THE FUTURE BITES

Steve: Hi Elton, it's Steve Elton: Oh Hi Steven Steve: I've got this song I would like you to appear on Elton: Oh ok, send it through and I can see what I can do Steve: Great, I'll email you a list of household items and I want you to read them out Elton: That's different but I'll go for it

Disclaimer: This is not the actual conversation but more of how imagine it. To me its completley surreal this collaberation actually happened. Elton John is a mega, megastar. But it does show just how far Steven Wilson has come in his rise and just how well respected he is within the music industry. Many call him the music industries best kept secret. But with each album he just seems to gather more and more momentum. And that is really saying something for someone who has been making albums for the last 30 years through the likes of Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Blackfield as well as remastering a whole load of other albums by other artists.

The thing is as well is that his early stuff wasn't that well received by the mainstream and it wasn't becasue it was bad. In my opinion it was awesome. And that's coming from someone who has followed him since 1999 when Porcupine Tree's "Stupid Dream" came out. It's more he makes more challenging music, venturing into prog mainly as well as other genres which tend not to have mainstream appeal.

But anyway enough of an introduction. This is about his 6th solo album "THE FUTURE BITES" which was due for release June 2020 but due to covid was put back to late January 2021. Whether this was a good move remains to be seen as I think the purpose with delaying it was so the tour would coincide more the release. But at the time of writing covid hasn't gone away and looks like tours are a way off yet.

The first song which was released of "THE FUTURE BITES" was "Personal Shopper" which stands at nearly 10 minutes. And my, my its a rollercoaster. Not only that but in this day and age where you feel there is not much more artists can be different to what has come before. Wilson comes up with this. What makes it so unique is the Abba esque style vocals for the choruses in the song. It is well known Wilson is a huge Abba fan and the influnece really shines through on this one. He did hint at this in his last album "Bones" through the pop genius which was "Permanating" but now he uses the Abba esque vocals, then mixes it with his own vocals in a prog fused upbeat and just dam right glorius track. And from the top of this review you saw the pretend conversation with Elton John. Well this is the track which he appears on. I would go as far to say nothing comes close and this track feels so unique, not just to his own music but also to prog music generally.

There is another track on the album with female Abba esque vocals through "Eminent Sleaze" but its just 4 minutes and while a good track nowhere near as epic. To be honest I was so excited about the direction Wilson took with "Personal Shopper", I wanted the whole album to sound like that. To be fair doing that sort of style is a big risk in terms of going off on a different direction and risking losing fans. So doing a whole album like that may have been too big a gamble. But to be fair he does still seem to have taken gambles with this album as a whole. There is a lot more keyboards on this and also "Personal Shopper" really is the stand out epic with most of the other tracks sitting at about 4 minutes long.

In fact it is just a 42 minute album with 9 tracks. The first track "Unself" is just a minute long. Two other tracks which stand out for me are "12 THINGS I FORGOT" AND "FOLLOWER". Both really upbeat tracks which are just so unbelievably good. The are essentially pop rock songs but have Wilson's add complexities he drives into each song as he keeps pushing boundaries. And that boundary is pushed even more with last track "COUNT OF UNEASE". This is just beautiful. Wilson just slows things right down with a 6 minutee chill out/phase out track. If you have had a busy day and just need to slow right down and relax. Put this track on and you will feel such a sense of calm.

When I first heard the other singles like "King Ghost" and "Man of People" I wasn't totally blown away. And to be honest I am surprised "FOLLOWER" wasn't released as a single. But these tracks do act as stepping stones on an album which builds and builds as it goes on. Then with "Personal Shopper", "Follower" and "Count of Unease" you have a 3 track combo to finish off the album which is hard to beat; both in terms of the diversity of the music as well as the sheer quality. Having just looked up wikipedia to find there is a delux version of the album it looks good but a bit expensive. Extended versions of 3 of the songs including Personal Shopper which is a 20 minute version! along with 7 other tracks. Hopefully these tracks will be accessible in the future at a cheaper price.

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