August 26 - Raider II

Steven Wilson is so clearly one of my absolute favorite musician these days, and he is no stranger to long songs. Today's song, Raider II, was originally on the album Grace for Drowning, which so far is unsurpassed as his crowning achievement - although I am positive he has more up his sleeve. I really like that it really has a jazzy quality to it, along with featuring an array of stellar musicians, rooted in the drums of Marco Minneman, who was completely unknown to me prior to his work with Steven Wilson.

My relationship to the music of Steven Wilson is a testament to the power of liner notes on records. I have said before that the reason I am listening to him and Porcupine Tree is that he produced Opeth, and this is not unique in my musical exploration. The above mentioned Marco Minneman, for instance, formed a trio with Tony Levin, whose session work I mainly know of because of reading record covers (I have followed him since before the world wide web made it really easy to find all this information) and Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess. I also discovered Emmylou Harris because she worked with the producer Daniel Lanois - I had, of course, heard the name before, but it was country and I was uninterested. But I was a big enough fan of Lanois' productions that I gave her a shot and I was hooked. I love her voice. I could go on - but reading record covers and finding connections has been so rewarding for me over the years. That is one of the reasons I tried for as long as I could to hang on to the physical copies of music - most recently in cd form - but it's getting more and more difficult to hold on to that - it takes way too much space.

Anyway, back to Steven Wilson. I am lucky enough to have a live document of the Grace for Drowning tour in the bluray/cd box set Get What You Deserve, and Steven Wilson himself gets a chance to introduce this beautiful and long song. AND - we get to watch great musicians perform great music!