''Nil Recurring'' (also ''Transmission 5.1'') is an
EP by British
progressive rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...
band
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree are an English rock band formed by musician Steven Wilson in 1987. During an initial career spanning more than twenty years, they earned critical acclaim from critics and fellow musicians, developed a cult following, and became ...
, released on 17 September 2007 through the band's online store. The standard version of the mini-album is composed of four tracks written during the ''
Fear of a Blank Planet
''Fear of a Blank Planet'' is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling before 2009's '' The Incident''. It was released on 16 April 2007 in the UK and the rest of Europe by Roadrunner, 24 A ...
'' recording sessions and was completed over the summer of 2007. The EP's title, which stems from the opening
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
track on the EP, was actually derived from an unreleased demo written during the ''
Fear of a Blank Planet
''Fear of a Blank Planet'' is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling before 2009's '' The Incident''. It was released on 16 April 2007 in the UK and the rest of Europe by Roadrunner, 24 A ...
'' recording sessions, called "Always Recurring". Although the band never formally released the song, lyrical and melodic elements of the track were reused in the closing piece of the EP, "What Happens Now?".
''Nil Recurring'' entered the
UK Top 30 Independent Label Albums at #8
and is the #2 EP of 2007 on
Rate Your Music
Rate Your Music (often abbreviated to RYM) is an online collaborative database of music releases and films. Users can catalog items from their personal collection, review them, and assign ratings in a five-star rating system. The site also fea ...
.
Writing and recording
The band met in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
in July 2006 to work on new material to follow up ''
Deadwing
''Deadwing'' is the eighth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, released in Japan on 24 March 2005, in Europe on 28 March, and in the US on 26 April. It quickly became the band's best selling album, although it was l ...
''. At the time, "My Ashes" and "Normal" had already been written by Wilson; he later reworked the latter song, transforming it into "
Sentimental". The band sessions produced "Fear of a Blank Planet", "Anesthetize", "Cheating the Polygraph", and "Sleep Together", along with material that would not fit the album they were forming. Thus, when the band toured later in the year to polish songwriting and preview the upcoming record, it was played in the work-in-progress running order: the same as the final album sequence, but with "Cheating the Polygraph" in the fifth track placement. Once the tour ended, the band decided none of the extra songs nor "Cheating the Polygraph" were up to the standards of the record, as they weren't properly developed, and there was a policy not to make the album over fifty minutes long.
The band wrote "Way Out of Here" to bridge "Sentimental" and "Sleep Together"; after ''Fear of a Blank Planet'' was released, the four remaining tracks were mixed between June and August 2007 to make the ''Nil Recurring'' EP.
Release
The first press of the album was issued on Porcupine Tree's own label, Transmission, and was limited to 5,000 copies in a fold-out digipak. It was originally decided to sell 3,000 copies through the band's online store and sell the remaining 2,000 at shows on the forthcoming tour, but the initial run of pre-orders through the online store were sold out in a period of 24 hours, so the band quickly put out more copies, whether for purchase or download in
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
/
FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
formats at a very cheap cost; the downloadable version includes exclusive printable artwork.
Peaceville Records
Peaceville Records is a British independent heavy metal record label. The label was founded by Paul "Hammy" Halmshaw (of the bands Instigators and Civilised Society) in Dewsbury, England in 1987, who was also a one-time drummer of Sore Throat ...
further promoted the release by constructing a ''Nil Recurring'' minisite, and more specifically in conjunction with
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree are an English rock band formed by musician Steven Wilson in 1987. During an initial career spanning more than twenty years, they earned critical acclaim from critics and fellow musicians, developed a cult following, and became ...
, by creating and releasing a video for the song "Normal", which contains an edited, radio-friendly version of the song. A Japanese edition was released through WHD in late October 2007 and includes the radio edit of "
Fear of a Blank Planet
''Fear of a Blank Planet'' is the ninth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree and their best selling before 2009's '' The Incident''. It was released on 16 April 2007 in the UK and the rest of Europe by Roadrunner, 24 A ...
" as a bonus track.
Title and concept
Porcupine Tree's frontman,
Steven Wilson
Steven John Wilson (born 3 November 1967) is an English musician. He is the founder, guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Porcupine Tree, as well as being a member of several other bands, including Blackfield, Storm Corrosio ...
, explained the meaning of the EP's title and commented about its relationship with the concept of ''Fear of a Blank Planet'':
"I just thought it was an interesting idea I had. I had this instrumental, and I didn't have a title, so I called it "Nil Recurring". It's always quite hard to name instrumentals, because obviously there's no subject matter to relate it to. I just thought the idea was quite funny. I kind of like absurd titles. I kind of have a history of having these titles that make no sense, like ''Up the Downstair''. I mean, ''Nil Recurring'' is another paradox-like statement. You cannot have the number nil recurring. So it's just a bit of fun really. And of course, it seemed to fit in with the lyrical concept of some of the other pieces that featured on ''Fear of a Blank Planet''. It was that idea of blankness, of not being there, or negativity that helped gave that piece - and the EP - its title".
Song details
* The track "Nil Recurring" is an instrumental piece and features
King Crimson
King Crimson are a progressive rock band formed in 1968 in London, England. The band draws inspiration from a wide variety of music, incorporating elements of classical, jazz, folk, heavy metal, gamelan, industrial, electronic, experime ...
guitarist
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946) is a British musician, songwriter, record producer, and author, best known as the guitarist, founder and longest-lasting member of the progressive rock band King Crimson. He has worked extensively as a session ...
on lead guitar. Furthermore, drummer
Gavin Harrison
Gavin Richard Harrison (born 28 May 1963) is an English musician. He is best known for playing with the progressive rock bands Porcupine Tree (2002–2010; 2021–present), King Crimson (2008, and 2014–present) and The Pineapple Thief (2016 ...
plays tap guitar on this track.
* The chorus in "Normal" is musically very similar to the chorus in "Sentimental", since the latter is a further development of the former. The lyrics of both songs contain a response to each other: while the last verse on "Normal" says "Wish I was old and a little sentimental", the first verse on "Sentimental" speaks "I never wanna be old, and I don't want dependence". The song also has a lyrical reference to the song "Anesthetize" from ''Fear of a Blank Planet'' in the phrase "I do a good impression of myself". According to Wilson's statement in the live performance ''
We Lost the Skyline
''We Lost the Skyline'' (also known as ''Transmission 7.1'') is a live recording by Porcupine Tree, recorded during an in-store performance at Park Avenue CDs in Orlando, Florida on 4 October 2007, with 200 fans in attendance. Although it was or ...
'', the song was written in
Tel-Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
.
* The song "Cheating the Polygraph" debuted on the late 2006 ''Fear of a Blank Planet'' preview tour, although its title was not revealed at the time. It was later dropped out of the track list for the album, so the band wrote "
Way Out of Here" to fill the gap. On the LP version of ''Fear of a Blank Planet'', "Cheating the Polygraph" ends the first side, therefore placed between "My Ashes" and "Anesthetize". The rest of ''Nil Recurring'' is placed on the fourth side. In 2015, it also became the title track of Gavin Harrison's solo album featuring Porcupine Tree songs rearranged (by bass player
Laurence Cottle
Laurence Cottle (born 16 December 1961) is a Welsh bass guitarist and composer.
Career
His solo recordings have been mostly in jazz and jazz fusion. He was a member of the fusion quartet The Fents and appeared on their second album, ''The Ot ...
) in a big band jazz setting.
* Ben Coleman contributes electric violin to "What Happens Now?", having previously worked with Wilson as part of
No-Man
No-Man are an English art pop duo, formed in 1987 as No Man Is an Island (Except the Isle of Man) by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. The band has so far produced seven studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes ...
. During live performances, Coleman's parts are played on the guitar by touring guitarist
John Wesley
John Wesley (; 2 March 1791) was an English people, English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The soci ...
. "What Happens Now?" includes a riff featured in "Anesthetize", lyrical references to "My Ashes", and additionally, elements of an unreleased song titled "Always Recurring" - which was pegged for "Nil Recurring" but dropped out later on - were used in the making of the song. Its title is derived from an unpublished (but sung) bridge lyric in "Way Out of Here": "I will be found with a bomb in my bag, thinking 'what happens now?'."
Promotion
Peaceville Records
Peaceville Records is a British independent heavy metal record label. The label was founded by Paul "Hammy" Halmshaw (of the bands Instigators and Civilised Society) in Dewsbury, England in 1987, who was also a one-time drummer of Sore Throat ...
set a ''Nil Recurring''
minisite related to the issue of the EP, including full
audio streaming
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
s for each track. The video for "Normal" was initially intended to be posted on 15 February 2008, but its release date was moved forward to 9 February 2008.
Track listing
In addition to the standard version, the EP is also available in
5.1 Surround Sound on the
DVDA version of ''Fear of a Blank Planet''.
Personnel
*
Steven Wilson
Steven John Wilson (born 3 November 1967) is an English musician. He is the founder, guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter of the rock band Porcupine Tree, as well as being a member of several other bands, including Blackfield, Storm Corrosio ...
– vocals, guitars, piano, keyboards
*
Richard Barbieri
Richard Barbieri (born 30 November 1957) is an English musician, composer and sound designer. Originally a member of new wave band Japan (and their brief 1989–1991 reincarnation as Rain Tree Crow), more recently he is known as the keyboard ...
– keyboards and synthesizers
*
Colin Edwin
Colin Edwin is an Australian musician, specialising in fretted and fretless bass guitar, double bass and guimbri.
Edwin first came to public attention as a member of the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, in which he was bass playe ...
– bass guitars
*
Gavin Harrison
Gavin Richard Harrison (born 28 May 1963) is an English musician. He is best known for playing with the progressive rock bands Porcupine Tree (2002–2010; 2021–present), King Crimson (2008, and 2014–present) and The Pineapple Thief (2016 ...
– drums, percussion, tapped guitar on "Nil Recurring"
Guests
*
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946) is a British musician, songwriter, record producer, and author, best known as the guitarist, founder and longest-lasting member of the progressive rock band King Crimson. He has worked extensively as a session ...
– lead guitar on "Nil Recurring"
* Ben Coleman – electric violin on "What Happens Now?"
Chart performance
Release history
References
External links
Porcupine Tree''Nil Recurring'' minisiteon Peaceville
{{Authority control
2007 EPs
Porcupine Tree EPs
Transmission (record label) EPs