Issue 6 of Carbon Nation contains an exclusive interview with Richard Barbieri. It includes topics such as:

SC – This tour’s probably been the most unusual that you’ve played in that you’re playing nearly an hour of unreleased music. How has that gone down with the audiences so far and have you enjoyed it?

RB – Yes. It’s gone down better than we thought it would. They’ve been really patient, attentive and supportive. Obviously we’re concentrating a lot with this new material and probably it seems like we’re not projecting and we’re a bit introspective with it, but that’s because it’s pretty hard to play both physically and concentration wise. So we were initially worried, but we thought it was worth a gamble and it’s gone down really well.

SC – On top of it being 50 minutes of new stuff, it’s all one big chunk as opposed to being spread throughout the set. My experience of it has been that they’ve been fantastically receptive, especially last night in London.

R – I think we made the right decision to do it all in one chunk and divide the show up into two halves. It was a good idea for Steven to explain after the first track that that’s what we’re doing. The audience is then prepared for it. They can have two experiences. They can have the listening experience and then in the second half they can just enjoy it. They know what’s coming.

S – What’s the score with following up your solo album which was out about 18 months ago? Is there anything you’ve got in the can already?

R – Yeah there is. Usually what happens is when Porcupine Tree start on a new album and we’re all writing, probably about 80% of what I write isn’t really right for Porcupine Tree and it gravitates towards what would be part of a solo album project, although I wasn’t writing particularly whole arrangements, just ideas and sections. So there’s plenty of that going around. I would hope to probably have something by next March I reckon. Although I have a lot of programming to do for Roland this winter as well.

All this and much more in the full interview!