Wiki
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Release Date
25 September 2011
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Length
12 tracks
Grace for Drowning is the second studio solo album by Steven Wilson, producer, songwriter, and frontman of Porcupine Tree. It was released by Kscope Music Records on September 26, 2011.
After the release of his first solo album, Insurgentes, Steven Wilson spent time on a number of his other projects. These include Porcupine Tree's album The Incident in 2009, Blackfield's third album Welcome to My DNA, on March 28, 2011, and an on-going project with Mikael Åkerfeldt, the lead singer of the band Opeth, tentatively named "Storm Corrosion". However, amongst these projects, in 2010, he announced that he had started working on his second solo album as well.
In early June 2011, Wilson launched a minisite for the new album revealing the album's name and album art photographed by his long time collaborator Lasse Hoile. Additionally, a free download of the track "Remainder the Black Dog" was also added. Sound and Vision magazine's website premiered the video of "Track One" on August 10, 2011. Not long after, Yahoo! Music debuted the music video for "Index". On August 16, WNYC's website premiered a free download for the radio edit of "Like Dust I Have Cleared From My Eye". A videoclip for "Remainder the Black Dog" was finally released on August 31, through Guitar World magazine's website.
Upon completion of the album, Wilson said:
"'Insurgentes' was an important step for me into something new. This record takes that as a starting point, but it’s more experimental and more eclectic. For me the golden period for music was the late sixties and early seventies, when the album became the primary means of artistic expression, when musicians liberated themselves from the 3 minute pop song format, and started to draw on jazz and classical music especially, combining it with the spirit of psychedelia to create “journeys in sound” I guess you could call them. So without being retro, my album is a kind of homage to that spirit. There’s everything from Morricone-esque film themes to choral music to piano ballads to a 23 minute progressive jazz –inspired piece. I've actually used a few jazz musicians this time, which is something I picked up from my work remixing the King Crimson records"
The special edition of the album is going to release on Blu-Ray video disc with the music playing in 5.1 surround sound and accompanying visuals and videos for each track, making it the first-ever rock album released primarily as a Blu-Ray video disc.
Mentioned collaborations to the album so far include Nic France on drums, Steve Hackett on lead guitar, Robert Fripp, Tony Levin, Nick Beggs and Trey Gunn on warr guitar, Theo Travis and Jordan Rudess, and some jazz musicians as mentioned above.
Disc 1: Deform to Form a Star
1. "Grace for Drowning"
2. "Sectarian"
3. "Deform to Form a Star"
4. "No Part of Me"
5. "Postcard"
6. "Raider Prelude"
7. "Remainder the Black Dog"
Disc 2: Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye
1. "Belle de Jour"
2. "Index"
3. "Track One"
4. "Raider II"
5. "Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye"
Disc 3: The Map (Deluxe Edition only; Demos + Out-Takes)
1. "Home in Negative"
2. "Fluid Tap"
3. "The Map"
4. "Raider Acceleration"
5. "Black Dog Throwbacks"
6. "Raider II (Demo Version)"
Deluxe Edition also contains:
- 120 page hardback book.
- Blu-Ray with 5.1 surround sound mix, high resolution stereo and additional demos.
- Blu-Ray also contains films for five tracks (directed by Lasse Hoile), Photo galleries, hand written notes and lyrics.
Reception:
Ben Bland of Steroboard was postive on album and wrote: "For a work so defiantly widescreen in its intentions as this, it is truly remarkable that there is nothing that could, or rather should, be accused of being filler or being over the top." Sea of Tranquility reviewer Murat Batmaz praised the production of the album, calling it "possibly Wilson's best."
Tour:
According to the Porcupine Tree fan site StarsDie.com, there will be no support acts for the ‘Grace for Drowning’ Tour.
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