HOUSEKEEPING: THE OLI YEARS 1990-1994

These days, most people who become aware of Steven Wilson probably know him for Porcupine Tree, or his solo albums, or his active side hustle putting together fresh new mixes of classic albums from the prog greats of the past. Then, of course, there's the expanded universe of less heralded side projects he's had a hand in over the years. These days, No-Man is one of those side projects - a thing he comes back to now and again, whenever the mood strikes him and Tim Bowness, his constant creative partner in the project, but which can't really be said to be the main focus of his career.

However, there was a time when that wasn't the case - when even the mighty Porcupine Tree was a mere side project and No-Man was the most active of his musical ventures. After putting out various early demos and EPs over the 1980s, No-Man would sign with the OLI label (called One Little Indian then, but sensibly rebranded as One Little Independent now), issuing a clutch of singles and albums which represent No-Man's most sustained and intense burst of activity, with Ben Coleman along for the ride on violin. (He would exit by the end of the era, partially for financial reasons, partially because No-Man were moving in a direction where putting a violin solo on every song no longer made sense.)

Housekeeping is an encapsulation of that era, offering over five CDs the Lovesighs compilation of single tracks predating their debut album, the debut album itself (Loveblows and Lovecries), and the magnificent Flowermouth - perhaps the apex of their musical accomplishment in this phase, as they emerged from the shadow of the commercially fashionable trip-hop style they'd been pigeonholed into by the label and created something more artistically compelling through the simple measure of ignoring all of the label's instructions and just doing their own thing.

The bonus tracks on the discs for Lovesighs and debut album Loveblows and Lovecries, plus the dedicated "Singles" disc of non-album singles, offer a somewhat more varied sound, with the 22 minute Heaven Taste touching at points on similar territory to that which Wilson was exploring in Porcupine Tree at the same time. (In the process, this material displaces the now-redundant compilation Heaven Taste.) Likewise, the disc's worth of radio sessions puts another spin on a lot of the material, with the acoustic sessions in particular taking their sound into evocative new realms and making their devotion to Donovan and Nick Drake make somewhat more sense.

Though taken individually I would say that Flowermouth stands head and shoulders over the other discs here (with the radio sessions at a close second place, thanks to the more diverse sound it has compared to the earlier OLI releases), at the same time my appreciation of the first three discs is heightened by having the musical evolution of the group during this era laid out here in such encyclopedic fashion.

Of course, we all know the story - after putting out a few tapes and On the Sunday of Life as a joke, Steven Wilson found his Porcupine Tree side hustle gaining further traction. By the end of the period covered here, Porcupine Tree would have released Up the Downstair - the first sign that the project was more than a one-off joke - Wilson would be simultaneously drawing together the material which would become The Sky Moves Sideways, Porcupine Tree would crystallise as a full-on band project, and the group's momentum just kept building.

At the same time, it appears that Bowness and Wilson were realising that whatever No-Man might become, it wasn't going to be as big as they'd hoped for; from 1994 to 2006 they went into a hiatus as far as live shows go, keeping No-Man alive as an occasional studio project and further developing and mutating its sound. But for a brief flash of time in the early 1990s, you could believe that No-Man were about to be the next big thing. Housekeeping will take anyone who remembers that era back there in fine fashion; for those of us, like me, who simply missed this material first time around, it's a wonderful one-stop summation of what all the fuss is about.