In a new interview with Jonathan Cornell of Immersive Audio Album, Steven Wilson shared a substantial update on the album he is building after The Overview. The short version is that the record is close to done, but the direction is intentionally different from what he released last year.
“Yeah, it’s almost finished, actually. It’s a very strange record. It’s the complete opposite of The Overview, which was a very lush, very big record and also about a very large — well, the largest possible subject matter you can imagine, literally the cosmos as we know it. This is a much more insular record. It’s still very conceptual. It’s still very experimental, and the pieces are — well, it feels like another single piece of music to me, in that sense. But it’s much more angular and experimental in a way that I’m really excited about. And that’s all I can really say at the moment. Very different again,” Wilson described (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
For listeners in the prog and heavier space who follow Wilson for detail and atmosphere, his comments on production are probably the biggest takeaway. He described a studio approach that stays layered, but leans harder into sound design, mono placement, texture, and contrast rather than pure scale.
“The way I make records is, by definition, pretty layered. I love the possibilities of the studio. I love overdubbing. Now, on this particular new record I’m making, there’s a lot of what I would call sound design elements. Now, that’s not to say they haven’t been on all my records, but let’s just say I’ve taken it to another level on this record. There’s a lot of sound design. There are a lot of sound effects that kind of place you in a particular place and a particular feeling. And there’s a lot of use of lo-fi sounds as well, keeping things sometimes in mono… But I’m making a lot of decisions on this album to keep things very small and mono, but also knowing that those things can be just as impressive in surround because you’ve got something very small and mono. You can place it very discreetly in a particular place in the room,” he explained.
“Sometimes when you have things that have been tracked four or five times, they’re kind of coming from everywhere. But sometimes what’s also nice in spatial audio is having something that’s just mono and being able to place it very, very particularly in a particular place. And that can be just as effective in spatial sound as the big immersive sound. So I’m using a lot of mono reverbs, spring reverbs. It all kind of relates to the concept of the record, which I can’t really talk about at the moment, but keeping things sounding almost old and rusted. And I think those are gonna be really effective in spatial audio, because I’ve got a lot of those kinds of elements. I’m playing a lot of instruments I’ve never played before. I’m playing the drums on some tracks myself. I’m playing violins, oboes, and harmoniums. It’s a very — I don’t wanna say it’s a nostalgic-sounding record, because it isn’t. There’s a lot of use of modern technology, too. But, yeah, it’s gonna be a strange record, and I think it’s gonna be a really interesting — the kind of [Dolby] Atmos mix I’ve never done before, in the sense of all these little details and things that will be very discreetly, particularly placed in a speaker or a position in the room,” Wilson added.
Outside the new studio album, Steven Wilson also launched Headphone Dust, a new platform focused on high-resolution stereo, 5.1, and Atmos/spatial editions of his catalog. The first title there is Impossible Tightrope: Live In Madrid, capturing the final night of the 2025 European leg of The Overview tour as a full two-hour show in Stereo, 5.1, and Atmos, and he confirmed it has no physical edition planned.
Headphone Dust also now carries a new Dolby Atmos mix of The Raven That Refused to Sing, plus high-res versions of The Overview, The Harmony Codex, and more. A new Atmos mix of Hand. Cannot. Erase. is expected “soon.”
