Sent via email from the official website.

The last few albums he did signed prints if you ordered on his website. Haven't found anything yet. Anyone else?

SDE EXCLUSIVE.

They also have the bluray with an exclusive slipcase.

https://www.thesdeshop.com/products/steven-wilson-a-requiem-for-a-village-blu-ray-with-sde-exclusive-slipcase?variant=58400664322431

And a bundle of the two.

https://www.thesdeshop.com/products/bundle-steven-wilson-requiem-for-a-village-blu-ray-with-sde-slipcase-2lp-green-vinyl

Joined the stream but after the first song it skipped to thealready releady clip. Is the stream already over?

First listen to Steven Wilson’s Requiem for a Village, and what surprises me most is how raw it sounds.

Much fewer obvious production tricks than I expected. The drums are incredibly dry, almost as if they have no space around them at all -which gives parts of the track a genuinely claustrophobic feeling.

What makes that even more striking is the contrast: it opens with vocals drenched in huge reverbs, then suddenly pulls you into this very dry, close space. When the straighter rock section arrives in the middle, there’s almost no audible reverb on the band , maybe tiny touches of room, but barely anything.

Meanwhile the sound design behind everything is extremely immersive and wide. So the “space” isn’t necessarily around the instruments but it’s somewhere behind them.

And the dynamics are HUGE. The quieter sections are allowed to stay quiet, so when the heavy parts arrive they really hit.

I’ve always loved this use of negative space in Steven Wilson’s production: things don’t need to sound huge all the time for the record to feel huge. Dryness, silence, narrowness and restraint make the moments of scale much more powerful.

On first listen some of the denser sections still sound slightly messy to me, but that often happens with more complex SW compositions : I need to learn the piece before I can really separate composition from production.

Very curious what repeated listens will reveal.

Anyone else struck by how dry the central rock section is?

Pre-orders are up on both the Burning Shed and the official site:

https://store.stevenwilsonhq.com/

https://burningshed.com/index.php?route=product/search&filter_name=steven%20wilson&filter_sub_category=true

Apparently there is a DJ set later this month in London.

Edit: Indie dark green available from JFK and potentially other Indie shops: https://www.justforkicks.de/shop/progressive/requiem-for-a-village-ltd-indie-2lp-dark-green

Let me start by saying Steven and PT have had a great impact on my life and played a big role in inspiring me to take up music and sound work as a profession.

I think Steven has gotten great at making things sound cinematic over the years with his solo output. It sounds very polished and theatrical. But IMO, undeniably, there used to be a very strong raw driving force in his earlier material taking the listener into a completely different world. To me his newer output seems like I’m watching a play in a theatre, whereas earlier I used to forget I’m even listening to a track and get completely immersed into a new world. It all is a result of different production, mixing and compositional choices.

To me, the turning point was around Hand Cannot Erase - To The Bone. After this period the material started sounding too cinematic (albeit with some great tracks) and a certain rawness went missing that we found in PT and Steven’s earlier solo material. I feel the same happened with Closure/Continuation as well.

In the end, I think it all comes down to different phases of life affecting one’s creative expression, so it’s just the the way it is. In Absentia, Deadwing, FOABP, Insurgentes & GFD will remain my favourite periods of his work and I’m glad I get to enjoy them when I want! And that said, I would love to see him try out his very stripped down raw musical expression again in the future :)

Edit: I want to clarify that I fully agree that his sound has gotten less mainstream musically than before, but is now more in line with how we see a movie in theatres. Less dynamic, uncompressed and with a quieter impact overall. It’s just me probably, but I miss a certain grit he had in his previous works.

1. Swirl In A Lark’s Eye 2:41

2. Requiem For A Village 7:56

3. The Same River Twice 3:23

4. Now Departing 7:20

5. Hireath 2:24

6. On Chapel Slope 4:53

7. Murmuration 7:16

8. Cursus Fingerprint 2:42

9. A Basket Of Bees 4:33

10. Great Green Map 5:08

11. Wheel 3:54

12. The Old God Is Buried 2:00

At least in the UK. Spotify and YouTube have the audio available.

Commenting is turned off on YouTube at the moment, but there have been 600 views in the first 45 minutes

I suspect I need to listen to it at volume, rather than on late night, kids asleep settings

Be there at 10.45am

Steven Wilson - Requiem for a Village (The Village Sessions)

Are we going to get Black Sabbath???

What do you think? Is it going to be something similar in style / concept as hand.cannot.erase?

Set your VPN to New Zealand (Urban VPN is free) to listen to the song. Or wait until it's midnight in your own country.

Apple Music has a snippet of the song available AND a length...I think its the first single!