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Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson at work in the studio

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"There are many records like that both within, and outside of, the progressive genre. I think the progressive bands that I think are very important to listen too are King Crimson, Pink Floyd, those were my two favourites. But as I say, there are many other albums outside of the immediate prog genre that I think are just as important if you want to listen too an interesting span.

"Everything from Captain Beefheart to Frank Zappa to Scott Walker to those classic Beach Boys and Beatles records, even to bands like ABBA! If you listen to ABBA's music from the '70s, if you wanna understand about how to produce great records, great pop songs, write great pop songs, listen to ABBA. They're amazing. No really! For me it's like the mechanics of writing great pop music. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, ABBA. And Mikael from Opeth is a huge ABBA fan too, and we kind of bond on that.

"I think people are surprised by that and they kind of smirk when you say it and I'm not joking (laughs). These guys, yes, they wrote cheesy pop music compared to say, the serious music of Frank Zappa and King Crimson, but they did it at the very highest level and you can learn a lot from listening. And I think you can always tell, and it irritates me, but I think you can always tell when a band have a very limited listening diet.

"There's nothing duller than a band that have chosen to read the blueprint and have stuck to it."

"It kind of gets boring for me quite quickly if they just listen to death metal all day or they just listen to hip-hop all day. What's nice is when you hear a band and you think, 'Fuck knows what they listen to!' (laughs) I like bands that really confront your expectations and that really comes from having an interesting listening diet, and not just listening to prog rock. I think people think we just listen to Yes and Genesis records all day. Yes, there was a time when I was a kid and you know I did completely immerse myself in that world but I haven't really listened to that music a lot over the past 20 years and that's what you hear when you listen to Porcupine Tree.

"You hear those death metal riffs and those industrial rhythms and those pop songs and those harmony vocals and those ambient sections because I don't just listen to prog rock and I think it's great - I think it's very important - I think everyone should listen to some classic progressive records - some Crimson records, some Floyd records, maybe some of the early Yes records - those are extraordinary records and they were records that were really reaching for something... reaching for the stars, y'know?

"Unfortunately British music has a tendency to make fun of those bands for overreaching themselves, and being pretentious and pompous, which is ironic when you go and see Muse, but anyway... (laughs) And I love Muse, by the way, but I mean that's a band that are reaching for the stars too and they're getting there some of the time and that's when music becomes exciting, when you get musicians that are almost, overreaching because there's nothing duller than a band that are just happy to play by the rules, for me. There's nothing duller than a band that have chosen to read the blueprint and have stuck to it. I wanna see bands that are reaching beyond, even what they think they're capable of, and that's what's really important."

Special thanks to Roadrunner UK

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