Steven Wilson on Requiem for a Village: Finding Magic in the Mistakes
For my second interview with Steven Wilson, we explored an album that connects with me on a very personal level. I live in a small rural village in Cornwall, surrounded by stone circles, Celtic crosses, a church and that sense of the old ways overlapping with the new. At our annual fête, you might hear a heavy metal band followed by a poet and then a reggae band. Listening to this record, I wondered whether Steven had spent an afternoon in my local pub.
There is something familiar about this village, even as its atmosphere becomes increasingly strange. The music brings together heavy guitars, folk, electronic rhythms, jazz and sound design, yet I never feel I am being taken through a checklist of genres. It feels like a place revealing itself.
Before this, Hand. Cannot. Erase. was my favourite Steven Wilson album. During our conversation, I told him that Requiem for a Village had taken its place. Here is why — and what Steven revealed about creating it.
A village built from memory
The village has no name, and that is deliberate.
Steven explained that it is a composite of places he visited on family holidays in the 1970s and 1980s: villages in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, mixed with places encountered in films, supernatural fiction and television.
His reference points include folk horror, Bagpuss and those episodes of The Avengers in which something peculiar is happening behind the respectable walls of a country house. The idea running through them is that the countryside is alive, and that small communities have traditions and customs which outsiders may never quite understand.
There is nostalgia here, but also a reaction against the constant flow of information in modern life.
“I think I’m nostalgic for those kind of communities where information travels slowly.”
That struck a chord with me. A village can feel wonderfully removed from the wider world. It can also have its own history, its own rules and stories that are only partly explained. Steven has drawn on that feeling without tying the album to one location.
The guitar rule: play it as you find it
One of the most revealing moments came when we discussed the album’s imperfections.
I have always thought of Steven as meticulous about recording and production. Here, though, I could hear moments where the guitars or keyboards seemed slightly out of tune. They worked within the music, adding tension and a sense of something being subtly unsettled.
How does someone with his experience resist fixing that?
Steven described a rule he established with guitarist Randy McStine: if they arrived at the studio and the guitar had drifted out of tune, Randy had to play it that way.
“You play the guitar as you find it.”
Steven laughed that some guitarists might have walked out at that instruction. Randy understood the intention: to embrace limitations, imperfections and unexpected results.
This gives a very concrete meaning to Steven’s idea of leaving human fingerprints in the music. Something that a conventional recording process might immediately correct could instead suggest a new sound or take the performance somewhere unplanned.
The challenge was allowing it to happen.
Rediscovering the freedom of a beginner
Steven also approached instruments he does not normally play, including violin, oboe and drums.
He described the way a child encounters a piano: without technique or expectations, simply discovering that it can make a noise. That sense of exploration became part of the album.
He was looking for interesting sounds rather than demonstrations of proficiency. An unfamiliar instrument could surprise him precisely because he did not have full command of it.
Our conversation turned to his frustration with the emphasis on speed and technical display in some modern guitar playing. What interests him is the character of a sound and what it contributes to the music.
“You should apply as much attention to the sound of things as you do to the notes you play.”
He cited Brian Eno as a particularly important example of that approach.
For me, it helps explain why the heavier passages on Requiem for a Village feel so atmospheric. The guitars contribute to an environment. Their texture matters as much as the riff.
Progressive music as a continuing search
The title track is a good example of how the album brings its influences together. We discussed its intense rhythm section, metal elements, sound design, falsetto and passages of almost spoken delivery.
Steven is comfortable with being described as a progressive rock artist. He sees the original progressive movement as an exercise in creating new hybrids, drawing together jazz, folk, blues and classical music.
His question is what an artist following that impulse would draw on today.
For Steven, that includes extreme metal, drum and bass, ambient and electronic music. The ambition is to make something whose identity cannot easily be reduced to a genre.
“I like the fact that I can’t really explain what it is.”
He also stressed that these combinations are not a self-conscious exercise in bolting incompatible styles together. They come from music he enjoys, becoming part of his own vocabulary.
That is what I hear, too. The shifts feel natural within the album’s world. To me, progressive music has always carried the possibility that what happens next will surprise you. This record keeps that sense of discovery alive.
David Tennant, Ivor Cutler and an understated voice
One of my favourite exchanges came when I mentioned that the narration reminded me of Ivor Cutler.
Steven immediately revealed that Cutler had been the voice he imagined throughout the album’s development.
He wanted a regional accent, connected to his memories of family holidays, and had pictured that soft, eccentric, almost hypnotic Scottish delivery. With Cutler no longer alive, David Tennant became the answer.
Once Steven heard Tennant’s performance, he could not imagine anyone else doing it.
The album was largely in place when the narration was recorded. Steven had even tried a temporary version himself, using what he described as a terrible Scottish accent, although he spared Tennant that recording.
Tennant offered several interpretations. Steven chose the more understated approach, trusting the actor’s judgement about how to deliver Andy Partridge’s words.
That restraint is part of what makes the narration so compelling for me. It draws you further into the village.
Andy Partridge and the people who never leave
Steven and Andy spent considerable time discussing the village before Andy began writing.
They talked regularly about its inhabitants, its character and the mythology governing its existence. Andy brought his own childhood memories and longstanding interest in rural English life. Steven pointed to the imagery surrounding XTC’s English Settlement as one connection.
A particularly striking idea emerged from their discussions: once you arrive in this village, you never leave.
But what happens when someone dies?
Their answer was that the women become birds inhabiting the trees and woodland, while the men become standing stones guarding the village.
Knowing that gives the album’s natural imagery another dimension. Birds, stones and landscape become part of the community’s continuing existence.
Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood was an important reference for the language. Steven and Andy were drawn to its ability to paint with words, creating images whose emotional effect can arrive before any literal explanation.
That is central to the way this album works. You can feel yourself entering its world before you understand its rules.
Katherine Priddy and the darkness of traditional folk
“Murmuration” is one of my favourite pieces on the album, and I asked Steven about Katherine Priddy’s contribution.
I had heard a connection between this album’s atmosphere and her song “Matches”. Steven explained that their work had moved in similar directions independently: a piece of synchronicity.
He knew her as an English folk artist and had noticed that she followed him on Instagram. He approached her initially to sing passages from the traditional ballad “Cruel Sister”.
We discussed how disturbing old folk songs can be. Murder, betrayal and brutality have long been part of that tradition, sometimes beneath deceptively beautiful music.
Katherine also recorded versions of other songs, which Steven said appear on the bonus disc.
Her contribution connects the album’s imagined village with a much older tradition of storytelling.
Resisting the temptation to fix everything
The hardest part of this approach, Steven explained, was resisting the correction tools that are now so readily available.
His phrase for the problem was simple:
“You can, so you do.”
If a vocal note is slightly off or a performance slips against the beat, software makes correction easy. Steven feels that the accumulation of those decisions can remove the individuality of a recording.
He acknowledged his own love of beautifully produced records, including the Trevor Horn productions he grew up admiring. On this album, however, he wanted to preserve the human gestures that increasingly matter to him.
His work remixing older recordings has reinforced that feeling. A drummer speeding up or slowing down, a slightly unstable pitch or the physical noises of an instrument can be part of what makes a recording emotionally engaging.
I mentioned the fretboard squeaks on early Black Sabbath records and the sound of hands, wood and metal on older Jethro Tull recordings. Steven confirmed that the first Black Sabbath album was a reference point, both visually and through the atmosphere of “Sleeping Village”.
Those audible traces of people making music are part of what I love about Requiem for a Village. The imperfections feel integral to the experience.
AI and the desire for human fingerprints
Steven said that AI was in the back of his mind throughout the process.
He repeatedly asked himself whether AI could have come up with an idea. If he felt it could, he discarded it.
That was his creative test while making this record. He also acknowledged that the technology may be capable of different things in a few years.
What fascinated me was the effect it had on his own direction. The increasing presence of AI made him want to move towards uncertainty, childlike experimentation and performances that retain their human frailties.
He compared it to being able to see the painter’s fingerprints in a painting.
For someone who has spent years developing his command of studio technology, choosing to leave those marks visible is a significant creative decision.
Could we return to the village?
The concept extends into the artwork, videos, website and presentation of the album. Steven enjoys building that broader framework around his music and feels that his strongest concepts have often produced his strongest records.
This village has proved particularly fertile. It can contain new inhabitants, shops, establishments and stories.
Steven revealed that he and Andy have discussed a possible sequel, perhaps even a trilogy. These are ideas they have talked about rather than a confirmed release plan, but he clearly feels there could be more to explore.
We also discussed whether the album might become a film or a wider visual project.
Steven could see the possibilities, but was equally conscious of what listeners might lose. Everyone brings their own memories and pictures to this village. A fixed visual interpretation could take some of that away.
For now, he values the idea of a film unfolding in each listener’s imagination.
Why this album means so much to me
At the end of our conversation, I told Steven that this had become my favourite of his albums.
The connection to village life is part of it, but so is the sense of wonder in the music. You hear someone allowing himself to discover things, even after decades of experience.
Children in the distance, bees, water and an aeroplane overhead sit among layers of keyboards, guitars and rhythms. Passages of great intensity give way to something delicate or unexpected. The record can turn very quickly, yet it holds together.
David Tennant’s narration, Andy Partridge’s language and the contributions of the musicians create a place I want to revisit.
Steven and I also briefly discussed speaking again around the planned relaunch of Headphone Dust, which he said was on the cards for early 2027. I would welcome that conversation.
For now, Requiem for a Village is already one of my musical highlights of 2026. It leaves me with the feeling that I have heard something personal, curious and alive.
Requiem for a Village is released through Fiction Records on 6 November 2026.
Watch or listen to my full interview with Steven Wilson alongside this feature. For official album information, visit Steven Wilson’s website.
Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine
Music is the healer and the doctor.
