FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET

Steven Wilson likes to plumb the deep recesses of your soul ,especially the dark bits! Paranoia and fear abounds in most PT albums I've heard since the brilliant Stupid Dream. Wonderfull atmospheric electronics and beautifull rythmic structures are two of the very pleasing aspects of their music that I particularly enjoy and this album may well be their finest moment to date. The centre peice Anesthetize (clocking in at 17:42) seesm to have caused the most debate. Is it a proper long peice or just 3 seperate peices cobbled together? I go for the former.You need to listen to this (and the rest of the album) at least 10 times to realise that (perhaps) but there's no mistaking it. My favourite track though is Lets Sleep Together.The rising crescendo as the track gains pace is almost orchestral like and extremely impressive.The whole album works though.If there was an extra gold star for album of the year then this gets it by a country mile in my book.