PORCUPINE TREE frontman Steven Wilson is featured in a new interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com. An excerpt is available below:

UG: Mikael Akerfeldt from OPETH says 'A Smart Kid' from the Stupid Dream album is his favorite Porcupine Tree song. You produced Heritage, the last Opeth album and Mikael has played on Porcupine Tree records.

Wilson: "Mikael’s one of my best friends. The thing about Mikael and myself is we both arrived at a similar point from completely different starting points. When he was a kid it was death metal and when I was a kid it was psychedelic music, progressive music and Krautrock. We both kind of arrived at the same point and that gives us a very interesting dynamic together. Not only that—we both have a very similar role in our respective bands. We both understand each other and we can sympathize with each other about the problems of trying to hold a band together but trying to be what you might call a benign dictator. He’s one of the few people I know, well he‘s the only person I know that will completely understand what I go through and ditto with me vice versa with him. I totally understand his position and we also totally understand the position our respective bands [have in] confronting the expectations of our audience. Now he’s done that several times with his fanbase and it’s never easy to do something which kind of shocks or surprises or confronts the expectations of your fanbase."

UG: Fans don’t typically want major changes from the bands they follow.

Wilson: "You get a lot of criticism. In his case he had death threats."

UG: That’s absurd.

Wilson: "That’s what you get you’re dealing with a lot of dumbass metal kids. And I understand that too, because for me it’s always been about not resting on your laurels and it’s always been about trying to progress in the true sense of the word and trying to move forward. And because we kind of meet so well on that kind of basic ideology, I think we find making music together is a lot of fun. We do please ourselves and I think that’s what all great artists really should do."

Click here for the complete interview.

PiercingMetal.com recently posted a review and photo from Wilson's November 11th acoustic performance/signing session in New York City at J&R; Music World. An excerpt is available below:

"As he took to the stage when he was ready to go the musician seemed taken aback by the overwhelming amount of people who had assembled and were ready to enjoy his stuff. He spoke to the crowd politely as he hooked up his acoustic guitar and mentioned how there was a little bit of last minute stuff to get through for the tour considering the original guitarist would not be joining him on this run and they had to act quickly to replace him. For the acoustic session right now however he would have both Theo Travis and Adam Holzman on flute and keyboard respectively. I was glad that this was the case as it beefed up the sound just a little more and brought more atmosphere out of it. The first tune he did was 'Postcard' and the official version can be found on his new Grace For Drowning CD. It’s a lovely tune and I look forward to hearing how it is supposed to sound now after hearing an alternate way. There was very little banter as he introduced the next song 'Deform To Form A Star' which is also on the new release. The downside was that these were the only two songs being played and if there was originally supposed to be a third we can thank the Manhattan traffic for preventing us from hearing it."

Go to this location for the complete review and photos. Additional photos can be found here.

(Photo by Ken Pierce)