In 2012 Marillion’s Steve Hogarth and Porcupine Tree’s Richard Barbieri lastly delivered an album they’d been hoping to make for years. Not the Weapon However The Hand pushed them each out of their consolation zones, and paved the best way for 2023’s Ready To Be Born. Forward of their debut launch they instructed Prog the way it had come collectively in the end.
Marillion vocalist Steve ‘H’ Hogarth is reclining in an govt chair together with his toes up on the desk. So is Richard Barbieri, higher often called Porcupine Tree keyboardist, No-Man collaborator and former member of the groundbreaking band Japan. Hogarth grins apologetically: “Sorry, we had been simply evaluating sneakers!”
We’re on the London headquarters of their label KScope to speak in regards to the duo’s first album collectively, Not The Weapon However The Hand. It’s fairly clear they’re completely delighted with it. “That is the primary copy we’ve seen,” the vocalist explains, pushing the completed product in the direction of for nearer inspection. “It’s fully knocked me out. I’m so happy with it… We’ve achieved a very good job, we actually have!”
Let’s get one factor straight: this isn’t a Porcupine Tree instrumental with a visitor singer. It’s a collaborative effort between two very gifted musicians. Recorded over a number of years, this haunting eight-tracker refuses to adapt to any expectations or guidelines – and it’s filled with so many Barbierian nuances that it’s arduous to overlook his digital roots. Such aural tinkering has given Hogarth the right alternative to get critically artistic within the vocal division; that is experimental progressive music in its truest sense.
The pair’s friendship dates again to 1996 when Porcupine Tree supported Marillion in London, and Hogarth – an enormous Japan fan – requested Barbieri if he would carry out on his solo album Ice Cream Genius. Though they stored in contact by way of subsequent reveals and through Steven Wilson’s personal involvement on Marillion’s Marbles album, it was an surprising e mail from Barbieri that obtained the ball rolling once more.
Hogarth remembers: “I used to be in Leeds on tour with Marillion, sitting in Starbucks with a espresso, and the e-mail got here by way of asking how I’d really feel about making a report collectively. It didn’t take lengthy for me to answer ‘completely’ and ‘how?’ Again within the 80s, I used to be in a band known as The Europeans, and Tin Drum by Japan was one of many albums we used to take heed to once we had been on tour… if somebody had instructed me then I’d find yourself working with Richard, I might have achieved a backflip and squealed with pleasure!”
Their hectic schedules meant that ‘working collectively’ was rather less straight-forward than the phrase implies. They despatched information backwards and forwards in their very own time, and didn’t share the identical area till their promotional picture shoot in Amsterdam.
The songs had been based mostly round a group of haunting instrumentals that Barbieri had begun composing way back to 2009. “I believed, ‘I need this sort of vocal on my music – I wish to know what it appears like,’” he explains. “I began writing and step by step fed him items of music and noticed the way it went from there. It’s form of untampered-with within the sense that, as soon as I’d handed the music on, what got here again was nearly a vocal manufacturing. There could be whispered voices and layered harmonies, a narrative occurring over right here after which a story, with none, ‘Might you alter this, may you alter that?’ The entire thing simply got here collectively and labored naturally.”
Barbieri wrote over the course of a number of winters – a season during which he feels most artistic. Conversely, Hogarth wrote most of his vocals throughout the summer season. “It hadn’t occurred to me till now that we had been working at reverse occasions of the 12 months,” he says. “There are fairly just a few examples of very darkish instrumentals with gentle poured throughout them – Solely Love Will Make You Free is one. It has a really darkish backbone, nevertheless it’s fully enveloped in gentle. That’s what I used to be attempting to do with the choruses and harmonies; make all of it about gentle and wrap it round this darkish, spooky backbone. It was a contented accident.”
Hogarth remembers he listened to the emailed soundscapes in his automobile and permit them to supply the soundtrack for magical thriller excursions round rural and concrete landscapes. “The very first thing Richard despatched is now Pink Kite. It’s a couple of feral creature that’s fully at odds with civilisation. Whereas we’re driving up motorways at 100mph, this factor that’s a part of nature hovers above us. It’s the double that means of roadkill – commuting can kill you spiritually in addition to bodily.
“I wrote Bare like that as properly; however then Crack is about being so obsessively in love with somebody that you just’re making them wish to go away – I’d had that darkish, nearly nasty little lyric kicking about for ages and I questioned whether or not I may get it to work. Lifting The Lid was additionally one thing I’d had floating round for years. It was simply three or 4 strains.”
I believed it will be fairly good to have Steve singing over drum’n’bass – it’s not the kind of factor he’d usually get to do!
Richard Barbieri
Barbieri interrupts: “That’s my favorite observe on the album, truly – I didn’t actually desire a vocal on that. I used to be very valuable about it and he knew that!”
Hogarth: “Yeah, once I was singing on it, I used to be aware that I needed to keep out of the best way of the track as a result of I knew he’d reject it. I simply had a imaginative and prescient that I may make one thing particular of it. I needed to permit the music to reside.”
Barbieri shines by way of on A Cat With Seven Souls and Crack – songs that characteristic components of trip-hop and drum’n’ bass respectively. “I work from quite a lot of completely different musical areas and it feels proper,” he says. “I like modern digital music, and I at all times have achieved, so I are inclined to veer in the direction of extra trancy, hypnotic rhythms, usually fairly digital and programmed.
“It’s the best way I grew up within the 80s – all the things was to a click on or a observe, so I suppose that’s a hangover. However they’re flavours; it’s not excessive. It’s not Aphex Twin, however the form of music I take heed to lots works its manner into my unconscious.” He provides with a smile: “And I believed it will be fairly good to have Steve singing over drum’n’bass – it’s not the kind of factor he’d usually get to do!”
Though Hogarth and Barbieri are the main focus, contributors embrace double bassist Danny Thompson, XTC/Tin Spirits guitarist Dave Gregory, percussionist Arran Ahmun (ex-John Martyn band) and drummer Chris Maitland (ex-Porcupine Tree and No-Man). “We didn’t wish to cease our characters from coming by way of,” Barbieri explains.
There’s at all times a hazard that if you hear one thing that appeals to you instantly, you’ll tire of it shortly
Steve Hogarth
“The work had already been fashioned – sure moods and themes had already been set in stone and we didn’t wish to veer too far-off from that and usher in somebody out of the blue, like Slash, for instance.”
Hogarth lets out a snort of laughter: “I’d have been up for that. Though I might have insisted he performed the xylophone!”
With Marillion attributable to start work on their subsequent album, to be adopted by a prolonged tour, and Porcupine Tree at the moment on a break earlier than regrouping to work on new materials, it appears unlikely the pair will get the possibility to take their collaboration out on the highway.
“We’d prefer to,” Barbieri says, “nevertheless it’s an advanced course of. As a result of the tracks weren’t constructed in a standard manner, it’s not as in case you can break it down and strum an acoustic guitar or sit down in entrance of a piano. There are methods of working it out, nevertheless it includes sitting down with a great deal of different folks, most likely.”
Solely time and schedules will inform. “I’m actually falling in love with the album now,” Hogarth grins. “There’s at all times a hazard that if you hear one thing that appeals to you instantly, you’ll tire of it shortly. I hope this takes just a few listens for folks to get into.”
