Steven Wilson - Requiem For A Village

Steven Wilson — Requiem For A Village

On his ninth solo album, prog rock aficionado Steven Wilson delves into the folk horror of the parochial English village. Named for David Gladwell's obscure 1975 arthouse film, Requiem for a Village is steeped in this tradition. Indeed, the video for single "On Chapel Slope" restages the most iconic scene in Gladwell's film in which the elderly groundskeeper of the cemetery witnesses the dead rise from their graves dressed in Sunday best.

Wilson's Requiem for a Village finds itself drawing on the brooding experimental melancholy of past works.  Microtonal acoustic guitars thread many tracks in webs of dread, actor David Tennant narrates spooky couplets written by XTC's Andy Partridge, and sounds from Wilson's seventies childhood — church bells on foggy mornings, the warbling synths of psychedelic children's TV shows — bead the album in uncanny nostalgia, writes the album review for The Progressive Subway.

"I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints. Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can't be created using software," Wilson says.

"For example using only analogue synths with all their unpredictability, or not having instruments perfectly in tune. But it also lead to me picking up the violin, the oboe, or trying my hand on the drums — playing things I don't really know how to play but getting something out of them that inspired me in ways I didn't expect.

"Approaching the music with a sense of innocence and seeing where it took me. And where it took me was to the village."