Where are you talking to me from?

I'm actually home in London at the moment. We wrapped up our touring at the end of last year so Australia's a little P.S. to the end of the tour if you like.

It's your first time to Australia as a band, have you ever been here before personally?

Myself personally no, actually our bass player was born in Australia and spent a few years there before he moved to England, so I know at least he's spent plenty of time in Australia cause he's got a lot of family there. But no, for me personally this is going to be a chance of a lifetime, first time ever.

Is there anything you're looking forward to?

Well I've just heard so many great things about [Australia]. Some of my friends have toured in Australia and say that the audiences are fantastic and the fans are so passionate about the music and so serious about the music, and it's always a pleasure to play to people with that much passion and that much belief in what they listen to and what they enjoy. But I'm just generally looking forward to the whole experience, not having been there as a tourist either, obviously I'm going to try and see some of the touristy sights and stuff, that's if we get time of course.

Is playing a country for the first time ever nerve-wracking?

I wouldn't say it's nerve-wracking, it's quite exciting because you never really know what to expect, and one thing I have learned over the years from touring a lot is that every country has its own character when it comes to the kind of relationship between a band being on stage and the audience, their own kind of vibe and their own way of responding to the music, and it's going to be really fascinating to see what kind of atmosphere we have in the Australian shows.

What can we expect from the show?

Well Porcupine Tree have developed quite a complex multimedia aspect to the show. Although we're a rock band and we can ROCK at times, but we also have more visual elements to the show than a lot of bands. We have films for all of the songs on the new record, so there are times during the show when the emphasis is very much on the projections, the movies, as opposed to the performance aspect. And we like to create a nice balance between that so there is a sense of musical journey and visual journey too throughout the show, so that it has a nice flow to it. Certainly when you come to a Porcupine Tree show you don't just get four guys standing up there belting out their latest album. It is conceived very much as an audio visual experience.

Will there be a mix of material or will you concentrate on FOABP?

I think that's always the case with our shows, I think the emphasis will be on the new record because that's the record we're still actively promoting, but I'm getting the impression that a lot of people will have heard about the band for the first time in more recent years, so the emphasis probably will be on the new album or the more recent work, but yes we are also aware that wherever we go we have people that have been with us since the beginning back in the mid 90s and probably will expect to hear some of the older material too, so yeah we'll try and create a good balance for people hearing it for the first time.

Has FOABP achieved the success you expected?

You know, I don't really know what we were expecting, I'm not sure I have those kind of expectations any more. When we're making the record, the focus is entirely on making something to please ourselves, which is a very self-indulgent way to look at things, but on the other hand I've always believed that that's what true artists always do. They create music or they create art or they create books or whatever it is they're doing, to please themselves, and that's the only way, really, you can call yourself an artist, because an artist doesn't create art to please other people. I think if he or she does then that becomes entertainment not art, and that's a very important distinction to make.

So expectations-wise I don't really think there were any, the only thing I will say about this record is that it has been our most commercially successful and it's also been our most critically acclaimed, which in a sense is ironic because it is in many respects the least commercially viable album we've ever made. I mean it's a 50-minute, continuous, concept-driven piece of music, it doesn't have 4 minute songs that can get taken out and played on the radio, it's very much a piece of music that you have to listen to as a whole, as a kind of musical journey. So it's ironic in a way that this has been in some respects our breakthrough record, which possibly says more about the way the music scene has changed and less about the band's development, because I think in some respects the music scene has swung in the direction of a band like Porcupine Tree in recent years, whereas for many years we were completely out of place in the industry through the more commercial era. Now I think as the major record companies are beginning to die out and the emphasis is going back to bands that make albums and tour and play live, I think that's definitely benefited the band and this album.

This is the first album on Roadrunner, I've noticed there's been a few bands who sign to Roadrunner and then their popularity skyrockets.

Now that's very interesting because that says a lot about major record labels. We and Dream Theater until this album were both on the same label, which was Warner Brothers, and it's fascinating to discover that actually leaving a major label and signing to an independent, albeit a very big independent like Roadrunner, will actually take your profile higher, when of course traditionally everyone would expect that being on a major label gives you a much higher profile, and I think that is very symptomatic of the way the industry's going. Labels like Warner Bros and Atlantic really are unable to take anything but the most cheesy pop music, they're not equipped to deal with anything but the most cheesy pop music these days, and if you have a quality album-based rock band like Porcupine Tree or Dream Theater, they really don't know what to do with those bands any more. That's where labels like Roadrunner really have the expertise, so that's really interesting to hear actually.

It was the same with Opeth and Nightwish as well, it was only once they started doing things with Roadrunner that they were able to come out here and tour, because Roadrunner are a lot more active with pushing bands.

Roadrunner must be kicking arse in Australia then, it sounds like they're doing a great job there. That's really good to hear.

OzProg started out pressuring promoters to tour Dream Theater, and the difference since they signed to Roadrunner is like night and day.

That's unbelievable, it's really quite sad in a way for the major labels like Warner. As I say I just don't think a label like Warner really understands 'the power of the fan base' particularly. They're so used to dealing with the entertainment end of the industry and the media, things like MTV, that they just don't understand this concept of fan power and street teams, and I think for bands like Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater and Opeth, those things are the lifeblood. That's what has given the band a fan base in the first place, the fact that they've gone out there and toured, made quality albums and built their fan base in a very word-of-mouth, organic way. And labels like Warner Bros will never understand that, and that's why I think they're all going to go down, because with download culture kicking in now, nobody really wants to pay for Britney Spears albums or Mariah Carey albums any more, but people will always want to buy Opeth records and Dream Theater records and Porcupine Tree records, because they know that they're buying into something special.

Nil Recurring was released recently, that was tracks from the FOABP sessions, right?

Yes, it's kind of a companion release in the sense that they were tracks that were left over from the original album. Not left over because they were not good enough but left over because they didn't fit in lyrically with the concept, because Fear Of A Blank Planet was a very lyrically-driven record, so there were certain songs that didn't fit into that [but] we wanted to put them out because we thought they did stand up in their own right.

A lot past PT albums have been re-issued, what led to that decision?

The thing about a band that is constantly building its fan base... and Porcupine Tree is, for the 15 years we've been together it's been a very gradual process, very organic, every album has sold more than the previous albums, every time we go on tour we have bigger audiences, which is great, but what that means is that there's always a new audience for your back catalogue. So for example something that was released ten years ago that maybe sold 10,000 copies at the time, now we find there's a much bigger audience for those releases. So there's always a need to re-press and re-evaluate things, and being as I am somebody who finds it very hard not to mess about with the past and try and improve it, I'm always very keen to take advantage of the opportunities when things are being re-issued and re-pressed to try to make improvements in the sound quality or the packaging particularly. Ten years ago all CDs came in generic crystal cases, and now you can do very nice things with digipaks and cardboard sleeves and stuff like that, special editions with DVDs and bonus tracks... so that's it really, I think it's been very much driven by the fan base in the sense that every time we make a new group of fans with a new record, those fans naturally are interested in investigating the band's back catalogue, so the demand is always there for re-issuing that stuff.

And the long talked about collaboration between yourself and Mikael Akerfeldt, has there been any progress with that?

Not really, no. The problem is, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, that we talked about this when we first met many years ago, and in fact we were talking about working together on something even before Mikael invited me to produce Opeth, and so what's happened since then as you can probably see is that both bands have become more and more successful, and there's been more pressure on ourselves individually to continue to make records. So we've just now found the right window of opportunity to get together and do this, and it doesn't help the fact that we're always out of sync with each other. For example last year I spent the whole year on the road promoting Fear Of A Blank Planet, and Mikael was at home with his kids, writing music. This year, he's gonna have the same kind of year that I had last year with Opeth, because they're just about to release their new record, so he's going to be on the road the whole year in 2008. So we're a bit out of sync at the moment, but all I would say is that I think it will happen one day, because we're both very keen for it to happen, but there's no way to put any dates on it at the moment I'm afraid.

Did you have anything to do with the new Opeth album?

I didn't no, I was on tour. I would have loved to have been involved but I'm sure it was fantastic and they didn't need me anyway, but no I would love to work with Mikael again but it was recorded in October/November last year and we were out on the road the whole time.

You also worked on Jordan Ruddess' album, what was it like to re-interpret such a classic song as Tarkus?

I've got to be honest, I was very uncomfortable with that. I did it because I love Jordan so much basically, I mean he's such a fantastic guy. He's one of my best friends, he's such a sweet guy, and he's been so helpful to me, it's a long story but he really helped me out of a very tight spot and I wanted to return the favour. I've always felt a little bit, and Jordan knows this, I've always been a little uncomfortable about the idea of nostalgia, you know going back and re-visiting things from the past, particularly stuff that's quite close to the music I grew up with. In a sense I'm always more interested in looking to the future than looking to the past, but Jordan is very much coming from that inspiration as well, that's the music he grew up with [too]. He wanted to make this record where he re-visited the music that inspired him to be a musician, and asked me if I would sing "Tarkus". I won't say it wasn't fun cause it was, it was a lot of fun to do that, but artistically I'm not sure if it's a particularly worthwhile thing for me to do personally. But he was very happy with it and it was kind of fun to sing a song that I know so well.

And were you inspired by old prog yourself?

Well I was. To be honest I don't listen to a lot of so-called 'progressive' music these days, but it has to be said that it is the music that I grew up with, and it's the music that inspired me to be a musician. And of course it wouldn't matter today if I stopped listening to progressive rock from that era the rest of my life [because] that sound and that influence is ingrained in me, it's in my style and it's in the way I write, the way I play, the way I sing, so it's obviously been a very important part of my own musical development and musical growth.

What were your favourite albums from 2007?

Actually I had a couple, well no I had more than two. I had three or four records that I was telling people were my favourite records depending on the day they asked me. I loved the Radiohead album, In Rainbows was fantastic, I mean another brilliant Radiohead album. I also was a big fan of, do you know a band called Oceansize? They toured with us a couple of times and they're a fantastic young band that kind of take elements of classic progressive music, but very much with a contemporary, post-Radiohead modern 21st century approach to it. Their record I thought was fantastic, Frames. I loved the record from the band from New York called LCD Soundsystem, if you know those guys. Fantastic record. And I love the new Neurosis record, very sort of nihilistic, doomy metal band, I loved their record Given To The Rising. So those four I think were my four favourites of last year.