Progressive Rock
Fiction Records · 6 November 2026
“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints,” Steven Wilson writes of “Requiem for a Village”, which Fiction Records released on 6 November and his own website calls his ninth album. His examples: using only analogue synths, and not having the instruments perfectly in tune. It runs to twelve tracks and around fifty-four minutes, from “Swirl in a Lark’s Eye” to “The Old God Is Buried”, and actor David Tennant narrates on six of them.
According to the CD credits, Wilson produced and mixed it, with additional production input from Randy McStine and Andy Partridge. McStine co-wrote the music for three tracks; Russell Holzman drums on four, and Wilson himself on four, as well as playing violin and oboe. Partridge wrote the lyrics for five songs, two of them with Wilson. Katherine Priddy sings on “Murmuration” and Adam Holzman plays modular synth on “Now Departing”.
He’d previewed the title track on 11 September, “On Chapel Slope” on 2 October and “A Basket of Bees” on 26 October. The album is out on CD, Blu-ray and double vinyl, and in a limited edition with two CDs and the Blu-ray inside a 96-page hardback book. That edition’s second CD adds seven pieces, among them a version of “On Chapel Slope” with Katherine Priddy and “Requiem for a Village (The Original Soundtrack)”, which runs to seventeen minutes. It arrives a year and almost eight months after “The Overview”, released on 14 March 2025.
Text by Guillem Cardós