Made of Plastic

Steven Wilson is probably the most prolific musician you’ve never heard of. He fronts the British rock band Porcupine Tree (whom you’ve probably also never heard of) and writes pretty much all of their music. He also takes part in at least three or four side projects (that I know of). He sings, writes lyrics, plays guitar, writes music, mixes and produces, maintains his own website, and closely oversees just about every project he has any involvement on.

And, in his sparetime (where he gets that, I don’t know) he apparently does music for commericials. According to, at least, the title of one of the songs from his CD, Unreleased Electronic Music Volume One, which I believe is a collection of tracks he wrote over a number of years.

I don’t know the origin of the track “Telegraph Commercial 1996,” but I was inspired while listening to it one day to write down its “lyrics.” And then to put those “lyrics” on a Sony Vegas timeline. And off and on over the next week or so, I put together an animation. And I called it… Telegraph 1996.

Marillion fans can be a bit overzealous. I know — I’m one of them. The band doesn’t get a whole lot of press nor promotional support from whichever label they’re on at the time, so the fans often take matters into their own hands.

For this reason, and for kicks as well, I made a short animation in 2004 to promote their new (at the time) album, Marbles. I started off with one of the wallpapers they have for download on their website. I chopped it up into distinct parts in Paint Shop Pro and arranged / animated them in Sony Vegas. The music in the clip is “Marbles I”, the first of four similarly themed tracks on the album. (Not to say there are only four tracks on the album.) I’d thought about doing animations for the other three tracks, but never got around to it. [Continued]