Episode 47 – This is Self-Destructing Turnip, Come in Radish: Porcupine Tree’s Curious Debut

After firing up a band called No Man Is An Island (later shortened to No-Man), a young Steven Wilson corralled a couple friends and some wild ideas to sculpt homespun cassette recordings under the strange name Porcupine Tree. These then-obscure tapes, Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm (1989) and The Nostalgia Factory (1991), were edited and re-sequenced as an oddball album, On the Sunday of Life, in 1992. Debuting on the newly-formed Delerium label, it was all an entirely English enterprise, right down to its freewheeling Gong-ish whimsy and hallucinogenic Lewis Carroll-esque playfulness. Begun as a not-very-serious project, the darkness of direction taken later by Porcupine Tree shows up here only in fits and starts, but what a start…we find this album a fascinating view into the mind of a young genius and a curious portent of the colorful vistas Wilson would later visit with the band once he started actually taking it seriously. Note I: We apologize for the poor quality of the audio on this episode. Just when we think we’ve got it sorted out, some technical glitch conspires to make us look ridiculous. We’re diligently working on finding a better, more reliable way to record our Greensboro>