History Music / PorcupineTree

* ''Stupid Dream'' (1999) - the album where they started moving away from psychedelia towards prog-rock.

* NewTechnologyIsEvil: Steven Wilson dislikes UsefulNotes/{{MP3}}s and [=MP3=] players, for decreasing the quality of music and the significance of it, respectively. He takes a few shots at iPods and video games on ''Fear of a Blank Planet''.

* AlbumTitleDrop: The title of ''Up the Downstair'' comes from a spoken line from the separately released ''Voyage 34''. Averted with the {{TitleTrack}}s of ''On the Sunday of Life'', ''Up the Downstair'', ''Signify'' and ''Stupid Dream'', which are instrumentals, whilst those of ''Deadwing'', ''Fear of a Blank Planet'' and ''The Incident'' don't mention the title at all. Played straight on ''The Sky Moves Sideways'' and ''Lightbulb Sun'', however.

* IAmTheBand: Music/StevenWilson was the only member for the first few years of the band's existence. Afterwards, he still wrote the majority of the songs by himself. After more than a decade of maintaining a solo career, he defied this with ''Closure/Continuation'' by having more prominent contributions from the other members to keep the album from sounding too much like his solo output.

+ Music/PinkFloyd, Music/{{Opeth}}, Music/{{Camel}}, Music/DonnaSummer, Music/{{ABBA}}, Music/{{Cardiacs}}, Music/{{XTC}}, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Music/{{Gojira}}, Music/{{SunnO}}, Music/{{Meshuggah}}, Tangerine Dream, Music/AphexTwin, Music/NineInchNails, Music/{{Neurosis}}, Music/{{Can}}, Music/{{Squarepusher}}, Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Schulze, Music/{{Neu}}

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Steven Wilson usually goes barefoot.

* IAmTheBand: Music/StevenWilson for the first few years of the band's existence.

* {{Sampling}}: All of their earlier albums feature sampled speech at some point, especially ''Signify''. "Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled" from ''Lightbulb Sun'' samples a speech made by the leader of the religious {{cult}} Heaven's Gate shortly before they committed mass suicide, while "Voyage 34" samples Timothy Leary and various other people talking about the various positive effects of LSD.

* Alex Lifeson - guitar solo on "Anesthetize" (Music/{{Rush}} member)

** "Sentimental" (from ''Fear of a Blank Planet'') and "Normal" (from ''Nil Recurring'') share some melodic and lyrical elements, but take them in completely opposite directions. In particular, the singer of "Sentimental" twice says, "I never want to be old," while the singer of "Normal" repeats, "Wish I was old and a little sentimental" (to a BrokenRecord extent, in fact). Despite this, the songs share several musical elements and the lyrics of their chorus. Also a possible case of RefrainFromAssuming, since the song that contains "sentimental" as a repeated word is not called "Sentimental" (in fact, the song ''actually called'' "Sentimental" does not even contain that word in its lyrics).

* RecordProducer: Steven Wilson does it himself, and has produced other bands (most notably Music/{{Opeth}}). He's also been remixing Music/KingCrimson's old albums for re-release. Other bands he's remixed include Music/{{Caravan}}, Music/JethroTull, Music/GentleGiant, and Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer.

** Similarly, "The Creator Has a Mastertape" is named for Pharaoh Sanders' "The Creator Has a Master Plan".

** A slightly less subtle one would be ''The Sky Moves Sideways'', a psychedelic rock album with five tracks, the first and last of which are halves of the titular song. Does this remind any Music/PinkFloyd fans of [[Music/WishYouWereHere anything]]?

** The opening of "Sentimental" features alternating sections of 9/8 and 15/16.

Porcupine Tree is an English ProgressiveRock group formed by Music/StevenWilson. They are known to combine elements of rock, {{Ambient}}, PsychedelicRock, {{Krautrock}}, electronica and (on their most recent albums) HeavyMetal into their music. Many critics have hailed them as the modern-day Music/PinkFloyd when their popularity increased in TheNineties, but Steven Wilson has expressed his dissatisfaction with this label, preferring that Porcupine Tree be known as "the old Porcupine Tree" or "the new Porcupine Tree" (as opposed to the "new" somebody else).

Porcupine Tree went on hiatus in 2010 following Music/StevenWilson's interest in continuing his solo career; in 2018 Wilson declared Porcupine Tree "finished", but eventually announced a reformation in 2021 as a trio, with a new album titled ''Closure/Continuation'' to be released in 2022.

** And ''The Incident'' contains the song "Time Flies", which is about nostalgia and contains MANY musical and lyrical hat-tips to Music/PinkFloyd - ''Music/{{Animals}}'' was the first album Steven Wilson bought as a child. It also has passing references to Music/TheBeatles and Music/JimiHendrix.

* NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: "Trains" has a random banjo interlude in the middle, and "Anesthetize", which starts off sounding vaguely like Music/{{Radiohead}}, progresses on to a metal section, and ends with a psychedelic sounding movement that has massive vocal overdubs.

Porcupine Tree is an English ProgressiveRock group formed by Music/StevenWilson. They are known to combine elements of rock, {{Ambient}}, PsychedelicRock, {{Krautrock}}, electronica and (on their most recent albums) HeavyMetal into their music. Many critics have hailed them as the modern day Music/PinkFloyd when their popularity increased in TheNineties, but Steven Wilson has expressed his dissatisfaction with this label, preferring that Porcupine Tree be known as "the old Porcupine Tree" or "the new Porcupine Tree" (as opposed to the "new" somebody else).

Porcupine Tree started off in 1987 as a psychedelic/space rock band with only Steven Wilson, who was signed to Delerium Records after a period of distributing his own cassettes and passing off PT as an old forgotten FakeBand, like [[Film/ThisIsSpinalTap Spinal Tap]]. On Delerium, Wilson released two and a half albums [[IAmTheBand largely recorded by himself with overdubbing and drum machines]] (some songs on ''The Sky Moves Sideways'' were performed by all the band members) before turning PT into an actual band. Their fourth album, ''Signify'', was their first album where all the band members played. Their next album, ''Stupid Dream'', slightly withdrew from the spacy, psychedelic, EpicRocking material on their earlier albums, adding elements of AlternativeRock and accentuating their ProgressiveRock influences. Starting with ''In Absentia'', their albums have started getting heavier and veering into progressive metal territory, although not to the extent of such bands as Music/{{Opeth}} or Music/DreamTheater.

Steven Wilson is known to be close friends with [[Music/{{Opeth}} Mikael Åkerfeldt]], and the two have collaborated with each other's bands - Wilson sang backing vocals on and produced four Opeth albums (''Blackwater Park'', ''Deliverance'', ''Damnation'', and ''Heritage'') while Åkerfeldt contributed backing vocals to three songs on ''Deadwing'' and a guitar solo to "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here". The two have even collaborated on a project entitled 'Storm Corrosion'.

** ''Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape'' (1992) - a compilation of the leftover early tracks that didn't make it on ''Sunday''. Includes the original cassette version of "Radioactive Toy", a song that was re-recorded for ''Sunday''. The CD version has a cover of "The Cross" by Music/{{Prince}}, while the vinyl version replaces that with "Out" (originally from ''Love, Death & Mussolini'').

** ''Fear of a Blank Planet'': Told from the viewpoint of a teenager in modern day society, isolated and alienated by prescription drugs and mass media. According to that other [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_a_Blank_Planet#Concept wiki]] it was heavily influenced by Creator/BretEastonEllis' novel ''Literature/LunarPark''.
** ''The Incident'': Has a theme of moments that change someone's life forever. The title track was inspired by a car accident Wilson witnessed, and his thoughts the the word "incident" was a very cold way to describe an event that could destroy people's lives. Another song (The Blind House) was inspired by the US government raid on a cult's ranch in Texas where polygamous marriages to teenage girls were going on.

* DarkerAndEdgier: More and more with each subsequent album, both musically and lyrically. While the band has always been morose, try comparing ''Lightbulb Sun'', which is esssntially a proggy alt-rock record with some sad and macabre themes, to ''In Absentia'', a borderline progressive metal record which prominently deals with serial killers, to see just how much darker the band got later on.

* GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: The re-released editions of ''Up the Downstair'' and ''The Sky Moves Sideways'' replace the programmed drums with real recorded drumming from Gavin Harrison. This is a case of a major change to an album being generally well received among a band's fan base, as most are quite fond of Harrison's drumming ability.

** The CD versions are still fairly compressed, though, most likely due to ExecutiveMeddling. There is audible clipping on the CD versions of ''In Absentia'' and especially ''Deadwing,'' but the mastering on later [=CDs=] is less crude. This is largely averted on the DVD-audio 5.1-channel mixes however, except ''In Absentia'', which, for some reason, is still clipped. (There is still some compression on some channels of the other 5.1 mixes, but not all, and it is not as bad as on the CD versions. The only 5.1 mix that is badly clipped is ''In Absentia''). It is quite possible that the ExecutiveMeddling with his own albums is what sparked Wilson's interest in remixing seemingly every ProgressiveRock album released in TheSeventies (and then some).

* SelfBackingVocalist: Wilson, most of the time. On several tracks he does polyphonic arrangements with several vocal lines reminiscent of Music/GentleGiant, which is likely a deliberate homage given his love of classic prog.

* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: Getting harder over their career, from 4/5 at the beginning to a pretty solid 6 for most of ''In Absentia'' and ''Deadwing'' to 6 or 7 on ''Fear of a Blank Planet'' and ''The Incident''.

Porcupine Tree currently went on hiatus in 2010 following Music/StevenWilson's interest in continuing his solo career; in 2018 Wilson declared Porcupine Tree "finished", but eventually announced a reformation in 2021 as a trio, with a new album titled ''Closure/Continuation'' to be released in 2022.

!! Porcupine Tree provides examples of: