Grace For Drowning, the new album from Steven Wilson, was released last month on Kscope. An accompanying iPhone and iPad app has now also been launched. Steven Wilson is a twice Grammy-nominated producer, writer and performer, best known as founder and front man of British rock band Porcupine Tree. The app, which is available from the app store for free, features exclusive audio and video content only available in the app including the previously unreleased song Cut Ribbon and the video for Belle De Jour.
More exclusive content will be added as time goes on. Steven explained the reason behind creating the app: "The making of Grace For Drowning was a big artistic step forward for me - while it has its roots in the experimental rock music of the early 70's, it's also an album which could have only been made in the 21st Century. To this end we have also embraced the best that modern technology has to offer by making the album one of the first ever to be conceived specifically for Blu-ray, which allows much higher audio resolution as well as interactive visual elements.
As a continuation of that philosophy this iPhone app allows fans to keep track of news and tour dates, but also access to audio and visual content, some of which is exclusive to the app." The app also contains unseen artwork and photography by Lasse Hoile, Steven's long-term visual collaborator.
Lasse created a huge amount of visual content for Grace For Drowning. Lots of this has been included in the various formats of the album, including the videos on the Blu-ray edition of the album and the photos featured in the 120 page book that was part of the deluxe edition, but much of the material is as yet unused as Lasse explains: "Grace For Drowning is probably the biggest project I've worked on, from the films to the images and all the different formats it was released in. We developed over 10,000 images knowing that none of the editions could contain even a fraction of the final result. It's been a great honor and pleasure to be part of this adventure with Steven and everyone else involved and I hope all will enjoy listening and looking at GFD for many years in the future.
With this great looking app we are able to show everything we couldn't fit in the book or on the Blu-ray." Starsdie.com, a Porcupine Tree fan site, have made a video showing the app and its various features. You can check it out at this link. Steven is just about to embark on his first solo tour and the app will be regularly updated with news, photos and audio from the tour.
The tour starts in Poland on Thursday before visiting Germany, Holland, France and the UK. A North American tour follows in November. Full details can be found on the Grace For Drowning mini-site. Lasse has created new films and multi-media content for the tour to create an immersive experience featuring material from Grace For Drowning and Steven's debut solo album, Insurgentes.
For the tour Steven will be joined by Marco Minnemann on drums, Nick Beggs on bass, Aziz Ibrahim on guitar, Adam Holzman on keyboards and Theo Travis on flute / sax.
www.gracefordrowning.com 'An album that can't really be described but it urgently calls to be heard' Classic Rock 'Wilson's ability to create music so prodigiously and to such consistent standards remains a mystery. With his second solo album, the Porcupine Tree leader has done it again.' Metal Hammer 'an immersive, ambitious project that demands repeated spins' Mojo **** 'A dense yet extremely coherent album Grace For Drowning succeeds brilliantly... Prog album of the year' Terrorizer ***** 'A majestic soundscape created by an innovative, forward-looking musician immersed in the history of music' Record Collector 'This is a magnificent step up; he simply can't be stopped.' Classic Rock Prog
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