Deadwing

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Deadwing
File:Pt deadwing.jpg
Cover art by Lasse Hoile
Studio album by Porcupine Tree
Released Europe: 28 March 2005 (2005-03-28)
United States: 26 April 2005 (2005-04-26)
Japan: 24 March 2006 (2006-03-24)
Recorded Various English cities
March–October 2004
Genre Progressive rock, progressive metal
Length 59:35 (Europe/Original edition)
64:34 (US edition)
79:07 (DVD-A edition)
Label Lava
Producer Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison, Richard Barbieri
Porcupine Tree chronology
In Absentia
(2002)In Absentia2002		 Deadwing
(2005)		 Fear of a Blank Planet
(2007)Fear of a Blank Planet2007
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic 3/5 stars [1]
Blogcritics (recommended) [2]
IGN (7.3/10) [3]
Kludge (9/10)[4]
KNAC (favourable) [5]
Metal Storm (10/10) [6]
musicOMH (favourable) [7]
Record Collector 5/5 stars [8]
Virgin Media (favourable) [9]

Deadwing is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released on 28 March 2005. It quickly became the band's best selling album, though was later surpassed by Fear of a Blank Planet. The album is based on a screenplay written by Steven Wilson and Mike Bennion, and is essentially a ghost story. Wilson had expressed the intention to eventually have this film script made into a movie.

The album produced two singles, "Shallow" and "Lazarus". "Shallow" also appeared in the movie Four Brothers.[10] It can be heard as background music in a bar. The album also produced three music videos for "Lazarus", "The Start of Something Beautiful", and "Glass Arm Shattering".

The album includes collaborations with King Crimson's Adrian Belew, who plays guitar solos on the title track "Deadwing" and "Halo", and Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt, who adds vocal harmonies on "Deadwing", "Lazarus", and "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here". He also plays the second guitar solo on "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here".

Background

Concept

The complete concept and story has never been entirely announced by the band, and this is likely due to Wilson's intentions of attempting to turn this into a movie, and not wanting to spoil any portions of the story.

Wilson said it is a surreal "ghost story," and "the idea's ultimately that this album will form a kind of companion with the feature film."[11] He stated that David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick were major influences for the filmscript.[12]

On 1 September 2006, Steven Wilson announced in his blog that Mike Bennion (Co-writer of the Deadwing screenplay) had released the first fifteen pages of the story. It is available for reading on Mike Bennion's myspace blog and on the [Deadwing microsite][1]. The filmscript thus far has made several connections to the album in various ways; such as a reference to the line in Mellotron Scratch 'A tiny flame inside my hand', the man mentioned in Lazarus 'My David don't you worry', and to the artwork in the album's cover insert (more specifically the page with the lyrics to "Halo" scrawled in it).

File:Porcupine Tree (Instore).jpg
The members of Porcupine Tree during a meet-and-greet at AKA Records on Second Street in Philadelphia on May 21, 2005.

While introducing the song Lazarus during the Shepherds Bush Empire concert in December 2005, Steven Wilson explained that this song was about a mother communicating with her young son - 'from the grave'.

Note on loudness war

In a comment on the loudness war, Steven Wilson mentioned how he considered placing a message on record sleeves that reads as follows: "Please note that this record may not be mastered as loudly as some of the other records in your collection. This is in order to retain the dynamic range and subtlety of the music. Please, use your volume knob." Conversely, the CD version of the album has been proved to contain clipping and dynamic range compression, whereas the 5.1 surround mix on the DVD-A version does not.[13] However, subsequent releases Fear of a Blank Planet and Nil Recurring are mastered at lower levels, preserving more of their original dynamic range.[14]

Track listing

The band stated that 15 songs were recorded during the Deadwing sessions. The initial release, for Europe, contained only 9 tracks. All versions contain those initial 9 tracks in the same order. For the later U.S. release, an additional track was added on, the 2004 re-recorded version of "Shesmovedon", which was originally released on their 2000 Lightbulb Sun, bringing the total to 10.

The album was also released as a DVD-Audio disc on 10 May 2005 by DTS Entertainment. The disc contains 5.1-channel surround versions of all the tracks from the US CD ("Shesmovedon (2004)" was included as an unlisted extra track.) plus three bonus tracks: "Revenant," "Mother and Child Divided" and "Half-Light", bringing the total to 13 songs.

One more song, "So Called Friend", was released on the "Lazarus" single, bringing it up to 14 songs. The is another song titled "Christenings": while it was never released as a Porcupine Tree song, it was eventually released on Steven Wilson's side project, Blackfield's 2007 album Blackfield II. An instrumental demo made in 2003 during writing sessions for Deadwing, but never recorded by the band is called "Collecting Space". A proper version of this piece was released on the limited edition of Wilson's first solo album, Insurgentes, while its demo appears as an extra track on the Insurgentes movie DVD. Another possible song from this time is "Godfearing", which was later released on the web and that Wilson doesn't recall its exact recording period, but it was either during Deadwing or In Absentia.

Europe edition (original edition)
No. Title Music Length
1. "Deadwing"   Steven Wilson 9:46
2. "Shallow"   Wilson 4:17
3. "Lazarus"   Wilson 4:18
4. "Halo"   Porcupine Tree 4:38
5. "Arriving Somewhere but Not Here"   Wilson 12:02
6. "Mellotron Scratch"   Wilson 6:57
7. "Open Car"   Wilson 3:46
8. "Start of Something Beautiful"   Gavin Harrison, Wilson 7:39
9. "Glass Arm Shattering"   Richard Barbieri, Colin Edwin, Harrison, Wilson 6:17
American edition

10. "Shesmovedon (2004)" – 4:59

DVD-A edition

10. "Revenant" (Barbieri) – 3:04
11. "Mother & Child Divided" (Wilson/Harrison) – 4:59
12. "Half-Light" – 6:20
13. "Shesmovedon (2004)" - 4:59 (easter egg track)

LP edition

10. "So Called Friend" (Wilson/Barbieri/Edwin/Harrison) – 4:49
11. "Half-Light" – 6:20

Awards

Deadwing won the "Best Made-For-Surround Title" award for the 2005 Surround Music Awards, Nine Inch Nails's With Teeth was amongst the nominated for that category,[15] and was voted number 2 album of 2005 in Sound & Vision, which is the most widely distributed US magazine in the field of home electronics and entertainment.[16] In addition to this, the album won the "Album of the Year" award for the 2005 Classic Rock magazine awards.[17] The album was named as one of Classic Rock‘s 10 essential progressive rock albums of the decade.[18]

Chart positions

Chart Peak
Position
Billboard 200[19] 132
Top Heatseekers[19] 4
Top Internet Albums[20] 6
United Kingdom 113
Netherlands[21] 56
Germany 52
Poland[22] 11
France[23] 100
Sweden[24] 26
Greece[25] 19
Singles
Song Chart Position
"Shallow" Mainstream Rock Tracks[26] 26

Personnel

Guest musicians
Production
  • Produced By Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri & Gavin Harrison
  • Recorded & Engineered By Paul Northfield & George Schilling
  • Mixed By Steven Wilson
  • Mastered By Andy VanDette
  • 5.1 Producer: Jeff Levison
  • 5.1 Mixed By: Elliot Scheiner
  • 5.1 Mastered By Darsy Proper at Sony Studios

References

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  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Deadwing promotional poster
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Classic Rock, February 2010, Issue 141.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
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