Steven Wilson - Grace For Drowning (2011)

 posted by all-musicrecords

Grace for Drowning is the second solo studio album by Steven Wilson, producer, songwriter, and frontman of Porcupine Tree. 

It was released by Kscope on 26 September 2011 as a double album. The album received a nomination at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Surround Sound Album.

After the release of his first solo album, Insurgentes, Steven Wilson spent time on a number of his other projects. 

These include Porcupine Tree's album The Incident in 2009, Blackfield's third album Welcome to My DNA, on 28 March 2011, and an ongoing project with Mikael Åkerfeldt (the leader of the band Opeth) named Storm Corrosion. However, amongst these projects, in 2010, he announced that he had started working on his second solo album as well.

In early June 2011, Wilson launched a minisite for the new album revealing the album's name and album art photographed by his longtime collaborator Lasse Hoile. Additionally, a free download of the track "Remainder the Black Dog" was also added. Sound and Vision magazine's website premiered the video of "Track One" on 10 August 2011. Not long after, Yahoo! Music debuted the music video for "Index". On 16 August, WNYC's website premiered a free download for the radio edit of "Like Dust I Have Cleared From My Eye". A video clip for "Remainder the Black Dog" was finally released on 31 August, through Guitar World magazine's website.

Upon completion of the album, Wilson said:

"'Insurgentes' was an important step for me into something new. This record takes that as a starting point, but it’s more experimental and more eclectic. For me the golden period for music was the late sixties and early seventies, when the album became the primary means of artistic expression, when musicians liberated themselves from the 3 minute pop song format, and started to draw on jazz and classical music especially, combining it with the spirit of psychedelia to create "journeys in sound" I guess you could call them. So without being retro, my album is a kind of homage to that spirit. There’s everything from [Ennio] Morricone-esque film themes to choral music to piano ballads to a 23 minute progressive jazz –inspired piece. I've actually used a few jazz musicians this time, which is something I picked up from my work remixing the King Crimson records".

For prolific British progressive rocker Steven Wilson, the two-CD set Grace for Drowning is his second official solo album, following 2008's Insurgentes. Recording under his own name, Wilson tends to fall somewhere between his popular Porcupine Tree group project and his ambient recordings as Bass Communion. 

Grace for Drowning's two discs are divided into one called Deform to Form a Star and another called Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye, both named after tracks on them. In the relatively sparse lyrics that Wilson sings with a calm, British-accented tenor, he seems melancholy at first, apparently suffering from the aftermath of a romantic breakup. 

"There's nothing left for me to say or do," he declares in "Postcard." By the second disc, he has become angrier about the situation, but the closing title track finds him reaching resolution and moving on. The words are spread out over music that builds and ebbs in a manner that allows for different styles and soloing by Wilson and a few musical guests. 

He is not abashed about evoking his prog predecessors. The obvious antecedent is Pink Floyd, particularly recalled in the space rock of "No Part of Me." The 23-minute "Raider II," coming toward the end, allows room for a flute-and-piano section that could have been excerpted from a Traffic album as well as guitar-bass-drum sections in rapid 6/4 time suggestive of Yes. By the end, Wilson has subsided into an ambient coda on "Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye," as if readying himself for the next Bass Communion album. 

Grace for Drowning has a particular conception in terms of its emotional journey from sadness through anger to acceptance, but it is also just another in a lengthy discography of albums by Wilson under various names in relatively similar styles. 

Track listing

Disc 1: Deform to Form a Star

1.  Grace for Drowning - 2:06 

2.  Sectarian (instrumental) - 7:41 

3.  Deform to Form a Star - 7:51 

4.  No Part of Me - 5:45 

5.  Postcard - 4:29 

6.  Raider Prelude (instrumental) - 2:23 

7.  Remainder the Black Dog - 9:27 

Disc 2: Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye

1.  Belle de Jour (instrumental) - 2:59 

2.  Index - 4:49 

3.  Track One - 4:16 

4.  Raider II - 23:21 

5.  Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye - 8:01 

All tracks are written by Steven Wilson.

Managerial

• Andy Leff – Acme Music
• Alex Leeks – assistant

Technical and production

• Steven Wilson – production, mixing
• Pat Mastelotto – additional production, electronic drums on "No Part of Me" and "Index"
• Dave Stewart – string & choir arrangements
• Mat Collis – engineering
• Paschal Byrne – mastering

Musicians

Steven Wilson – keys (CD1 tracks 1–5 and 7 / CD2 1–5), guitars (CD1 tracks 2, 3, and 5 / CD2 tracks 1–5), autoharp (CD1 track 2 / CD2 tracks 1, 2, 5), bass guitar (CD1 tracks 2 and 5 / CD2 tracks 1 and 4), percussion (CD1 track 4 / CD2 track 4), piano (CD1 tracks 5–7 / CD2 tracks 4 and 5), gong (CD1 track 6), glockenspiel (CD1 track 7), programming (CD2 track 2), harmonium (CD2 tracks 4 and 5) Jordan Rudess – piano (CD1 tracks 1 and 3 / CD2 track 4) Theo Travis – saxophone (CD1 tracks 2, 4 and 7 / CD2 track 4), clarinet (CD1 track 3 and 7 / CD2 track 4), flute (CD1 track 7 / CD2 track 4) Ben Castle – clarinet (CD1 track 2) Nick Beggs – Chapman stick (CD1 tracks 2 and 7 / CD2 track 4), bass guitar (tracks CD1 tracks 4 and 7 / CD2 track 4) Tony Levin – bass guitar (CD1 track 3 / CD2 track 5) Nic France – drums (CD1 track 2–3, 5 and 7 / CD2 track 3–5) Pat Mastelotto – acoustic and electronic drums (CD1 track 4 / CD2 track 2) Markus Reuter – U8 touch guitar (CD1 track 4) Trey Gunn – warr guitar and bass guitar (CD1 track 4) London Session Orchestra – strings (CD1 tracks 4 and 5 / CD2 tracks 1 and 2) Steve Hackett – guitar (CD1 track 7) Mike Outram – guitar (CD2 track 4) Sand Snowman – guitar (CD2 track 4) Visuals and imagery Lasse Hoile – photography, film director Bettina Ejlersen – photography assistant Carl Glover – art director Ray Shulman – Blu-ray authoring Sounding Steven Wilson – vocals on all tracks except "Sectarian", "Raider Prelude" and "Belle de Jour" Dave Kerzner – sound design on "Raider II" Synergy Vocals – choir on "Postcard", "Raider Prelude" and "Raider II"

Notes

Released:  26 September 2011 

Recorded: January 2010 – June 2011  

Studio No Man's Land (Hemel Hempstead) Koolworld (Luton) 

Angel Recording Studios(London) 

various locations in the UK, USA and Germany 

Genre:  Progressive rock, experimental rock, jazz fusion 

Length:  83:01 

Label - Kscope Records