We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction.
Owning vinyl is like having a beautiful painting hanging in your living room. It's something you can hold, pore over the lyrics, and immerse yourself in the art work.
Porcupine Tree is a band, and it's not up to me where the band goes - it's between the manager, our agent, and the band as a whole.
In the mid- to late '70s, there was no one better than ABBA at writing and producing great pop.
I get really frustrated - actually, it almost makes me angry - when I see, sometimes, magazines will publish a musician's playlist. They'll go and they'll ask, I don't know, somebody from Aerosmith or whoever, Coldplay, to list their five favourite albums. And it's always the same stuff!
My musical tastes are very diverse. I just never felt like listening to certain kinds of bands. There's too much great stuff out there.
You cannot please everyone, and I think that what's important, ultimately, is to make sure you please yourself. If you start trying to please other people, you'll just go around in circles.
I grew up with vinyl records and remember the pleasure and the kind of buzz that I got from buying a beautiful vinyl record with the sleeve and the lyrics - all that kind of tactile experience that you could get from an old vinyl record.
Ever since I was a kid, I've always been interested in the poetry of melancholy, if you like.
Pink Floyd, the most successful progressive rock band of all time, have stood the test of time because the emphasis was always on melody and atmosphere.
Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.
It's a cliche that music rises above it all, and it's a cliche for a reason - it's very often true.
The city can be the loneliest place of all.
I grew up listening to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance - these are the bands that I actually grew up with, and I always had these things in my taste, too. And I always loved industrial music as well: I listened to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire. And shoegaze bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.
Every time the mainstream media talk about progressive rock, they wheel out a clip of Rick Wakeman in a cape. For me, it's one of the most ambitious forms of music. The problem is that when it doesn't work, you end up with Emerson, Lake and Palmer doing symphonies with 60-piece orchestras and revolving pianos, which I think is ridiculous as well.
If I want to do an orchestral record, if I want to do an acoustic record, if I want to do a death-metal record, if I want to do a jazz record - I can move in whichever direction I want, and no one is going to get upset about that. Except maybe my manager and my record company.
When it comes to being in a band or going solo, one is collaborative, and one is not. But generally speaking, when going solo, I am the boss. People can contribute ideas, but I am the boss. When collaborating, you make compromises and look for a common ground.
It's one thing to fail with something you utterly believe in, but to fail with something you don't believe in? You just feel so sordid.
I've always been the sort of person who likes to look forward and live in the present.
One thing I have found over years is that if you change direction, the initial reaction tends to be very polarized, but as the music gradually filters through and fans start engaging with it on its own terms rather than comparing it to what went before, the appreciation and acceptance of it increases.
