Any Porcupine Tree Fans?

mesaman said:
Gavin is an official member of The Pineapple Thief now, not just a hired gun. This is a pretty cool video of him playing part of White Mist, which is a track off of Dissolution. If you like live concert DVDs, I'd recommend picking up Where We Stood, which was recorded on I think the first tour Gavin did with them. As a guitarist, I would have been fine with the camera being on Gavin the whole time :D

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Ok... Now I have somewhere to start with The Pineapple Thief!

Thanks... Off to iTunes :)
 
Seen Gavin six times since he’s been part of the three drummer iteration of King Crimson (Harrison, Pat Mastelotto, & Jeremy Stacy). Twice sitting right in front of him (drummers are front of the stage for recent Crim shows). He is amazing. But so are the other two.

 
TSJMajesty said:
Kicking myself that I only discovered these guys a few years after they were done, so I never got to see them live. Gavin Harrison..., what an amazing, dynamic, fantastic drummer, evidenced by this mind-blowing fill, and Richard's sly smile!!

Any others here dig these guys, saw them live, write music like them?

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Oooh yeah! For a few shining years in the mid-late '00s, Porcupine Tree and Opeth were the twin axes of my musical world. In Absentia and Blackwater Park were the first albums I bought from the respective bands, and I couldn't have had more perfect introductions to them. Both are desert island albums, and I bought them when they were new releases, so I still had Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet, Damnation, and Deliverance awaiting me as future releases... Those were really good years!

I saw PT and Opeth live in Seattle supporting In Absentia and Damnation. They were trading spots on the bill night by night, and it was Opeth's turn to play second that night. PT blew me away, and then Opeth came on and played their mellow 70's rock set... I was hoping they'd cut loose with the brootalz that night, but they didn't. Mikael sang lead on one of the PT songs in the first set (can't remember which one) and said "I've never been so nervous in my life!"

Then the PRS Experiences came into the picture in very interesting ways. I think in '08 PT played in Baltimore the weekend of the Experience, and I was lucky enough to hook up with a spare ticket and some guys who became lifelong friends to drive up there and see the show. "Anesthetize" rocked my brains out in particular, but it was a great, great show overall.

I bought "The Incident" the weekend of a later PRS experience (09? 10?) and if memory serves, both Steven Wilson and John Wesley were scheduled to appear and play. John played (and was brilliant), but Steven didn't. He was hanging out watching other acts during the afternoon. I could have talked to him I suppose, but I was a little star-struck and didn't want to hassle him.

The coda to that story is that Opeth was at the 2012 PRS Experience, and I bought their new album "Heritage" that weekend. Sense a theme here? This time I did talk to the guy I wanted to, and chatted up Mikael a bit. I mentioned Steven from the previous time, and Mikael said "yeah, he didn't play. He was super nervous about doing that." Evidently jamming with people is not his thing, and I can totally understand that -- I have a hard time with it too.

So all in all, I listened my way through Porcupine Tree's heyday and heard their new stuff when it was new. I count myself lucky to have done so. Their run was too short. Great, great stuff!
 
I discovered Porcupine Tree (Signify although he doesn't play on that one) through Gavin Harrison (coming from O.S.I, where Gavin replaced Portnoy on the 3rd album - where I also heard for the first time Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt on one of the tracks). Got to O.S.I through former Dream Theater Kevin Moore after listening to Space-Dye Vest. I discovered Guthrie Govan trough a Hans Zimmer DVD, fell in love with his Erotic Cakes and seen him with the Aristocrats in Toronto. Found about Haken from an interview with Jordan Ruddes and managed seen them in Toronto (love Pareidolia from the Mountain and the whole Vector album).

Funny how the world turns round
 
Favorite band!!... Steven, while being a bit eccentric, is an incredible songwriter/composer with diverse influences. I have all the PT and SW albums... every one has some real gems. But I think Hand Cannot Erase may be his masterpiece.

Definitely recommend seeing him live when touring resumes... always incredible live shows - great players, perfectly mixed and engineered, sometimes with surround sound in venues.
 
Collect all their albums and listen chronologically. What a journey....So diverse. Worth checking out anything Steven Wilson has touched. His remastered versions of classic albums are amazing.

Highlights for me are

Voyage 34

Fear Of

In (and “Out”) Absentia Album. Seems to resonate with many fans.

Deadwing
 
skunc said:
Collect all their albums and listen chronologically. What a journey....So diverse. Worth checking out anything Steven Wilson has touched. His remastered versions of classic albums are amazing.

Highlights for me are

Voyage 34

Fear Of

In (and “Out”) Absentia Album. Seems to resonate with many fans.

Deadwing
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this one gets me every time…


 
I have a deep appreciation for their studio albums. In Absentia being one of those end-to-end listens that just pull me in and hold me there. Their approach to layered tones, unique guitar sounds, mixing -- it all just floors me every time I put their stuff on.
 
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mesaman said:
Gavin is an official member of The Pineapple Thief now, not just a hired gun. This is a pretty cool video of him playing part of White Mist, which is a track off of Dissolution. If you like live concert DVDs, I'd recommend picking up Where We Stood, which was recorded on I think the first tour Gavin did with them. As a guitarist, I would have been fine with the camera being on Gavin the whole time :D

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I loved everything about that and will be checking out Pineapple Thief immediately. As much of a metalhead I am, there's nothing cooler to me than an extremely dynamic drummer who can pull stuff off whisper quiet at the same speed he can when he's wailing away. There's not too many guys who are that dynamic with their playing, even some of the great guys, like Mangini, as amazing as he is, he's got soft/medium/loud and stays within those until he has to change. Gavin, Dave Weckyl, Virgil Donati; those dudes approach the kit the same way a vocalist approaches dynamics when singing. Makes the song feel so much more organic and like a living, breathing thing. Danny Carey is another one....even though he wails the piss out of those drums, he's constantly varying the dynamics.

While it's all extremely dynamic, 6:15 on is a great example because he's playing like 3 different things at once and they've all got they're own independent dynamics. Ridiculous.


Thanks for posting that! Holy shit they've got a lot of albums! I went back as far as 2007 and added them all to my iTunes, I'm anxious to check these guys out!
 
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Gavin has also said he strives to play to the song, looking for "spaces" in which to insert little nuances, like ghost notes (or whatever you call the real light snare hits that sound like short, mini rolls...), and not just doing fills for the sake of doing fills.
 
TSJMajesty said:
My cousin tried turning me on to Dream Theater when Images and Words came out, and I already knew (and liked) Pull Me Under (prob from eMpTyV), but was like, meh, to the rest of the album. Then one night hanging with guys in another band, they would use New Millenium (from Falling into Infinity album) to tune their PA, and I was like, Who ARE these guys? Their music just completely floored me from that point on (till just a few songs into A Dramatic Turn of Events, which is right after Portnoy left.)

It may happen; It may not. I've tried several times to like their releases with Mike Mangini, but aside from a few songs that I like a little, it just ain't happening. And until I discovered Muse, they were my favorite band, by far.

As for PT, I think it was a You Tube suggestion..., I remember the song was Time Flies, and I instantly dug it. Just a nice blend for me of all the prog elements I love. Then I learned about Gavin Harrison...! My vocabulary is simply not deep enough to find adjectives that describe how amazing I feel he is! I tell guys who argue over which Mike in DT is better, that if Gavin Harrison had auditioned, we'd never even had those discussions (although probably not, since I kinda think MM had an edge over everyone else going in, tbh.)

I'm jealous of you guys who have seen PT live. I need to go deeper into their catalogue.
Thanks for chiming in!
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You know what's funny? I purposefully forced myself to love Dream Theater because I knew being a fan of Petrucci would make me a better guitar player. Well, my 14 year-old mind reasoned that, anyway. It was around '96 and a skater kid, of all people, asked me if I liked them. I only saw their name in Guitar World at that time, but this dude told me they were crazy good, like technically good. I was already a Vai freak so I went and got Awake that weekend. Didn't dig it at all. I couldn't stand LaBrie's voice and Alice In Chains was as heavy as I got back then, I think the heavier guitars in "The Mirror" and "Lie" turned me off (which is HILARIOUS now because those are my benchmarks for metal tones and I'm a total metalhead). Eventually, "Silent Man" caught my ear :D and because of that, I listened to the album over and over until I fell in love with it and became a full fledged DT fanboy for the next 6-7 years.

The newest album, Distance Over Time, was really good. Definitely the best one Mangini has been on so far but I haven't found myself going back to it like I&W, Awake, ACOS, FII, SFAM, 6DOIT. SFAM was a huge album for me. It came out at the height of my DT fandom and was the only album my best friend and I listened to for about 2 years straight. He ended up going to Berklee and spent his 3 years there filling up his schedule with Mangini labs. It was a trip for him when Mangini joined. That said, we both prefer Portnoy in DT. (Don't worry, he'll be back....all this buddy/buddy stuff lately, they'll be stupid not to have him back, it'll be the biggest move of their career).

Mangini definitely had an edge going in, he was also the only guy who was willing to eat, shit and breath DT and Portnoy's parts. Thomas Lang has discussed that whole audition thing and really made it out to be a complete fabrication of management. He hinted that Mangini was going to get the gig the entire time and the whole thing was for show and taking advantage of the publicity it would bring. He calls the interviewer out for trying to bait him into talking shit, but he still divulges quite a bit. I have a hard time not believing him after he brought up the contracts and timing of them.

Edit- Right around 8:45 he starts getting into it.


Sorry for going off topic!
 
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TSJMajesty said:
Gavin has also said he strives to play to the song, looking for "spaces" in which to insert little nuances, like ghost notes (or whatever you call the real light snare hits that sound like short, mini rolls...), and not just doing fills for the sake of doing fills.
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Those are ghost notes! Blew my mind when I learned what they are, what they do and how many songs are basically powered by them. Might be the best example of something subtle having a huge effect, you can entirely change the feel/pace of a song by adding/taking away ghost notes on a snare.
 
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