The Porcupine Tree reunion has resulted in a new record called Closure/Continuation and an upcoming series of world tour dates. But fans are still wondering – where's bassist Colin Edwin?
According to Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson in an interview with Super Deluxe Edition, there's really not a crazy story behind Edwin's absence. Wilson said he wrote a lot of the upcoming material on bass and felt like he was the bassist for the record, and added that he and Edwin haven't really spoken since Porcupine Tree became inactive about 10 years ago.
"There isn't really a big story. There are lots of little things that conspired to make it the way it was. I think the first thing was that the very genesis of the project was me wandering over to Gavin's place for a cup of tea one day, and him suggesting we have a jam. And I looked around his studio and he didn't have a guitar, but he had a bass guitar. So I picked up the bass guitar. And I think that one of the very first times we got together we started jamming that groove at the beginning of 'Harridan', which opens the record. And we had a few sessions like that where I didn't even bother bringing a guitar – I was enjoying playing the bass.
"Like a lot of guitar players, when I pick up the bass, I tend to play it like a guitar player. So I do a lot of stuff quite high, I play melodies, I play chords, things that perhaps a 'proper bass player' might not think to do. And so the very fundamentals of the record, the very basis of the record, the DNA the record comes from, was built on me and Gavin jamming with me on bass, playing bass in my style, which is very different to Colin's style. So in that sense, it became a bit of a fait accompli, by the time we had three or four songs, it was like, 'oh, okay, I guess I'm the bass player on this record, then.'
"But there were other things. None of us heard from Colin for years on end. We all went our separate ways in 2010, and I would regularly hear from Richard and Gavin: 'When are we going to do something new?,' 'Should we get together?,' 'Should we have dinner?,' 'Should we have a cup of tea?' I didn't hear from Colin, I still haven't heard from him. So he wasn't proactively pushing to be involved in anything new."
Wilson later added that he also feels himself, drummer Gavin Harrison, and keyboardist Richard Barbieri are the core creative members of the group, and that he's played bass on plenty of Porcupine Tree material over the years including tracks on In Absentia and Deadwing. Closure/Continuation is out on June 24, and pre-orders are available here. You can also check out the new single "Rats Return" below.
