http://www.innerviews.org/inner/steven-wilson
Provide a snapshot of your upcoming album remix projects for other artists.
I’ve done virtually nothing during the last year because I’ve been totally focused on To the Bone. I’m catching up on things between promoting the album and the tour next year. I’m very committed to continuing with the XTC remixes. Black Sea was just announced. We’re averaging one a year, which is about right when you consider the amount of work that goes into each of those. They’re really like a box set on a single Blu-ray disc. Andy Partridge puts demos, rehearsal tunes, videos, promotional films, the instrumentals, a flat transfer, and stereo and surround remixes on them. It’s amazing how much stuff is on those. And yet there are people who still feel entitled to more. It’s extraordinary the comments I read about them sometimes.
I’m continuing with Gentle Giant too. We’re about to release Three Piece Suite, including my remixes of material from their first three albums. Ray Shulman from Gentle Giant also authors a lot of my Blu-ray discs. We have this relationship in which he does a job for me and I do a job for them. He authored the To the Bone Blu-ray as a swap for me remixing the tracks for Three Piece Suite. No money changes hands. And I love their music, too, so it’s a great situation. Gentle Giant is perfect for surround. It’s contrapuntal music with a lot of layers. Everyone is playing different parts. I can do a lot with that.
I’m continuing with the Jethro Tull back catalog as time allows. That’s been a very well-received series and a lot of fun to work on because I’m so motivated and supportive of the project. I think the next one will be Heavy Horses and we’ll eventually do the first album at some point.
Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood just came out. That was a tough one because there’s not a lot to work with for a surround mix on that album. The 5.1 mix is nice, but it’s not particularly whiz-bang. It’s a very simply-recorded album. There aren’t any backing vocals or sound design. Most of the time it’s drums, bass, a single guitar line, a single keyboard, and a lead vocal. What could I do with that? Not a lot is the answer. I made it sound nice and a bit more immersive.
I’ve started working on Marillion’s Brave, which is a completely different kettle of fish. There are backing vocals, sound design and all kinds of layers to the music. It’s a very conceptual record that will sound very cinematic in surround.
Do you feel your approach to surround remixing has evolved over time?
I’ve got a bit better at it. I think I hit on the approach people like pretty early on when I did the King Crimson and Porcupine Tree surround discs. They went down very well in the surround sound community. I think it was probably because I was approaching them without any preconceptions of what you should and shouldn’t do in surround. I just did what I felt sounded good to me. I realized later I was doing stuff other people hadn’t really done. I was being very aggressive with the surround elements, including using the center speaker for vocals. People seemed to dig that, so I’ve stuck to my approach ever since.
Several artists now embed your name right into the artwork of the remixed albums. How does that make you feel?
It appeals to my ego. [laughs] It’s nice to see the subtext there, which is my name to some extent has become an indication of a certain level of quality for the surround mixes. There have been plenty of examples of surround mixes that haven’t been done very well and weren’t well received by people who loved those records. For whatever reason, my remixes are seen as something that people can have a degree of confidence in because they’re done sympathetically. It’s flattering to be acknowledged on the artwork or the sticker on the album.