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lupineaudiophile · 4 months

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Steven Wilson's December Skies, Anna Indiana and AI in music

If you’ve read the title, it’s likely that you’ll be confused and haven’t yet heard Steven’s Christmas song, or you have and may still have thoughts on it. Whether those are positive or negative depends on how you view AI, I suppose!

So. This dropped unexpectedly last night. I saw a video pop up as I looked for stuff to listen to. I’ve recently been getting back into SCP so anything there was definitely going to be aural bliss for my ears. Then I see it’s from the Steven Wilson channel. And it's a snowy thumbnail. So intrigued, I check this out.

At this point I’m like ‘someone pinch me please!’ because my initial reaction is to check the date. Nope, definitely not an April Fool!

The video description highlighted a conversation he’d had with a friend (Jonathon as he later says in the accompanying short) who in light of Steven kicking back against writing a Christmas song as he wouldn’t be happy with what was written. So his friend goes off to ChatGPT and through various inputs, such as ‘don’t mention Christmas’ or ‘make it sound lonely’ we get a song called December Skies. And Miles Skarin of Crystal Spotlight (who made two videos for Harmony Codex) created the video which was with a specially built AI image generator using Steven’s old videos.

All that had to be added was the music and this was the part not done with AI.

Okay. So.

I have thoughts.

Firstly, I am glad this was actually done with permission. It wasn’t ‘Let’s go behind Steven’s back and do this!’ then risk it being a deep fake which would have to be disproved. So many times I’ve seen reports on my timelines on various socials about AI being used without any permission at all and it’s those affected who have to then come out with a statement about what happened and why it’s not them. And of course, the whole deep fake thing where what you think is a video of your favourite celeb then turns out to be a very convincing fake, that can be extremely damaging.

Second, I’m not really sure what to think.

When it comes to AI, I’ve always seen it as a tool but with a lot of caution. Useful at times but don’t make it a crutch. It’s not really intelligence as it is a response to prompts then using what information is fed into it. It’s more a generative tool that’s as smart as your prompts and inputs.

Spell checker, for example, is a generative tool. It’ll look up correct spellings and suggestions and this can be very helpful. But it also behaves logically, like I’d expect any computer or software to. In this case, because I have a bad tendency to skip letters, my spell checker works overtime and in writing this has corrected several of my errors.

But if I were to write a story where the dialogue has someone not use correct grammar because they aren’t educated or because of dialect, then I would ignore grammar suggestions entirely for those sections.

This may make it sound like I’m not averse to these tools and I’m not completely, but in another way I am. It’s not the tools themselves by any means though. A pen is a tool. I could use it to write anything. This could be good and help someone or many others. Or I could write harmful things, misinformation, etc. The point is that intent is what guides a tool’s use.

I’m an artist as well as a sometimes on, sometimes off writer, and art is where this ‘AI’ trend really took off. Stable Diffusion, to give one example, has allowed people to generate art with prompts. The tool is fine. A few artists I follow said they have used things like it to then inspire them to redraw something they’ve created. Someone a long while ago used it to retouch screencaps from a game so they fed the machine what they wanted to fix. This was by choice.

But what if it wasn’t by choice? There’s far too many more instances where an artist has their works fed into such things and then it spits out what looks to be something they’d create. The person using the prompts is basically trying to get a result from maybe a specific style and not have to even get in touch with the artist in any way. They could create something that’s as close to what they want with ease.

Herein lies the issue I have. The tool may be fine but what it’s fed on is the hard work of others and then the intent to produce art for… well what? Many advocates of what they call AI (but is really just generative prompts) say this democratises art and makes it so anyone can do it. If you have an idea, you can actually make it real. Great idea, in theory. But what they don’t say is that for a good many of them, it is more about not paying someone else and getting a piece of ‘art’ effectively free and more immediate as well. Maybe even selling it or doing something with said ‘art’ that’ll make them money and no one else. It’s worth noting many advocates you’ll see on Twitter or elsewhere (but Twitter mainly) also advocated for cryptocurrency and when the bottom fell out of that, this seemed to be the next best thing to invest time into.

As an aside, I’ve been watching the reactions to Shadiversity’s foray into the whole AI thing and he just out and out said the whole spiel above about democratisation etc. He often cites how much better at art he is and if you compare the pictures, all that really happened was that he got better with prompts. Anyway.

I don’t know. Call me cynical but I think that while AI generative things have a place (with substantial caveats), it’s just the logic behind their use I hate. There was a strike about this, remember? Screenwriters didn’t want programs like ChatGPT replacing them because Hollywood studios were like ‘Oh we have to save money, we can get AI to write the scripts and you can just edit them, or we can save an actor’s likeness and use it later, no need to worry about them ageing or dying, and it’ll save so much!’

Yeah. That’s the part I’m not keen on. Tools are great. But it’s more about how they’re used and this is where my ick with the whole concept comes from. It was why my very first reaction was to think the worst. Had someone deep faked Steven’s style? Worse, had he tried it with a view to testing the waters and gone the way it's tempting to go down and ultimately sell out?

Thankfully this is not the case. Listening to the short, it seemed he was really bemused by the whole concept and the video description was just as divided on the whole issue of AI. It was a fun experiment that appears, for now, as a one off. It still kind of set my teeth on edge though, mainly for the reasons cited above.

There is something else about AI/generated stuff though and it’s the part I feel is most important. It fundamentally feels very soulless.

To compare (not that I think Steven would go this far, he’s way too invested in music to do this I would think), I wanted to briefly look at the completely AI generated singer-songwriter Anna Indiana. Everything is AI or generated for ‘her’ here, from the lyrics via ChatGPT to the look, to the music played as well. Even her name hinted at this whole thing being computer generated (Anna Indiana basically can be capitalised as A and I). It caused a bit of a stir but quickly has been largely forgotten or disregarded.

I know two songs ‘she’ released but I’m hard-pressed to remember them fully. The first one I definitely know because the lyrics are interesting, to put it very mildly. Betrayed By This Town. Good grief. The bot was having a field day with depressing lyrics on both of them. The prompt was ‘you are an expert songwriter’ at one point. I mean… What does that mean? Max Martin is an expert songwriter. So is Steven. Fleetwood Mac are experts too. What makes an expert songwriter?

My thoughts on the whole thing were that I didn’t rate it. It was competent and well put together. But… that’s it. Now when I sometimes use this word to describe music, I mean it in the sense of it was put together well but I didn’t feel it wowed me. The difference is that music I generally find in this description doesn't leap out at me but I wouldn’t switch it off. It just needs tweaks here and there. Thing is, I know there’s a person behind it who may have had an off day. It happens. You can normally tell if a person has a bad day and just gets something out there to plug a gap (or if executives interfered again).

With Anna Indiana, I can say it’s been put together okay. I can say it sounds fine. But I can also say it feels really very hollow. It sounds corporate. It sounds like someone tried singer-songwriter in the vein of a young starlet on her journey in the music business but looking to be taken seriously. But it sounds very fake and… I don’t know the exact words I’m looking for, it’s just lacking something. There’s no personal touches here or anything I can really look for that says to me ‘Yes, a person wrote this.’

Manufactured pop is not new. There’s your Pop Idols, American Idols, boy bands, girl bands etc. Gorillaz was a pastiche and part-parody on this, because of an idea Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett had.

Anna Indiana essentially is the ‘strip all people out, let’s just make this with computers to make it easy and cheap’ approach in action. As much as I find some pop ultimately a little boring, I can at least say that there were multiple people involved and little personal touches can be picked up, especially with music motifs and lyrical choices. It’s how you can tell one producer did things on multiple tracks because of their little tricks.

I don’t think Steven is going to make this a long term thing. It was a quick experiment and he seemed happy enough to add music to it and sing it (no faking his voice there! Thank goodness) then release it.

Now I have heard this and my thoughts on it are that again, it sounds very competent. In fact, because he sings it, and it’s him and Randy McStine playing on it, the melody is the thing that elevates it and gives it its mood. The lyrics are fine but lack a distinct Steven Wilson touch and it’s the one thing throwing me off about it. My feelings as of right now are that it’s a fun throwaway thing. That's it. But I’m still feeling a little ick about it overall.

It does add an interesting observation to my already jumbled thoughts. It’s definitely missing the lyrical feeling I usually get with most of Steven’s writing but in doing so, it raises the question for me of what a song in his wheelhouse would sound like if elements were replaced by the generative AI. For example, have him write the lyrics but what if it was a deep fake voice? Or the music was written by the AI?

It certainly shows (to me anyway) that his overall holistic approach is so uniquely his, in a way you wouldn’t hear on that Anna Indiana song. It’d be hard to replicate and in such instances, you’d spot it was AI if it did attempt it. And you can easily say the same for any band or musician.

I think this is the thing with the seeming rush to incorporate AI and its generative features into everything, which appears to be following a similar trajectory to the whole cryptocurrency fad. It’s a copy. Fundamentally, as noted, machines and software can only work with the right inputs. They follow logical paths but are not, as science fiction often fears it to be, sentient in that there is no additional thought added to the mix. A bot for art, such as Stable Diffusion, is not rubbing robot hands in glee, going ‘Ha ha! Now all artists are out of a job as soon as I get hands right!’ It’s literally just waiting for your prompts and that's it. What it’ll produce is art, as a facsimile of what you fed it. It’s a souped up photocopier, producing what you want.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I used to think AI was going to come sweeping in and make everyone redundant but the fact is, like when cryptocurrency was the biggest thing, it will be a brief but painful blip. Painful because we’ve had executives with dollar signs in their eyes start to think it could outright replace people and automate their jobs. Brief because where it has been sighted, it’s called out. Not just art but also articles for publications and infamously, when used in law and that one time when a fake case was cited and it was instantly ruled that if you had to find a case, do not use ChatGPT to generate your argument!

Yes, it’s not perfect but this is not the point. Perfection I don’t think was ever the goal with this fad. (Hint: As helpful as it could be, the reason for its quick-paced development is definitely money. Gotta fix its faults so you can make more of it, right?)

So I’m going to wrap this up. Basically in terms of the reason I started writing this, the song is fine but clearly a brief diversion and maybe even a trolling of the fanbase. For me, it really shows a deficiency in the AI/generative content in that while everything else around it works, the lyrics are perhaps hollow. It is, at the very least, not as hollow as the entirely artificially generated Anna Indiana.

While I have some misgivings about using these tools, I do still feel they have some use. But for as long as we have those with dollar signs in their eyes eyeing up their use with less than noble intentions, I think they should be regarded and used with some caution. I guess I used this as a way to talk about music and using these tools so my review of the song was very minimal, but hey, my blog. I’ve wanted to talk about it a while now so why not now.

#steven wilson #anna indiana #ai/generative content #long post #essay #my thoughts

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lupineaudiophile · 4 months

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Music Review: Steven Wilson's The Harmony Codex

Probably very late to the party on this but it’s been a busy few months. I also wanted to listen to it more to get the feel of it and on that score, it is very safe to say I have listened to, if not all of it, then some of it daily. I think I can give it a proper shake now.

It’s fair to say I absolutely love Steven Wilson’s work. There’s an honesty about it. You can see where his influences are and he doesn’t tuck them away, it’s there for all to see. He adds his own particular spin on them and that is the more transformative part of his work. This in itself is nothing new as most artists worth their salt do this, but I can’t define what makes Steven stand out with his approach. It just… I think you could say it just clicks with me?

I’m the sort of Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree fan who will take everything and listen to it, knowing I’ll like it all, even if some albums take a bit longer to get used to. This is admittedly where I am with The Incident, which I heard in full for the first time a few days ago. I have thoughts on that one but maybe another time.

The subject of this review is The Harmony Codex. When it was unveiled after the Closure/Continuation tour, the only things I knew were that it was coming and that it was based on a short story he’d written. I’m on the official Steven Wilson discord (well it was made ‘official’ last year, but had existed before) and there was much buzz about it as well as trepidation. Don’t worry; this is very normal for anything Steven Wilson related. There was a lot more trepidation about The Future Bites, that much I can tell you, if going by youtube comments alone was an indicator.

The Future Bites was, in my view, a good album. If anything I felt it start to slip towards the end and one more song could easily have finished it off, or one swapped out for another. It felt like an album of its time, when it was the pandemic. It was deeply surreal and I sometimes wonder what really happened in those two years of alternating lockdown and getting tested every time you have a cough. The album conveys some of this but still I feel it maybe didn’t go quite far enough into just how surreal it all really was.

In his autobiography, Limited Edition of One, Steven said that Future Bites had to come first before Harmony Codex. Some tracks on Codex could not have existed without Future Bites laying the way with its own brand of experimentation. And on this one, maybe he’s right.

The Harmony Codex can be described at its simplest as a soundscape. It’s a culmination of many styles, some that you’d never think could work together but somehow, they are all woven into an intricate pattern that is sometimes noisy but always fascinating to look at. It all focusses on a central theme and that is the ever ascending staircase.

Steven describes his inspiration as a story he read where a man was perpetually on a staircase or escalator down and it had no end. It was Descending by Thomas Disch, written in 1964 and the protagonist there was gradually driven mad on this perpetual descent, unable to escape. An overall nihilistic story that when I looked it up, had many readers guessing its intent. The image seemed to stick in his mind, enough that he decided to make a story about it.

So what is the story of The Harmony Codex?

The story starts with Jamie and Harmony, brother and sister, going to visit their father at his place of work in Whitechapel, London. It seems to be largely from Jamie’s POV, as he’s resentful of his father and protective of Harmony, while she takes in life as it comes. They pause at a stall as he buys a necklace for her, and again to buy some cupcakes on the way. They reach the office tower he works in, sign in at the receptionist’s behest, then it goes weird. There’s an explosion and both Jamie and Harmony try to get out using the stairs. They try going down but a blast forces them up. These go up and up… And wait, they must have gone higher than the building itself! It becomes hazy and then… They find a room where it’s inky blackness outside (or so it appears) then a fog swallows up Harmony and forces Jamie to retreat down to firefighters rescuing them.

Jamie is then in hospital. He asks where Harmony is and is told they'll find her soon enough but he has to rest. He may have some trauma still from the blast. This isn’t good enough. He has to find where Harmony went and what happened to her. Why is no one concerned but him? So he breaks back into the building. This is actually very very easy. He's surprised no one catches him there. Even more so when the receptionist who signed them in is there. He asks her where Harmony is and she says Harmony is there somewhere. Then she falters in her words, saying she’s unsure why she’s there, and wants to go home, shortly after showing signs of a nosebleed.

Jamie climbs the stairs. He feels ill halfway, as if his head is still in agony from the moment the blast hit. Then he finds the door, the one that was impossibly high and enters. It’s a bright bright light and then a carousel appears. Harmony is there, laughing and enjoying the ride, but does she really see him? The carousel disappears and Jamie finds another room; it's just an office but it offers a stunning view across London, then across tortured seas, then the stars. Then that’s it. The end.

Well. Quite the story! Steven did write more, mainly for The Raven Who Refused To Sing and those were good too, especially Luminol.

This story did make me excited for the album. The concept is solid, or as solid as writing a dreamscape can be. If you’ve ever had those dreams that you swear it all feels real and then you wake up and you start to forget, it feels like that. Jamie is sure he’s probably the only one to remember Harmony but it’s in the dreamworld presented here that he really sees her. Maybe because I’m very attuned to dreams, I found that this resonated very strongly with me.

I particularly felt that not having the answers made it all the better. If I’d written this, I may have risked stripping away some of the mystery but here, I felt it better to not have the answers. Who was responsible for the blast? Why does no one else seem to be in a state of urgency regarding missing persons? Having it from Jamie’s perspective makes sense here too because he just wants to find Harmony and if he ever does is left open. I feel this is the best way. Don’t answer the questions, let us (the fans) stew and speculate.

On Tumblr, there was something that gave me a similar thrill. Users began talking about a forgotten Scorsese film made in 1973 called Goncharov, a mafia film about Russian mafia in Italy with a distinct clock motif and various characters who were all symbolic, one way or another, of the titular character’s downfall. In case you are wondering… No. It does not exist. But I wish it had. It was like a fever dream but a collective one as everyone who wanted in added their own contributions. Mini essays on the theme of time and the ubiquitous clock tower, to how the ‘cast’ was depicted as motifs, that kind of thing.

The reason I cite this is because the key word is unreality. Goncharov is unreality. It’s talked about as if it's real but is in fact a mass fever dream. Everything everyone adds to it makes it seem more real but is in fact rooted in this unreality. Jamie is in a state of unreality all his own, remembering the events of that day and being preoccupied with finding his sister, but finds himself returning to the dreamworld with the intent of finding her but as soon as he does, it slips and reality sets back in. She’s still gone and so it begins again. The dream feels real, as bizarre as it appears to him, but the real world does not.

So I see unreality as the underpinning theme here. The songs reflect this despite the changing soundscape and I feel justified in saying it does it better thematically than Future Bites. That album walked so Harmony Codex could run.

So, onto the songs themselves!

One thing I will highlight that I love is a leitmotif. You hear it more often in things like musicals or soundtracks where a particular theme will slip in to remind you of a mood, a character or similar. Concept albums also do that and I do like it when I hear it. Strains of Economies of Scale I could pick up in other songs for example. There are smaller snippets as well, linking music to bridge songs together and remind you there is an overall story behind it.

Inclination: This starts with a small musical introduction. It sounds busy. The drums give the idea of a train going through the underground, like Jamie and Harmony on their way to Whitechapel. It is very evocative of a busy day on the London tubes and having been on those often enough, I got that idea very quickly.

Then it goes quiet and we know the song itself is to begin with a rather cold opening ‘Come see the fool’. Steven has said every song pulls a different idea from the story and the lyrics for this one suggest, to me, their father. As noted in the story, it is Jamie who has resentment about this little ritual to see him so I had the impression this was coming from his perspective. The lyrics don’t exactly convey an excitement about all this and paint the father in a negative light, stating he’s a liar. Again, no explanation of what happened, just bare feelings.

The music here is not quite industrial but it does lean that way just a little, the percussion especially. There’s some simple piano where and when necessary. If anything, the first listen was strange for me. I at first thought it sounded a little off kilter, the sort that takes me a while to get used to, but in fact I got used to it fairly quickly. In fact it reminds me of Kate Bush’s experiments with the Fairlight and that is meant as a compliment because that is an underrated Kate Bush era.

What Life Brings: This next one is a massive turnaround from the last one. It feels a lot warmer with the acoustic guitar and occasional piano. It was accompanied by a video where you had two dancers and what looked like a car accident, and Steven himself appeared, appearing as an observer to the life the dancers played out.

In a youtube short, he said this was a positive song, a warm one, but still with the tinge of sadness that characterises his work. It’s taking life’s surprises as they happen, which sounds like either a fortune cookie sentiment or the musings of an older person (and he’s definitely that… Not that you’d see it, I mean… he still looks like he’s drinking from the fountain of youth!). It’s trite but true. And this is one of my favourite tracks from the album. I honestly think I wear it out how often I listen to it!

In my attempt to place where this pulls from the story, I’m still thinking. I have a rough idea it’s Jamie after all this dwelling on it and then continuing but I’m not entirely sold on it.

Economies of Scale: This threw the discord group into a loop, I can say that much. The biggest reaction was trepidation and that it wasn’t a good lead song from the album.

I’d argue and say it was, despite me taking a few listens to warm to it. There’s a base keyboard part Steven was given by his keyboardist and over that, we have percussion mimicking a trap beat, then the piano coming in to provide accents and move the song along. Finally we have layered vocals at the chorus.

It's a bold choice. This turn of phrase normally implies a polite way of saying ‘Yeah… doesn’t work, sorry.’ I use it here because I think it’s bold in that it’s a style you don't expect to hear from Steven. He’s mostly known for Porcupine Tree style prog soundscapes, going from calm to blistering solos, or more melancholic moments such as those in The Raven That Refused To Sing. To hear something like this I can imagine is a surprise but it does work. While it isn’t the best on here, I do see what he was going for and it’s a good thing to hear him stretching his musical wings.

The video for this one was another interpretive dance one. I can only imagine how creative you have to be to make a whole piece about two dancers with the legendary Object but I loved this. Like What Life Brings, it seems to be in reverse, with the dishevelled one tidying up throughout the video and the Object the centre of focus. It’s effectively mimed as them both avoiding it then picking it up, or miming it being suddenly very heavy. At the end, they mime a person climbing it but can’t quite reach the top. Pretentious? Maybe. I see the whole thing as not wanting to face what’s up those stairs. Or a fear of loss.

Oh and Steven’s in it. He’s reading a paper but ignores them as he walks off. He’s got another record to make.

Impossible Tightrope: Okay. Can I get one thing out of the way? Given how much I was gushing over this on Twitter, I’ll just say it right now. I fucking love this song. I love the song. I love the video. I just love it. Miles Skarin did such a good job on this.

Alright now to talk about it properly. This was released after Economies of Scale and the snippet posted had me so excited. The way the music and video worked together so well had me legitimately hyped.

The music first. It’s an instrumental. There are some spoken words but it’s nearly 10 minutes of instrumental that starts sombre with violins, builds with keyboard, percussion then guitar. It all weaves together beautifully. It’s nearly 10 minutes of perfection, with a part that is reminiscent of Rush, quieter introspective ones and the final part where the keyboard is just allowed to go crazy.

The video very closely mimics the music. How many times did Miles and co have to listen to it to get the video to match seamlessly with the flow of the music? It’s basically following a wire through several landscapes, inspired by the work of Hipgnosis, but that shortsells it. It must be seen to be believed how intricate it is. The landscapes are fantastically made, invoking the sort of thing that dream landscapes look like. There is very much an edge of bordering on reality and unreality there.

There’s so many points I could pinpoint on it and this will have to be its own thing. After the initial rush (heh) that sounds akin to Rush, it goes quiet and follows the rope/wire between lighthouses. Below is calm water. As the piano chimes in and we hear the fading voice of ‘Hold me, dear sister’ the water fountains up very briefly to match with each piano note. This one I will highlight because that gets me everytime. I have to watch the whole video as is but this part takes my breath away.

This was the very first Porcupine Tree song I showed to my partner. I had to show her because I said it reminded me of Sonic Frontiers and we’re both Sonic fans. Even the music could fit into Sonic Frontiers. Like, I could see Sonic on the wire, using it like a grindrail, or platforming on the various landscapes.

Yes. I brought Sonic into this. I’m not sorry. Also this song should be modded into Sonic Frontiers.

Rock Bottom: I can chalk this up as the second song I know called Rock Bottom. The first is from the UK in Eurovision in 1977 and that's a hilarious song, even if, oh so sadly, it is true.

This is… not a funny song. Once more we tread into the realm of the melancholy and bereft he does so well at. This is with Ninet Tayeb, who has a very fruitful working relationship with him and had started it as a simple acoustic guitar song. He was interested and they worked on it together.

The lyrics in this are absolutely heart-breaking. There’s no hiding that it’s about feeling the lowest you could possibly be and wanting to hide. Yet there’s also the hope that once you do hit that point, there’s no way to go but up. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to really see where to go.

And Ninet’s voice is so good for this. It breaks and in doing so breaks my heart too. Not to sell Steven short here too, wailing like a man in despair as their voices merge together. The solo just hammers it home, sounding like it too wails with despair and hopelessness.

The video for this one is simple but effective. Ninet and Steven are tied to chairs, back to back. There’s a single light that illuminates both of them. As the song starts, the ropes very slowly unwind and by the solo, the ropes are completely loose. They fall off the chairs, lying on the floor and not moving except to get back up to the chairs, to be securely tied once again. At the very end, the Object appears and the video ends. One of the simpler videos by far.

If I had to hazard my own interpretation, it ties into the infinite ascending staircase in that there’s one way: up. So you start from the bottom and go up. Again I tie this to Jamie’s feelings where perhaps he does feel the loss and it hurts hard. It really does feel like rock bottom.

Beautiful Scarecrow: Continuing the low mood, here’s the next one. Still very much minor key, this one uses the instrumentation to convey a gloomy brooding mood. It doesn’t suggest a happy ending. Musically, I noticed comments that linked it to older material that was equally dark and I think I’d agree.

There was another video for this one and it was by Jess Cope. Anyone who knows Jess will know her videos for Steven are always good. They really added to the general ambience of Raven Who Refused To Sing.

This one was inspired by the dour mood laid by the music to be the tale of a society where those suffering from a plague are forced to live underground. As they are led off into the depths, a child runs terrified from the line and is forced back with a blanket over their head. Another who is unaffected by this plague, sees this and frowns, running to offer them a cuddly rabbit that has, yes, the object on its belly. She only has seconds after offering before she is pushed back from the line.

It's years later and the children have grown. The one underground lives in a walking head that is controlled from within and they still have the rabbit. They also wear masks and why becomes clear later. They head out after gathering water to find a way out to see the person who was so kind to them. She's dancing in the cornfields and they winch up a little more to get a better view. They’re obviously nervous and have every right to be as she turns around and sees them. Unfortunately all she sees is a figure clothed in drab clothing, wearing a mask and staring at her, and she’s terrified. The masked one is also terrified and quickly goes back down but the rabbit is dislodged and they can’t get it back. The paragraph before is then shown as a flashback.

At the end of the video, the masked one makes a new mask, one of terror. The others show different emotions, showing they’ve observed the girl for a while now. Above, the girl wants to find whoever it was but only finds the rabbit. It ends as she realises who it was and below her, the masked one shuts off the walking machine. It’s… Look, if you expect a good ending to come from this, you have high hopes.

The lyrics reference being disassembled, torn down, and harbour an almost hateful, possibly scared reaction to someone else. I definitely got fear from this, but there’s also sadness. Like the masked one underground, there seems to be a resignation and shutting down. There’s a lot to parse from this and if I don’t have my own ideas cracked now, then maybe later. But this definitely left a lasting impression, making this a good solid middle of the album so far.

The Harmony Codex: I have to add a caveat to this. I can’t really be impartial on this track. When I saw this uploaded, I was so excited to get off work and listen. The thumbnail alone had me. Once again, Crystal Spotlight had this down perfect.

This track is again nearly 10 minutes but trust me when I say this will be the best 10 minutes of your life you’ll want on repeat. I… listened once. Then I pressed play again. And again. This track is so very hypnotic. Even without the video, it is so good. It has a good pace set by the instrumentation alone and I find myself humming it frequently. The only spoken words are supposed to be from Harmony, talking about how she can see everything over London and beyond and then only a slight falter as she asks if she is dreaming or being dreamed. It ends when she finishes on the thought of the real world re-entering and dreams being forgotten.

Look. You try listening to it and describing it. All I can do are a few words and do my best. It’s a feeling I can't describe. At best I can describe it as a track of nearly 10 minutes that from the very start feels like a meditation. It draws you in, I feel in a strange way weightless as I listen to it. I wish I could properly describe it but honestly, it’s hard. There’s no words in any language that I think could describe the bliss, the euphoria and then the gentle letdown this brings out in my many, many listens.

The video is easier to describe but barely. It’s a dream. It’s the underground to Whitechapel, through the station then to the office, then hovering over London and then… Oh you have to see it. It really adds to the ambience of the track. It basically takes you on the journey of brother and sister and then what happens after the blast, when it comes a dreamscape of office spaces, people you know are there but hard to make out, twisting corridors. That kind of thing. It’s things I’ve recognised in dreams but carrying the concept of liminal space as well. And there’s a flood of mercury on the ever upwards staircase. Yeah.

The parts in the video that freak me out are the stormy waters which move so well, a little too well for my liking. A little dark, just a bit scary for me. It appears again towards the end before the mercury flood except on the ceiling too. I wish I knew why this part makes me a little scared. It’s not a huge part but it’s worth watching to get past it to the weird and wonderful beyond.

Time Is Running Out: We’ve had such a strong middle and this next one is a signal we’re coming to the end. These next tracks feel like what Future Bites was gearing towards and as a whole, I think what he’s learned from that album works best here. See, this is why I agree that maybe Future Bites had to come first, get the experimentation out there (even if not perfect) and you get these.

This one makes another named Time Is Running Out I know and this one is certainly gentler than the others I’m familiar with. It’s a far cry from the dreamlike state of The Harmony Codex and despite minimal percussion, it races along as if time is indeed short.

While I see this in the same vein as Economies of Scale of not being the best track, I do feel it is a good bridge to the end of the record. There’s some lyrical stuff here I did appreciate, such as rock ‘n roll with no quality control or a reference to The Kick Inside and War of the Worlds. Ugh. I swear, Steven, stop looking at my record collection!

Actual Brutal Facts: Now this is what I like. I feel I would need to hear an instrumental of this on its own. It’s the sort of trip hop thing that was big in the 90s and its low menacing tone makes the hairs on my arm stand on end. The treated vocals work so well with it too.

It’s a taunting track. Even the lyrics are a taunt. Turning shit into gold and getting nothing for it, like it’s that kind of scene in a film where someone is sat down and another paces around them, where the tension could be cut with a knife and the sitting person is trying not to let what the other say get to them. This is exactly the sort of thing it makes me think of. It really puts the cinema for your ears comment into perspective.

The Staircase: Finally the end of this collection and it’s such a good ending song.

I always see this as Jamie having moved on, it’s years later and he still remembers but he’s never sure if it's a half-forgotten dream or if it was real, as if his brain was tricking him. Things have changed, but the thought lingers.

This one never leaves my head if I hear it. The pattern the lyrics are performed in sticks in my head, seemingly random words but all relevant still to the story and how it’s ending. Like the part where it’s just words and the way it’s spoken is listlike, but to a tempo you can remember. I’m sure there’s probably a music term for that but I really like it. And that bass break. Ooooh yes. If that was longer, I’d have loved it even more.

This one does also recall previous songs. Time Is Running Out gets a small recall, parts of Impossible Tightrope I can hear too. Then it ends back on that dream note of Harmony talking about dreams, is she dreaming him or him dreaming her, finally that one note of dreams being forgotten as you wake up. Then it ends. On that very note. Is it a hopeful note? A depressing one? The music suggests both at this point but I’m honestly not sure. Knowing this to be Steven Wilson, it could be a bit of both.

Conclusion: This is a very solid record. It’s clear it was very much a labour of love and one he wanted to get out there. When I heard him talking about it in interviews or throughout the Limited Edition of One book, it was always clear he wanted it to sound right. Maybe it was that with earlier records, it wasn’t quite in place yet and as a creative, I know that feeling. It has to be right or sound right before it can be finished.

Thankfully this is a case of the hype meeting every expectation. There is always a danger of an artist deciding it’s not right then taking forever to release something that doesn’t meet the expectations of it. Happens a lot unfortunately.

My only real expectation is that he puts out a record he likes and it sounds great, with no idea on what it’ll sound like. To be honest, I think his thinking around not really filling any genre makes it hard to describe what each record would be like so genuinely, I had no idea what would be included here and thankfully I love all of it, some parts more than others.

The only track I’d say that comes any close to filler is Time Is Running Out and that's just because it comes off the back of the brilliant The Harmony Codex and before Actual Brutal Facts. On the other hand, I couldn’t name my favourite. I listen to Impossible Tightrope, it’s that. Or it’s Rock Bottom. Or The Harmony Codex. If you asked me to do a tierlist, it’d be painful.

This comes together so well overall. With some of the experimentation on display here, it’s worth a listen and I think fulfils what Future Bites was maybe trying to do. I would definitely recommend giving this a listen. Maybe first listen to all the tracks in order but then if you like it enough, do as he suggested and listen to the tracks in any order, make your own personal version.

Next I think I’d like to listen to the remixes again and the extra tracks I had with the special edition. There were a couple I felt were strange choices but usually the first listen is the listen I don’t really count because especially after hearing the original track, anything after will sound odd.

EDIT: I spent about 2 weeks on this! I had to re-read Limited Edition of One but also I found the reference to Thomas Disch here explained more clearly:

In the interests of transparency, this is majority my own thoughts and cues from Limited Edition of One, but I wanted a seperate link for the Disch story. Thereby this is made a transformative work and majority my own creation.

In case anyone wanted to pull me after the H-bomb that is Hbomberguy and his video.

#steven wilson #the harmony codex #review #long post #mentions on unreality #mentions of dreams #my thoughts

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