Issue 5 of Carbon Nation contains an exclusive interview with Steven Wilson. It includes topics such as:

SC – The Deadwing touring cycle is now at a close. Did you achieve what you wanted to this year in terms of touring and the album?

SW – Well, yes and no. What we wanted to achieve was to promote the album and to play to more people, and we have done that, but perhaps not to the level that we would have liked. The level we would have liked is to reach millions of people! Again, as has always been the case with Porcupine Tree, we seem to carve out a little bit more ground. Every album is like eeking out a bit more ground and everyone’s always waiting for the big upswing and it never comes. It’s a kind of war of attrition, though I think it’s maybe sped up a little bit. We’ve started to get a bit more acclaim and acceptance from parts of the media. We’ve started to get more young kids getting into the band. I think those two things have probably been the most gratifying developments this time around. In terms of record sales we’ve done slightly more than In Absentia at a time when record sales are generally falling, so relatively speaking it’s actually a better upturn than might otherwise appear because download culture really is now biting in very hard. If you can sell more records than your previous record then relatively speaking you’ve sold a lot more.

SC – Lightbulb Sun is then the next re-issue that everybody is talking about. Will it be the same treatment as Stupid Dream is getting?

SW – Yeah. If this goes well I like the idea of a companion release in exactly the same format. It’s just a question of me getting around to doing a 5.1 mix of it, which actually will be easier than the Stupid Dream 5.1 mix because the technology I did Lightbulb Sun on is closer to the technology I use now. Stupid Dream I had to go back to ADAT tapes and all sorts of stuff. I had to re-transfer everything to computer.

All this and much more in the full interview!