Porcupine Tree

Porcupine Tree began in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England, in 1987 as an inside joke turned solo project. The band originated as a collaborative hoax project conceived by musician Steven Wilson and his friend Malcolm Stocks. Porcupine Tree started out as a "fake" band, the only real member being multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson, who wrote and performed everything himself while inventing an elaborate fictional backstory for the group. By the early 1990s the music had built a genuine cult following, and by late 1993 Wilson wanted to work in a band environment, bringing on frequent collaborators Richard Barbieri as keyboardist, Colin Edwin as bassist, and Chris Maitland as drummer to form the first permanent lineup. Early on, the band's atmospheric, spacey sound drew constant comparisons to 1970s psychedelic and progressive rock, and their 1995 album The Sky Moves Sideways became a success among progressive rock fans, with the band hailed as the Pink Floyd of the 1990s. Porcupine Tree's real breakthrough came as the band sharpened its songwriting and toughened its sound through the late 1990s and into the 2000s. The first real band album recorded was Signify in 1996, followed by Stupid Dream in 1999, a breakthrough album which saw the band move into a more song-orientated direction. A pivotal lineup change followed: in February 2002 Maitland left the band and Gavin Harrison was recruited to replace him, completing what fans consider the classic quartet of Wilson, Barbieri, Edwin, and Harrison. That same year, with Gavin Harrison replacing drummer Chris Maitland, Porcupine Tree achieved their biggest success to that point with In Absentia in 2002, an album whose fusion of metal, progressive rock, and ambient textures became a blueprint for a generation of bands to follow. The momentum continued with 2005's Deadwing, which produced a rare hit single in 2005 with "Shallow," and peaked commercially with 2007's Fear of a Blank Planet, an album that quickly became Porcupine Tree's most successful album to date, debuting at number 59 on the US Billboard 200 and number 31 in the UK, earning a Grammy nomination and guest contributions from prog and rock royalty including Rush's Alex Lifeson and King Crimson's Robert Fripp. The band's career arc through the 2000s was marked by relentless touring, growing critical stature, and a steadily rising profile among both prog purists and the metal crowd. Fear of a Blank Planet was met with great critical and commercial acclaim, backed by a hugely successful tour, bolstered by an increased profile among the metal crowd, helped considerably by the backing of Roadrunner Records and the approval of peers such as Opeth, Katatonia and Anathema. Touring intensified further, and in 2008 Porcupine Tree played Australia for the first time, appearing in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, alongside major European festival dates. The band's tenth studio album, The Incident, followed in 2009, and the band went on hiatus in 2010 after their biggest ever headline show at London's Royal Albert Hall, following a career that spanned an excess of 20 years and 10 studio albums. By that point, tensions within the group had grown; as Wilson later acknowledged, vibes within the four-piece began to deteriorate prior to the 2010 Royal Albert Hall show, two band members got into an altercation, and Wilson had been dissatisfied with the band's 2009 release, feeling the group was stuck in a creative rut. After more than a decade of silence, Porcupine Tree returned in a stripped-down trio configuration. It was announced in late 2021 that the core unit of Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison and Richard Barbieri had been secretly working to complete an album of new material for release the following summer. That album, Closure/Continuation, arrived in June 2022 via Music For Nations/Megaforce Records, and the band toured the world for the first time since 2010, with bassist Nate Navarro recruited to replace classic member Colin Edwin, who did not participate in the reunion. Wilson has been careful to frame the comeback on his own terms, insisting it's not a reunion, since the band never broke up and they made a new record. Today, decades after its origins as a fictional band invented for fun, Porcupine Tree stands as one of modern progressive rock's most respected and influential acts, having built, in the words of one retrospective, a cult that has "grown, and grown." It is fitting that a band built on patient, decades-long devotion should have a place in this archive. Wayne Dennon photographed Porcupine Tree at three different shows between 2005 and 2010, right in the heart of the band's most celebrated creative stretch, the Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet, and The Incident era that cemented their reputation among prog and metal fans alike. Those nights live on here