Porcupine Tree
Nil Recurring

It is frankly difficult to understand exactly the latest choices of Porcupine Tree, especially after listening to their latest release, the EP "NIL RECURRING", released under the Transmission label and containing four tracks with a total duration of about half an hour.

This is not because this latest release is poor quality, but rather because, upon listening to it and perceiving the compositional vein and sound meticulousness, it is unclear why these tracks (or at least a couple of them) were not included in the latest album "Fear Of A Blank Planet", as seemed to be the initial intentions of Steven Wilson and company.

However, it can certainly be said that undoubtedly, these tracks would have significantly enriched the previous work of the British group and would have granted it greater luster and consideration even in the eyes (or better, ears) of the old Porcupine followers. Not that this is a work radically different from the group's latest productions, but this time the tracks seem to be permeated by more suitable and closer atmospheres to the Porcupine brand and overall endowed with greater coherence among them. This not so much for stylistic choices, still quite aligned with the prog and heavy turn undertaken by PT for some years, but for an atmosphere and a general sensation of psychedelic and experimental touch, where there's a clear appetite for more daring approaches and more refined sounds, without abandoning the ravenous melodic attitudes that have characterized the band's history.

The beginning is dazzling, with a title track of clear progressive brand, in which the eternal Robert Fripp also appears in a very incisive and recognizable way. The track, however, is well-balanced, and here one finally gets the impression that the group manages to offer metal echoes with the right balance and in a fitting context and not in an anachronistic manner as in the recent past. A splendid acoustic guitar introduces the beautiful Normal, a track that might appear to be a mere alternative version of Sentimental, already included in "Fear Of A Blank Planet", but this definition would be simplistic and limiting.

Although it's true that the main theme is the same, the development is decidedly different, adhering far less to the song form of the track included in the album (which is still quite convincing) and proposing itself as a more expansive and experimental version in which the atmospheric echoes of the former Porcupine are plentiful. Here too, a harder and metallic interlude is not missing, but it seems to be the watershed between the two parts of the piece, and right in the second part, we find sentiments of the Porcupine past both in the sound atmospheres and in the splendid vocal harmonies woven by Steven Wilson.

"Cheating The Polygraph" is a track already known to PT fans because it was played live in some of the latest performances and often in place of "Way Out Of Here". The style of the track in this case is perfectly aligned with that of the tracks from the latest album, but in some passages, the dreamier and more psychedelic Wilsonian guitars of the origins return to echo. The closure belongs to "What Happens Now?", a track marked by a clearly interesting electronic imprint, which seems to represent a perfect synthesis of the early Porcupine's psychedelic-electronic phase and the harder tones of recent productions.

In conclusion, the judgment that can be given to this EP is that of a decidedly harmonious and coherent work, not at all self-indulgent, but rather it reveals a much clearer and more personal direction than the alternating and hardly decipherable one of "Fear Of A Blank Planet" and precisely for this reason, it seems legitimate to continue asking why these tracks were not published in the album.

Have the Porcupines found their definitive direction? We will only find out by living...