Fear of a Blank Planet
Fear of a Blank Planet is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling before 2009's The Incident. It was released on 16 April 2007 in the UK and the rest of Europe by Roadrunner, 24 April 2007 in the United States by Atlantic, 25 April 2007 in Japan by WHD, and 1 May 2007 in Canada by WEA. Steven Wilson has mentioned that the album's title is a direct reference to the 1990 Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet; while the former tackled race issues, the latter is about the fear of losing the current generation of youth to various common threats to their mental and social wellbeing, including broken homes, excessive "screen time", and narcotic overuse to the point of mental and spiritual "blankness".
The album was written in Tel Aviv and London between January and July 2006. The promotion of the record included a premiere performance of the songs during the shows in support of the Arriving Somewhere... DVD tour between September and November 2006, and a series of listening parties at New York's Legacy Studios, and London's Abbey Road Studios during January 2007.
Fear of a Blank Planet was followed later the same year by release of the Nil Recurring extended play. An additional track titled "Always Recurring" was demoed yet did not receive a formal release on any of the four records released by Porcupine Tree during this era. With the release of Insurgentes, Wilson's debut solo album, Wilson would further develop some of the ideas on which Fear of a Blank Planet is conceived.
The album charted in almost all European countries and entered the U.S. Billboard 200 at #59. The album was highly acclaimed by critics and was awarded "Album of the Year" by Classic Rock magazine in 2007.
Writing and recording
Steven Wilson started writing the album in early 2006 in Tel Aviv, while he was recording the second Blackfield album. One of the first songs that Wilson wrote for the album during this period, called "Always Recurring", would later be recycled lyrically and sonically, for use in the track "What Happens Now?". In the meantime, while Wilson was in Tel Aviv, Richard Barbieri wrote most of the music for the song "My Ashes". "Cheating the Polygraph" was a Harrison/Wilson composition whilst "Way Out of Here", "What Happens Now?" and "Nil Recurring" were written by all four band members. The Blackfield album was finished in June, so Wilson travelled back to London and met the other band members to work on the material he had been writing. These sessions took place between July and August and produced a good number of songs from which just six were picked for the record.Porcupine Tree's first DVD, entitled Arriving Somewhere..., was released in August of the same year. The band started a short tour in September to promote it, during which the six new songs selected for the forthcoming album were performed at the first half of the shows. Along the tour, which lasted until November, the band began recording the album, eventually rejecting the song "Cheating the Polygraph" since they felt it was somewhat weak when compared to the other five of the live set list; they wrote a new song called "Way Out of Here" to replace it. "Way Out of Here" was a collaboration between all band members and resulted in the only full-band composition of the record. They contacted King Crimson's guitarist Robert Fripp, who provided soundscapes to the song as well as lead guitar for the track "Nil Recurring", an instrumental song not included in the album but later released in the EP of the same name.
Around the time of the recording, Wilson read an interview in Classic Rock magazine in which Rush's guitarist Alex Lifeson had mentioned he was a big fan of Porcupine Tree. Wilson quickly got in touch with Alex to ask him if he would like to play on the album. Lifeson was pleased to contribute so Wilson wrote a section of the song "Anesthetize" for him to play a solo on. Lifeson recorded the solo in his own studio and sent it to Wilson.
The album recording process was finished in December of the same year. In January 2007, it was revealed that the album title would be Fear of a Blank Planet.
Concept
The concept of the album was heavily influenced by Bret Easton Ellis' novel Lunar Park. The novel is told from the perspective of a father, who bears the name of the novel's author himself, whereas the album is mostly from his son's perspective, an eleven-year-old kid named Robby. Many of the lyrics for Fear of a Blank Planet are lifted directly from the novel; this is particularly evident in "My Ashes", which is a homage to the last chapter, in which the ashes of Bret's father are scattered and cover the memories of his life.The lyrics deal with two typical neurobehavioural developmental disorders affecting teenagers in the 21st century: bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder. It also deals with other common behaviour tendencies of youth like escapism through prescription drugs, social alienation caused by technology, and a feeling of vacuity—a product of information overload by the mass media. In an interview with Revolver magazine, Wilson described the main character of the story as "...this kind of terminally bored kid, anywhere between 10 and 15 years old, who spends all his daylight hours in his bedroom with the curtains closed, playing on his PlayStation, listening to his iPod, texting his friends on his cell phone, looking at hardcore pornography on the Internet, downloading music, films, news, violence..."
The songs on Fear of a Blank Planet seem to have a connection not just between the lyrics but also musically; every track flows into the next, comprising a single fifty-minute piece of music. Wilson said the idea was to make an album that could be listened to in one sitting, in contrast to some bands tendency to make very long records that do not maintain the attention of the listener. He described Fear of a Blank Planet as a homage to 1970s records, whose moderate length helps the listener maintain focus:
Release and promotion
A few days after the mixing and recording processes were finished, Wilson unveiled the 5.1 mix edition of the album at two listening parties at New York's Legacy Studios, and at London's Abbey Road Studios, where the official track list was finally unveiled. Additionally, there was a third pre-release listening party without the presence of Steven Wilson in the Club Phoenix of Brisbane later on 14 April, organised by OzProg.com along with Roadrunner Records. A medley of the album tracks was posted to the band's MySpace page and the Fear of a Blank Planet microsite on 21 February. Then on 6 March, the title track was released in the US iTunes Store as a bonus track with Blackfield II, the second album from Wilson's side-project Blackfield. On 12 April, the CD came out in parts of Europe four days earlier than intended, and was soon leaked onto the internet."Sentimental" was NPR's "Song of the Day" on 4 June.
On 6 August, on their official website, Porcupine Tree announced a new EP was going to be released on 17 September the same year named Nil Recurring, featuring four tracks that were written during the Fear of a Blank Planet sessions, including the title track featuring Robert Fripp on guitar, and "Cheating the Polygraph".
The song "My Ashes" was featured in the American television series The Shield in episode #81, entitled "Animal Control", which originally aired on 7 October 2008.
On 18 April 2007, two days after the European release of the album, the band embarked on an extensive tour until the end of the year, with a short break during August and September resuming in October. During the first run of shows, the band played all of the album either in one go, or spread throughout the set. For the second run of shows this was stopped. Once again, Lasse Hoile worked with the band creating a video to accompany the performance of the whole album.
Image:Porcupine Tree @ Hamburg.jpg|thumb|right|210px|Porcupine Tree performing at Hamburg, Germany, in 11/29/2007.
Starting in Glasgow, the tour led the band through many major international music festivals such as the twins Hurricane Festival and Southside Festival in Germany, the Download Festival at Donington Park, the Voodoo Music Experience of New Orleans, and the Ilosaarirock Festival in Finland ; a radio broadcast from this performance was recorded and later remastered by the band for a release in March 2009 under the title Ilosaarirock, given away to members of the Residents of a Blank Planet ticketing club. Support acts included Pure Reason Revolution, Amplifier and Absynthe Minded across Europe, and 3 for the US. The second leg started in October in North America. Head>>Fake and 3 were the supporting bands during this month; that stretch of the tour included their first performance ever in Mexico at the Teatro Metropolitan of Mexico City. Alternative rock band Anathema joined them on tour from November as support for the European gigs that lasted until December. Along 2007, they played 92 dates in total.
The tour continued in April 2008, with their first appearance ever in Australia, where they played three consecutive dates from 25 to 27 April in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane respectively. They performed at the Dutch Pinkpop Festival on 30 May, the Rocksound Festival of Switzerland on 6 June, the Austrian Nova Rock Festival on 13 June, the Hellfest Summer Open Air in France on 21 June and the Finnish Ruisrock on 4 July 2008. Shortly after they played for the first time in Russia, on 6 July at the B1 Club of Moscow. Thereafter in October the band started a brief European tour, during which a second official DVD was shot. The filming took place along two consecutive shows on 15 and 16 October, in Tilburg, the Netherlands, at the 013 venue. This was the final leg for the Fear of a Blank Planet tour and included their first performance ever as headliners in Portugal. Oceansize opened for the UK shows.