Jul 18, 2012 at 5:44 PM | Music News | By Stephen Humphries

Steven Wilson, the British musician who put the progressive back into progressive rock, has announced that he is going to begin recording his third solo album in Los Angeles in September. On his Facebook page, the Porcupine Tree frontman says that he has asked Alan Parsons, leader of The Alan Parsons Project, to engineer the album. "Alan, as I'm sure many of you know, was the engineer on Dark Side of the Moon, one of the best sounding records ever," wrote Wilson.

Wilson, the cover star of the August issue of Guitar Player magazine, added, "The writing for the next SW album is almost finished, and this time I've written it all for my live band to play, mostly pretty long pieces (including the piece we previewed on the recent tour "Luminol")."

Wilson may have built his reputation as the singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer of Porcupine Tree, but the four piece has been on hiatus ever since its 2010 headlining shows at New York's Radio City Music Hall and London's Royal Albert Hall.

Since then, Wilson has been busier than London Olympic Games Committee. In 2012 alone, Wilson has:

• Toured three continents in support of his 2011 second solo album, Grace for Drowning, which was hailed by Rolling Stone as "prog rock wrung dry of nostalgia, perfect not for drowning but immersion." 
• Collaborated with Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt on Storm Corrosion, a psych-folk album that The Guardian called "an unequivocal triumph."
• Remixed the first two albums by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in 5.1 Surround Sound (Wilson says he is due to remix Jethro Tull's A Passion Play next).
• Added a lead vocal and guitars to the new album by Blackfield. (Though Blackfield was formerly a 50/50 partnership with Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen, Wilson has dialed back his role to that of contributor and mixer.)
• Announced an August tour of Europe with No-Man, Wilson's long-running art-rock project with singer Tim Bowness.

Rather than reconvene Porcupine Tree, Wilson's main focus is on his burgeoning solo career. Indeed, Wilson is scheduling an extensive global tour in 2013 with his solo band, which consists of Marco Minneman (drums), Nick Beggs (bass and Chapman Stick), Theo Travis (flute and sax), Adam Holzman (keys) and Niko Tsonev (guitars).

On his Facebook page, Wilson writes, "The new album should be out in early 2013 and conceptually and visually we are planning to take things to the next level with the packaging and live show too."

In the mean time, Wilson is readying the September 25 release of a live DVD, Get All You Deserve, which was filmed in Mexico City earlier this year. As a preview of the DVD, Wilson released a live version of "Harmony Korine." (See below.)

 

• The Who Announce the “Quadrophenia and More Tour”
• Watch: Ozzy Osboune’s “Crazy Train” Performance From “Speak of the Devil”