One of the most eclectic and prolific artists in rock music, Steven Wilson has been writing, recording, and producing music continuously since the age of 10. A native of Hemel Hempstead in England, Steven was first exposed to music at the age of eight, when he started hearing his father listening to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” and his mother to Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” two albums that were pivotal in the development of his musical direction. His father, an electrical engineer, built him a multi-track tape machine, and he began to experiment with overdubbing and developing a repertoire of production techniques.Early demo tapes started to emerge in the mid 80’s while Steven was still at school, and at the end of the decade he created the two projects which gained him entry to the professional music world: Porcupine Tree and No Man. Porcupine Tree, which explored psychedelia, progressive music, and his love of ambitious seventies music, was initially an imaginary “band” which, in reality, Steven overdubbed all the instruments himself. This even extended to early demo tapes coming with a fictional written history of the band, and biographical info about the fictitious performers.Around the same time, Steven formed No-Man, his long-term collaboration with singer Tim Bowness. Influenced by everything from ambient music to hip-hop, their early singles and albums were a mixture of dance beats and lush orchestrations. Signing to One Little Indian in the UK, and Epic in the US in 1990, they received tremendous accolades from the music press, with Singles Of The Week in Melody Maker, Sounds and Hot Press.Steven has become known for the high standard of his production and is a sought-after mixer and producer. Artists he has worked with in this capacity include the Norwegian artist Anja Garbarek, Anathema, and Swedish progressive-metal band Opeth for whom he produced and/or mixed four albums. Other projects include Blackfield, a collaboration with Israeli megastar Aviv Geffen which has now produced two acclaimed albums, and Steven’s drone / ambient / experimental outlet Bass Communion.More recently Steven has become known for his 5.1 surround sound mixing, starting with his own projects, but since 2009 also for the remixing of several classic albums, notably the revamping of the King Crimson catalogue, on which Steven worked closely with band leader Robert Fripp, Jethro Tull, and several others yet unannounced projects.In September 2012 Steven won “Guiding Light” at the “Progressive Music Awards” 2012.Since the start of 2012 Steven has been writing and recording a third solo studio album, with the members of his touring band. Principal sessions for the album took place in Los Angeles during September 2012, with legendary producer Alan Parsons engineering. The album will be released in February 2013, followed by an extensive tour. The current line up of the band is SW, Guthrie Govan (guitar), Adam Holzman (keyboards), Theo Travis (flute / sax), Nick Beggs (bass / stick), and Marco Minnemann (drums).
