FB : The first thing I'm wondering about is "The Incident". The incident you're referring to is your birth, right?

SW : Well, "The Incident" is about many, many different kind of incidents; my birth is one of those incidents.

FB : How much of it is autobiographical?

SW : Let's say probably about....well, that's a difficult question, because I think, in a sense... Every song that I write..every song that every songwriter writes is always autobiographical, in the sense that, even when you're writing about something that's not from your own personal experience, you still need to take things from your own experience; feelings, emotions, to make it believable. So even when I'm writing about things that are fairy abstract to me I'm still trying to incorporate some of my own experiences into that, to make it believable.

It's the same way with an actor, you know. When an actor goes into a movie or a play and they have to pretend to be the character, they draw on their own emotional experiences in order to make that character believable. So if it's necessary, they'll think about something sad that they've experienced if they need to express sadness in their character. If they need to express anger then they'll draw them something from their own history that make them angry – and I think it's the same with songwriting. The answer to your question is probably about 50/50.

About 50 per cent of the songs are actually taken from my own personal experience, and the other 50 per cent are taken from the media, or something that I've seen in the news or something but I'm still putting myself inside the situation and using my own experience to make it seem believable, if you understand what I mean.

FB : What about the photographical concept, in the book?

SW : It's a fairly literal interpretation of the lyrics, so there are songs in The Incident cycle that are about... There's a song about religious cults, called "The Blind House", there's a song about child abduction, there's a song about a body found in a river... All these incidents are interpreted quite literally, in the photography that illustrates the book, so you also have pictures of me, as a kid, for the more autobiographical material..

So they're fairly literal, I think the lyrics in a way, I've always tried to step away from making things too easy to interpret, because I like the fact that people are able to interpret things in different ways. No less valued ways, you know, you have some people that come along and says this song is about this and this is about that, and it's nothing of what I was thinking about when I was writing it. But still, I like the fact that they've been interpreted that in their fashion. So I shy away from making the lyrics too literal, but at the same time the visual side, the booklet and the book are more clues to where the songs come from.

FB : What about the artwork by Hajo Müeller, it's pretty abstract...

SW : The drawings are very abstract, very chaotic – I like that. I like chaos, I like decay, I like things that look...more human in the sense that human beings are not... We're very imperfect creatures, we're very imperfect mechanisms...

FB : Though we try to be as symmetrical as possible...

SW : Yeah, we're actually pretty crazy, but we're keeping it under control, most of us keep it under control, but in fact what's going on inside us most of the time is a constant kind of schizophrenia, moodswings, emotional kinda swings from anger to happiness, to sadness to depression, to melancholia to...it's going on all the time inside us and I like the fact that his (HM) drawings represent that side of "The Incident", which is kind of, these emotionally chaotic states, I don't like things that are clean and fancy, particularly. I like reality, I like things that are kind of inner space rather than outer space, and so he seems to capture that really well in his drawings.

FB : So you're not the biggest Tolkien fan, are you?

SW : Well, I like "The Lord of the Rings", I read it when I was a kid and I enjoyed it, like a lot of people did, but as a songwriter I like to write about things that are of this earth. There are lots of other bands that write about sci-fi and fantasy things. I write about how much women have fucked me up, and how much life has fucked me up, and how much technology affects us, and living in the 21st century and what it's like, and all the kind of prescription drugs and things that we kind of rely on these days..... For me, that's more fascinating than anything going on in my dreams, or in my imagination, so it's just a different perspective.

FB : How do you look upon the "Insurgentes" album now, in perspective with the new Porcupine Tree album? Did the making of the solo album it easier to work on "The Incident"?

SW : I think making the solo record was kinda liberating for me, it was liberating in the sense that the solo album really represents exactly the kind of music I make when I'm left on my own. There aren't anyone else I have to please, no one else, this is just the music I would make, and I was very proud of that record.

When I write for Porcupine Tree I'm always aware that I'm writing, for myself, but also for three other people, and I would never ask those other people to play music that I didn't think they would relate to, that they would feel comfortable with. So, I'm aware that there is a certain point of which we all agree; "this is the kind of music we want to play, and Porcupine Tree represents that" - which is good, it's a good thing about being in a band is that you do have a fusion of personalities, a combination of personalities which gives a band this very strong identity.

So there are things on my solo record that I know of that I could never have asked the band to play, or I could have done, but I would have done it without necessarily relating that well to it, so I wouldn't have done that.

I'm very proud of "The Incident". I think, together with my solo album and the "In Absentia" album, I think it's probably the three best things I've done, but time will tell. Time will tell. It's very hard when you're very close to something, to be objective about it – if you ask me in 5 years I'll have a better idea. But for the moment I'm very proud of it.

FB : "Our latest album is our greatest"...

SW : Well, there is a tendency to say that....

FB : Quote Paul Stanley...

SW & FB : Hahahah...

SW : Well, I haven't heard it, so I can’t say, but I think that's normal...

FB : He said so after every KISS record...

SW : Aw, does he? Well, you know what, I probably say so after every record too, and probably a lot of artists say that after every record. I know that Katatonia think their new record is their best, but the thing is there's always a sense that when you make a new record you're obviously gonna most proud of that record that you've just made, coz that's the record that's closest to you, and to the person you are at this moment in time. It's closest psychologically to you at this moment in time.
There are record's I've made many, many years ago, that some people think are still the best things Porcupine Tree has done. The thing is, I look at those records almost as a foreigner, as a stranger. I don't understand them, I'm no longer the person that made them, so it's very hard for me to relate to them and to like them. The album I've just made was made by someone, the person I consider myself to be now, so I feel emotionally attached to it, I feel it's psychologically exactly who I am now, so of course I'm gonna think it's the best, you know.

But I think after five or ten years you can look back with more objectivity and say "that could have been better" or "Wow! That was really good and I didn't realize it at the time, but it's really good", but at the moment I'm proud of the record.

FB : Speaking of Katatonia, as you mentioned – You seem to have a very good taste in choosing support acts, with Katatonia, Anathema and Pure Reason Revolution as guests the three times you've come here to Norway lately...?

SW : I like to have good bands, I like to have bands that I like, you know, opening for us and I like those bands, and I like to help bands, that I can help, to reach... Now Katatonia is a great case in point, Anathema has the same problem – they both have the same problem, which is – they started out as heavy metal bands, and their whole audience is just heavy metal, but their music is not heavy metal anymore, and I think it's a shame in a way, that Katatonia don't get the chance, to be heard by people that like other kinds of music. So one of the reasons to have Anathema and Katatonia on a Porcupine Tree tour is to introduce them to a wider audience, and not just the heavy metal audience.

FB : More mainstream...

SW : Progressive, or alternative, or you know, more mainstream, because our audience is very eclectic. When I see, I've been to see Anathema and Katatonia play on their own and it's just heavy metal fans who go and see them, and I think that's weird, because their music – it's not heavy metal anymore.

FB : Not that much.

SW : Not at all. They still have a few heavy riffs, but if Katatonia started out today no one would think they were a heavy metal band, they would say they were closer to, I don't know, Radiohead or Muse or something, but because of their history, people think they are a heavy metal band and they categorize them as a heavy metal band and I think that's a shame. So one of the things about having Katatonia and Anathema with us is to try and introduce them to our audience and I think it has worked out very well.

FB : How is it going with the "Insurgentes" movie?

SW : It's being premiered, finally, it's finished, and it has its premiere in Copenhagen Film Festival. So after that we're doing a few other film festivals with it, one in L.A., one in New York and then I think probably we will put it out on DVD sometime in 2010.

FB : And how's it going with "Cover version 6"...?

SW : Ao, heheh, it's not. I mean, it will happen, but I've got a long list in my notebook of possible songs I could do – every week I think of another one, and I write it down, but I just haven't had the time to do it yet. I've just moved house as well, which took a loot of my time over this summer, so uh...it will happen, I don't know when, hopefully in 2010.

FB : What about the "Fear of a Blank Planet" concert DVD..?

SW : Same thing really..... - It's going to happen, but we just got kind of occupied with making the new record... Put it this way, if we'd done the DVD, then it would've meant that the new record wouldn't have been done until next year, and I think it was important for us to make a new record, so the DVD's kinda been put on ice a little bit, but it will come out, I think, in the spring. We've just started to look at the footage now – it's gonna be great, it's gonna look good.

FB : So it's gonna be "FOABP" footage, you're not gonna do anything on this tour..?

SW : Filming-wise? No-no... - We may, but I think that the "FOABP"-DVD represents that, that kind of show and that album, so we'll finish that and we'll maybe something different on this tour, another DVD, maybe.

FB : Do you have any "left-over" material from "The Incident" or...? Like on "FOABP" you had the "Nil Recurring" EP, or is the four songs on disc two of "The Incident" "Nil"'s equivalent...?

SW : Exactly. This time we made the decision to put everything on the record.

FB : Is there like, a "message" to the listeners on "The Incident" or is everything up for self-interpretation..?

SW : I prefer the latter, yeah. I don't really like the idea of preaching. I don't like the Bono/Bruce Springsteen-thing, where you tell your fans; "This is who you should vote for", or "This is how you should think" "This is what you should do with your life". I don't really like that, I like more to hold up a mirror, with the lyrics and say, you know, "This is a perspective, look in the mirror; do you see yourself, do you recognize yourself in the mirror? Is there something here you can relate to, and if not – OK, that's fine – you can just enjoy it as music, but message-wise, I'm certainly never intending, if you like, to preach, or to try to get something across, but at the same time, I'm putting a lot of thought into the words, and I suppose in a way, I'm trying to exorcise something out of myself, something that annoys me, something that angers me, something that depresses me, usually something from a negative perspective.

But using this, is a way of exorcising that out, and people relate to it in different ways – Some people relate to it purely as music, some people relate to in on a very serious fundamental level, conceptually too. The Fear of a Blank Planet, for example – I think a lot of people related to that, and about the idea of technology and computer games and iPods...

FB : Yeah, that was sort of that kind of type "message" I was wondering about...

SW : I suppose so...I don't think of that as a "message" so much...

FB : I know, it's sort of like, the modern media’s influence, the decline of today’s youth, the lack of social engagement and self awareness…

SW : Yeah. It's a concern of mine, and so I write songs about it, and people either chose to relate to it or they don't. Most people tend to relate to that.

"The Incident" is more, kind of, a bit more vague, in a sense that a lot of it is more personal to me, and my growing-up, and my life. The other half of it is more about the way the media chose to filter for us what we should feel emotional about, or empathy for.

It all came as a reaction of the word "Incident" being used as a word to de-personalize, and distance us from horrible things, horrible, horrible things. In the news, for example. You can turn on the news in England and watch the BBC and you can see stuff like child abductions or homicides, or earthquakes, or tsunamies described as... "incidents".

And it's a very dispassionate word, it's a word that enables us to almost disconnect from the horror, of what we're seeing. But at the same time the media are very capable of doing the opposite, the death of Michael Jackson, for example, was presented in a hysterical way by the media, absolutely hysterical.

To get things in perspective, this is one pop star who died, a pop star who hadn't made a good record for a long time, a pop star that most people knew of as someone who was, you know, for the wrong reasons. And when he died there was this incredible hysteria from the media, almost as we all expected to feel like one of our family had died. See, that's the example of the opposite, so I guess what I'm saying is, the media are very guilty in some ways, but we're all guilty because we choose to allow it to happen.

The media are very guilty of choosing what we're going to feel emotional about. So, the death of Michael Jackson – we're supposed to feel terrible. The death of 5000 people of an earthquake in India – we're not supposed to feel anything. And it's because of the use of words like "incidents" that I think they are able to... The use of language... Language is a very powerful tool, in kind of manipulating the way we feel about things, as the death of Michael Jackson proved. So, if there is a "message", or concept to the album, then I think that would be it.

FB : You put a lot of work in, not just the recording, but also the packaging of your releases, with the boxes, books and stuff... How are the sales on your physical releases compared to the digital format?

SW : For us; still much more physical than download. That's not to say that there's not a lot of people stealing the download, I mean I cannot quantify how many people actually who have downloaded the album from legal sites, because there are so many, but for us our physical sales are still going up. I think that's partly, well mainly because the band's popularity is still going up, because physical sales generally in the industry are going down but, we have taken a lot of care and attention over making sure that if people are going to spend money on a physical piece, a physical piece of art that they get something really special for their money. We still do the generic CD, you know, with the crystal case and all that stuff, but we also do really special editions, and starting with my solo album "Insurgentes", I did a really elaborate 120 page cloth-bound book with three discs and it sold out like that. I think I made 4000 copies of that and it sold out almost instantly.
And that was very encouraging, because it says to me that there are still people out there, that if you give them something they can think of as an piece of art, then they're gonna buy it, they still want to own it, they still want to treasure it and treat it as having a beautiful painting hanging on your wall, you know. And I think one of the problems with the way music has become presented since CDs came along is that it has gone from being art to software.

In the '70 & '80's with vinyl you had gatefold sleeves, and inner bags, and it was a piece of art. It was like buying a piece of art it was like buying a beautiful painting. Then CDs came along, with their little plastic cases, and little everything. It was like a piece of software. So it was like, you load it onto your computer and then throw away the packaging, because it was like, just like a piece of packaging you get with a piece of cheese or something, you know. But now what we're seeing is almost a return to the idea of packaging, of the music as art, and presented as art, and you get lots of bands now doing it.

They're expensive to do, and people sometimes complain about the costs, but think how much you pay for a painting – thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if music is art too, and I think it is, they should be presented as art too, so paying $100 or $60 or whatever it is, or €60 for a beautiful piece of art, no one should feel the right to complain about that – I think, because they are really buying a piece of art.

And they are expensive to make as well, those packages. It's not like the artists are making huge amounts of money on them, because we are not, those packaging concepts cost a lot of money, but I do it because I've always felt that music was art and it should be presented as art, and not a piece of software, or this new word, that of course everyone uses now – "content". Music now has become content for iPods and iTunes. I think that is a really ugly, ugly concept. So in a way; music is art – presented as art.