BFI IMAX, Southbank, London
Tuesday 25th February 2025
In 1999 I walked into a Swansea record store and heard Steven Wilson’s music for the first time. The album in question was Porcupine Tree’s Stupid Dream and it had an instant effect on me, thanks to our own late, great Jez Rowden who I found out many years later had snuck it on. I left with the album I came in for, though I don’t remember what it was, along with a copy of Stupid Dream on CD. Twenty six years later, as a committed Steven Wilson devotee, I boarded the train from Cardiff for a very special solo album launch event in London.
This wasn’t your usual album launch listening party, this was a complete audio visual experience on the largest cinema screen in the UK. The Overview, which comes out less than eighteen months after Wilson’s seventh solo release The Harmony Codex is seen as a return to his progressive rock roots. Like Dark Side of the Moon, by his favourite band Pink Floyd, it is designed to be two sides of continuous music. Fittingly rather than commissioning multiple videos to go with each single release, Wilson turned to longtime collaborator Miles Skarin to create one 42-minute piece of film. “This unique cinema event will represent the first immersive public presentation of The Overview anywhere in the world.” A world premiere and a spatial 360° audio event? This was something I didn’t want to miss.
On arrival at the BFI IMAX cinema in Southbank, I realised this wasn’t the usual prog crowd I was used to seeing at gigs or similar events. Looking around I wasn’t just surrounded by men of a certain age, squeezed into a faded Camel T-shirt that had seen better days. There was a whiff of advertising agency creative director on show here too, all turned up jeans and designer specs. This was a long way from eating a curry with the security guard at Real World when Big Big Train released Folklore. It was still a very male skewed audience with the gents toilet queue being longer than the total attendance at some grassroots gigs I’ve attended.
I’ve been to the BFI IMAX before, but something about seeing something commissioned specifically for this space made the screen seem even bigger. It was a full house and we’d just about made it in and got comfortable when Space Rocks co-founder Alex Milas started proceedings. He told us how a lunch meeting with Steven, where Milas explained the overview effect to the musician, had been the catalyst for this album, only a year ago.
“The Overview takes the listener on a Kubrickian journey into the endless darkness of outer space via a breathtakingly eclectic new progressive rock opus. The Overview is based on the overview effect where astronauts who seeing the Earth from space undergo a transformative cognitive shift. Some experience an overwhelming appreciation and perception of the planet’s beauty, while others see the Earth truly for what it is – insignificant and lost in the vastness of space, the human race as its primary, troubled species.”
It was a slight sensory overload, hearing the music for the first time as part of a complete audio visual experience. It means my initial takeaway is very different than it would have been if solely listening to the record for the first time. I’m a firm believer that all albums need a minimum of three plays to be truly judged, I certainly wouldn’t review a record until I’d given it at least three spins. This was more about the experience and the spectacle. Wilson’s music and Skarin’s visual accompaniment working in tandem to create something awe inspiring and magical. The size and scale of the screen before us, matching the ambition of the project and the vastness of space that was being explored audio-visually.
Musically this was undeniably a Steven Wilson album, while simultaneously unlike anything he’s done before. There are many of his trademark sounds and production layers and a heavy reliance on the falsetto side of his vocal range. What makes this so different, is that it feels more like a soundscape, and as much as I want to avoid saying it, this is an album which has much more space in it. As much as this is a return to the prog side of his musical psyche, this isn’t as unexpected a musical step as some might think. This leans into the more textural expansive elements of The Harmony Codex which makes it quite a logical follow on from that album. Without the constraints of needing some short form, hook based single type songs, this is more a composition, something conceptual in feel as well as nature. The second side of the album feels closer to Wilson’s more electronic recernt albums, with the first side being akin to earlier solo work and Porcupine Tree records.
The lyrics didn’t quite take hold of me on one listen and at times you lost sense of what was being sung, while you used the impressive animation as your narrative anchor instead. I think I just about managed to pick out the Andy Partridge penned section though. It works so well in this setting, but I do wonder how the album will feel when listened to as a purely audio experience. I’d imagine I’ll always be picturing this film in my mind’s eye when I put the record on.
The work that has gone into the film is astounding, having personally been involved in the production of some animated music videos in the past for Deep Purple, Europe and Tarja, I know the amount of sweat, blood and tears needed to make a 42-minute film. I take my hat off to Skarin, as much as I do to the musician whose work I’ve become such a fan of.
So much happened musically and visually that it was hard to form an opinion of the record itself, that will come in time with this show as an indelible memory to draw from.
The Q&A barely covered the music, anyone expecting to hear about the composition, production or even musician line-up on the record would have been disappointed. It wasn’t an open to the floor style Q&A either, more a panel discussion on the concept behind the album and the general vastness of space, chaired by Alex Milas. He was joined by Steven Wilson and Miles Skarin, along with Miho Janvier; astrophysicist and solar physicist at The European Space Agency, Mark McCaughrean; senior scientific advisor for human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency (retired), and James Webb Space Telescope mission scientist & professor at the Max Planck institute. Steven’s take on the overview effect was interesting and while focussed on space, the album is really about humanity. It explores our place in the world and the universe, encouraging us to look up like we used to, rather than constantly looking down at our phones. The slideshow and conversation was more about space exploration than music, with Steven contributing less than the two scientists. That actually broadened the experience, with an educational and scientific angle to accompany the art. In a world that feels pitted against experts and a time when science is often mistrusted or ignored, it was refreshing to find out more about the important work of the European space agency. Much like Space Rocks, this event showed how music and science can be brought together in an informative and imaginative way. Cinematic music in a cinematic setting, with scientists whose first interest in space came from cinema itself.
The event ended quite abruptly, and the last questions didn’t feel like they had a natural conclusion. When there were no more slides and no more time, it just kind of ended. Considering the magnitude of the setting and the monumental nature of this being a premiere, that was a little underwhelming.
My friend and I returned to the bar and tried to deconstruct the album we had just heard. We tried our best but ultimately failed. The experience we could describe, the record would need some time and attention on release day and beyond. We saw the likes of John Mitchell (Lonely Robot, Frost*) and radio presenter Garry Foster (Prog Rock Files) as we made our way out into the chilly London night. I’ve heard since that Frank Skinner, Guy Pratt and Gary Kemp were also in attendance.
The biggest takeaway for me was that Steven Wilson is kind of a big deal. Where the likes of Big Big Train mingle in the foyer of their gigs and album playthroughs, here there was a VIP roped off section for Steven and friends. That’s not a surprise with an artist with his level of profile, but still felt different than most prog events as a result. “The most famous person you’ve never heard of” chips away at the public consciousness with every release and this one should have Guardian readers writhing in intelligent ecstasy. As the audience demographic suggested this could appeal to Shoreditch hipsters just as much as hardcore prog fans, and space geeks as much as music ones.
Overall The Overview launch was well worth attending and I’d suggest joining the streamed version of the full video if you can’t make any of the cinema events. This was an interesting piece of art in all senses of the word. I look forward to experiencing the album without visuals and seeing how well it works standalone. It will be hard to divorce the two initially, but I’m more than happy to invest the time to find out. Once again Steven Wilson does something you didn’t quite expect and that’s just what you want from an artist.
![Steven Wilson [photo Andrew Hobbs]](https://theprogressiveaspect.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Steven-Wilson-photo-Andrew-Hobbs-150x150.jpg)
