Metal Anarchy

Steven Wilson will be releasing a new album, titled “Requiem For A Village,” on November 6. A video for the title track can be found below. The clip serves as the first installment in his “Village Sessions” series.

“Requiem For A Village” Track Listing:

01. “Swirl In A Lark’s Eye”
02. “Requiem For A Village”
03. “The Same River Twice”
04. “Now Departing”
05. “Hiraeth”
06. “On Chapel Slope”
07. “Murmuration”
08. “Curcus Fingerprint”
09. “A Basket Of Bees”
10. “Great Green Map”
11. “Wheel”
12. “The Old God Is Buried”

The following was said about the album:

“If Steven Wilson’s eighth album ‘The Overview’ explored the depths, distances, and desolation of deep space, ‘Requiem for a Village’ narrows its focus to a tiny, unknown corner of the British Isles. It steps back from the modern world and ventures into the unfamiliar, setting down in a village that exists beyond time and place.

In imagining this realm of otherness and in creating music that willingly embraces both the macabre and the possibilities of studio mistakes Wilson adopted a similarly unorthodox recording approach. Eschewing AI and corrective studio technologies, he turned instead to organic instrumentation (whether pristine or imperfect), embracing mistakes to see where they might lead. Intimate, ambitious, richly imaginative, and knowingly eccentric, featuring compelling narration written by Andy Partridge (XTC) and voiced by one of the country’s finest actors, David Tennant.

Set in a landscape where the paintings of Stanley Spencer hang in the local art gallery, the stories of M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood sit on the shelves of the public library, and the children of the stones play in the market square, ‘Requiem for a Village’ is a sepia-toned snapshot of a place you won’t find on any map a 54-minute piece of cinema for the ears.”

Wilson added:

“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints. Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can’t be created using software.

For example using only analogue synths with all their unpredictability, or not having instruments perfectly in tune. But it also lead to me picking up the violin, the oboe, or trying my hand on the drums – playing things I don’t really know how to play but getting something out of them that inspired me in ways I didn’t expect.

Approaching the music with a sense of innocence and seeing where it took me. And where it took me was to the village.”

He also announced a special DJ set:

“I will be hosting a DJ set at The Social (5 Little Portland Street, London, W1W 7JD) on the 22nd September. Expect to hear the songs that sit beside the album’s foundation stones, everything from the gauzy otherness of Boards of Canada and Demdike Stare, the haunted ragas of Third Ear Band, to the creeping dread found in British children’s TV and other broadcasts from the ’70s. All proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to charity.”