“I love the guitar, but essentially it’s an instrument that belongs to the 20th century in many ways. So it’s a question of, what can you do to try to reinvent that vocabulary to make it seem relevant?”: Steven Wilson on the making of a cosmic prog epic

Steven Wilson plays his Custom Shop Fender Telecaster onstage with Porcupine Tree – that Tele is all over his new solo album, The Overview Effect.

“It’s a big chunk of conceptual rock music about the cosmos, and why not?” Steven Wilson says as we settle in on our Zoom call. His past couple of albums, The Future Bites (2021) and The Harmony Codex (2023), veered instrumentally more towards electronica, with the guitar taking a back seat.

But The Overview sees the instrument return to central focus, and even includes a four-minute long epic guitar solo from Wilson’s Porcupine Tree touring companion, Randy McStine.