juggernauts (through no fault of their own - they just made a few albums that sold in mind-boggling numbers). It just would be nice for the Saucers to be allowed out on the road to tour these songs again, but that’s a blog post for another day.