FLOWERMOUTH

No-Man's last major release on OLI saw the band sufficiently demoralised by record company mandates that they decided to simply ignore what the company wanted entirely and just follow their own muse. As a result, they branch out of the narrow trip-hop lane they had occupied for their earlier OLI releases and explored a broader dream pop/progressive pop universe.

A seismic shift occurred here in the band lineup, with Ben Coleman departing the group, credited here in only a guest capacity. As well as simply wanting to find better-paying work, Coleman was finding that he was becoming more peripheral to the group, and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson has admitted since that things had reached a point where No-Man's music needed a broader range of instrumental textures and crowbarring a violin solo into every song had becomes burdensome.

The benefits of a wider range of guests become apparent here, including Ian Carr of Nucleus fame, several future full- time members of Porcupine Tree (Richard Barbieri and Colin Maitland), Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard, and King Crimson luminaries Mel Collins and Robert Fripp. With its centre of gravity in the artier, more laid-back end of downtempo, the album manages to show a progressive ethos without working in the more classically psych-prog/space rock notes that Wilson was reserving for Porcupine Tree.

The wake of this album would see further changes for No-Man; they would depart the OLI label, continue to evolve their sound, and put their live appearances on hiatus, not performing onstage again until 2006. With Porcupine Tree beginning to seriously gather steam at this point, it's perhaps understandable that No-Man activities were scaled back at this point. In the intervening years a new No-Man album has been a comparatively rare treat whilst Porcupine Tree has given us an embarrassment of riches (five new studio albums from No-Man, nine from Porcupine Tree, and way more live releases from the latter at that) and Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness have both put out a plethora of solo albums and collaborations along the way.

In other words, a case can certainly be made that Flowermouth represents the last point when No-Man was the central motivating force of Steven Wilson's musical endeavours - the main project which was given top priority out of all his activities at the time. On Flowermouth, we can hear why he considered this music worth committing to.