The concept with the title track was to mangle, expand, constrict, reshape, and combine sounds from all of Porcupine Tree's albums, from On The Sunday Of Life and Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape to Deadwing, integrating them into a meditative dronescape called Transmutation. Every sound presented in Transmutation was sampled from a Porcupine Tree song. No additional music was recorded. This is an experiment in pure sound inasmuch as I wanted to take sound waves and change them far from their original forms so that they took on new characters.

Throughout his career, Steven Wilson has shared elements from his various projects using and reusing them between one another. Often it is a Bass Communion track which forms a foundation or atmospheric element for a no-man or Porcupine Tree song. An obvious example would be Bass Communion's Drugged becoming the backing track for no-man's Together We're Stranger.

Transmutation takes this concept in the other direction: deconstructing Porcupine Tree into a minimalist, Bass Communion-style abstract ambient expression. It was interesting working within the "rules" of the concept, never touching a keyboard or guitar, only recycling and repurposing existing sounds and experiencing their interactions firsthand as they were mixed. A small amount of acoustic recording was also done, but it was still sourced from Porcupine Tree albums. I'll leave you to figure out how this was accomplished.

This work is not endorsed by Steven Wilson, but I hope (should he become aware of its existence), he will appreciate what I've done. Wilson has inspired Marc and I for a long time, and this is a direct reflection of that inspiration.

Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are atmospheric electronics, free-form expressions realized during improvisations and experimentations in the studio. Track 7 (Hidden Fires) is a less melancholy "credit roll" three-chord wonder recorded with my former, long time musical partner Sean Smith.

--Terry
February 2006