UP THE DOWNSTAIR

If Porcupine Tree's debut, On the Sunday of Life, was the band's nostalgia album (and remember, one of the cassettes its songs were selected from was entitled The Nostalgia Factory), Up the Downstair brings Porcupine Tree into the modern day. Settling on a space rock sound on this release which draws from influences ranging from Pink Floyd to the Ozric Tentacles, Steve Wilson masterfully infuses this sound with carefully selected influences from the worlds of early 1990s dance music and Britpop.

The end result is a progressive rock sound which is genuinely forward-looking and of its time, eschewing nostalgia entirely in favour of saying "well, if we take what's going on now and apply a progressive approach to it, where does that take us"? This has been the secret to the band's success ever since, and as a piece of 1990s prog which is 100% progressive without a shred of "retro" to it, Up the Downstair is an engrossing listen.