Eponymous

Blackfield by Blackfield from Blackfield produced by Blackfield written by Blackfield.

January 2018 was when I properly discovered Steven Wilson and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. Prior to this, I'd been a fan of No-Man and had a few of their singles: Days In The Trees, Only Baby, Painting Paradise and Housewives Hooked On Heroin. However, I'd not really paid much attention to their albums or the members' extra-curricular activity.

I can't remember the exact prompt but it may have been seeing Steven Wilson's name pop up everywhere on the back of rave reviews for his solo album, To The Bone, and being producer of choice for remixed and remastered reissues by the likes of Yes, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and XTC. It was also around this time that I finally picked up No-Man's second album from 1993, Loveblows & Lovecries: A Confession, featuring the aforementioned singles, Only Baby and Painting Paradise.

 

Whatever the reason, my eBay spree at the start of 2018 including a couple more No-Man albums, Flowermouth (1994) and Wild Opera (1996), Fear Of A Blank Planet (2007) by Porcupine Tree, Grace For Drowning by Steven Wilson (2011) and the first four albums by Blackfield.

 

Blackfield was formed by Aviv Geffen and Steven Wilson in 2004, becoming more of a vehicle for Geffen from Blackfield IV (2013). There have been a couple more albums since, V (2017) and For The Music (2020). 

 

Steven Wilson reconvened with Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison for an 11th - and apparently final - Porcupine Tree album, Closure / Continuation, in June of this year. The previous month, Wilson also released a memoir, Limited Edition Of One, with a heftily priced special edition featuring additional book and CD in a nice slipcase. However, that's a drop in the ocean compared to the "Ultra Deluxe Music Product On Obsolete Media" version of his album The Future Bites, a literal limited edition of one, which sold for $10,000 in November 2020. Proceeds of the sale went to the Music Venue Trust.  

B(l)ack to Blackfield by Blackfield, the album features a cover of Aviv Geffen & The Mistakes' 1993 song Cloudy Now, which was banned in his native Israel for it's use of the F-word and went on to top the charts. The eponymous title track, like the rest of the album is slickly produced and (excuse the pun) strikes all the right notes, with piano intro, crashing acoustic guitar and drums and powerful vocals. Personally, the album skates a little too close to MOR/AOR territory to demand regular repeat listening at Casa K but it gets dusted off when I'm in a particular mood for big, bold and 'worthy' music. The video is stylish and suits the song, but if I didn't know otherwise I'd have guessed the visuals and music dated from the mid-1990s, not a decade later.