be made now . I think I achieved that and that ’ s why I feel it is quite a breakthrough record .
When transitioning to the primarily electronic sound of The Future Bites ( 2020 ), how have things changed in terms of your mindset , how you see the world , where you get ideas from , etc .?
I think I had to acknowledge to myself that I live in an electronic world . I think something that we all need to acknowledge to ourselves . When I grew up in the 80s and 90s , a lot of music was rock . I liked electronic music too but I gravitated towards playing the guitar and became a rock musician .
I believe that the one major thing is that we don ’ t live in that world anymore . We live in a world that is surrounded by electronic sound whether it is coming from our laptop or phone or even our door bell . We are constantly bombarded by electronic sound and this is the musical vocabulary that young people understand . The guitar is an alien sound to them . My kids who are 9 and 10 don ’ t know what a guitar sounds like .
Working with that musical palette was a challenge for me but I embraced it because I always liked electronic music . I have not always been brave enough before now to completely immerse myself in that world . But this time around I was absolutely adamant that it had to be a record that reflected the times that we live in . In order to reflect that , it had to be an album with an electronic sensibility . There are still guitars on this record but overall the record leans towards the electronic aesthetic .
I know you ’ re a longtime David Bowie admirer . Did he come to mind when you were dabbling in this album ’ s electronica ? In the same vein , are there any modern pop artists that interest you ? Also , did you draw any influence from your music with No-Man ?
The reason Bowie , for me , is an icon is because of the way he conducts the expectations of the audience or not be afraid to disappoint your audience by doing something that they are not expecting . He was the king of that ! One minute he is a glam rocker , then he is a folk singer , then he is a solo singer and then he made the Berlin Trilogy which is dark , experimental European music which I think is a reference for so many people working in Pop music .
He then reinvented himself in the 80s with the big stadium pop music . For someone to be able to do that consistently and in such a short period of time , I think he is almost unprecedented . To me , he is a constant inspiration in that sense to be brave and change direction . I think it is important for artists to please themselves and not to please listeners .
So , for the first time we ’ re getting a Dolby Atmos mix of a Steven Wilson album . You also mentioned that you are remixing all your music at home in Atmos . How did you come to this new mode of mixing from the 5.1 mix ? And could you take us through the production journey for The Future Bites ?
For the second time in a row , I worked with a co-producer , a guy called David . He is someone who I have followed for many years and admired . What I love about his production is that he has a great understanding of the history of music ; it is very contemporary and fresh .
Working with someone like David was very important . It was the most solo album I have made in the sense that I have played most of the guitars , bass and keyboards so there wasn ’ t so much of a band involved in this album . That was also a conscious decision because the album was going to be electronic . I wanted this album to be streamlined and fresh .
The Dolby Atmos was an extension of something that I have been doing for many years which is my interest in surround sound . I have been making music in 5.1 sound and I understand that a lot of people don ’ t get what that is .
5.1 is basically when you have two speakers in front of you , two speakers behind you , one speaker in the middle and the . 1 is a low frequency . Dolby
Atmos is the next step up from that and the standard is 7.1.0 which means that instead of five speakers , you now have seven . For the first time , someone like me can not only spread the music in a horizontal way but also a vertical way . For an album like this , with a lot of details , this was a very immersive experience .
You said that you think the most powerful people in the world right now are those who write algorithms and persuade us to do things online . Does that idea scare you , amuse you ? How did it become a conceptual pivot for The Future Bites ?
There were a couple of themes I was interested in exploring . The idea of self and identity has changed in the era of social media . We all have a mirror of social media which means that we get immediate feedback to any music , opinion , belief etc . I think that has created a world of music for more narcissistic people which includes myself as well . We are all more self absorbed . I think before the internet , we used to look at the world with curiosity and now we look at the little screen to see how many comments our Facebook or Instagram post has received . It ’ s fascinating to see how much the Internet has changed the world in an incredibly short period of time and a lot of those ideas went into the album .
Another thing that the album pivots on is the idea of consumerism and the fact that our internet footprint is constantly being analysed and the data is being used against us to buy things , to watch things , to believe things , to listen to things . It is framed in a positive way that our life is made easier by being recommended things that you like to purchase but there is another insidious side to it .
I see an increase in belligerence and the way people take extreme views . I think the internet and social media and algorithms feed into that . They present to us a world that we already know and that is not the purpose of life . The internet tends to analyse and give us things that we already know and believe in .
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