BLACKFIELD – Blackfield (Snapper)
Having recently been introduced to the Porcupine Tree, and reading good reviews of this collaboration between PT mainman Stephen Wilson and Israeli Aviv Geffen in Record Collector and our own dear Feedback I gave it a try. The first thing that I noticed was there seemed to be very little comparison between the music on here and the only Porcupine Tree album that I have in ‘Signify’, with the songs being much more rock than prog. I also expected Geffen to bring more of an Arabic feel to the songs, or at least have some exotic instrumentation, but it all sounds very English to me. The well-packaged CD does include a bonus disc containing two new tracks, a live rendition of ‘Cloudy Now’, and the video to the title track - making this excellent value for money - but I still feel that the duo could have experimented more to produce something just that little bit out of the ordinary. That said, the eponymous ‘Blackfeld’ is a memorable song, while ‘Scars’ and ‘Cloudy Now’ have a certain charm to them, and the live version of the latter on the bonus disc certainly adds something to the song. Overall, though, the album had a distinctly downbeat feel to it, and it is only the afore-mentioned ‘Cloudy Now’ which raises any level of excitement, and that is only in the closing few lines. I don’t quite know what I was expecting when I put this on, but from what I can hear it seems that Geffen’s contribution is pretty minimal, and with Wilson taking all the vocal duties it just sounds like another Porcupine Tree album. I will keep on playing it, as it is not a bad album, but I will be more careful in future to hear something before buying.