Thursday 17 September 2026
The Ritz, Manchester
★★★★★
Voyage 35 take us on a joyful trip to the outer reaches of the Porcupine Tree catalogue
In an interview with Nick Holmes Music in August, bass player Colin Edwin explained how Voyage 35, his newly-formed band playing the music of early Porcupine Tree, came about. Porcupine Tree was formed by Steven Wilson, originally as a sarcastic joke: the ‘band’ was actually a solo project with a fictitious backstory and fictitious members. Only when the band attracted a following, and Wilson needed to form an actual band to play his music live, did Edwin join Porcupine Tree. Edwin hadn’t played the music of Porcupine Tree for ‘years and years’, but then,
‘A lot of people would write to me and say how much they enjoyed the music and how much they missed it. I hadn’t really thought about it for a long time.’
He met up with drummer Chris Maitland, who left before the band’s seventh studio album, In Absentia (2002), was released. They joked about how much fun it would be to play Porcupine Tree’s music again. Then, by coincidence, Edwin bumped into Glenn Povey, Porcupine Tree’s original agent, who liked the idea: ‘I think this is a really good idea. How serious are you?’
‘I think if Voyage 34 was the ‘crushing encounter’, Voyage 35 is the recovery, isn’t it?’ Colin Edwin
Thus Voyage 35 was born, to tour the music of early Porcupine Tree. The band’s name is taken from the track Voyage 34, which describes a bad trip on LSD. Maitland couldn’t join the tour because of other musical commitments. Edwin had recently reconnected with Porcupine Tree’s touring guitarist John Wesley, when they worked together on a track for Edwin’s band O.R.k. When Edwin pitched the new band idea to Wesley, the response was instant: ‘Hell man, I’d love to do that again!’
They were joined by Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari (LEF) on voice and keyboards, and Alessandro Vagnoni on voice and drums. There’s a perfect analogy with Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, formed a few years ago with one original member to play Pink Floyd’s early, more psychedelic music. Mason said at the time that he didn’t need to play later Pink Floyd (post-Meddle), as several tribute acts [not least The Australian Pink Floyd] played mostly the later songs. He wanted to resurrect the early songs and play them live, just as Edwin did with Voyage 35.
The new band’s first tour began recently, and they came to Manchester on Thursday evening. The band’s aim was not a lovingly accurate recreation of the original recordings, as the Dutch Band The Analogues used to do with the music of The Beatles, before they sadly split up. As Edwin said,
‘It’s not about recreating it like a painting. It’s about bringing some other character to it.’
On Thursday, Voyage 35 achieved this with great success, creating in effect a new band while honouring the spirit of the original songs, and reminding us that even in the early days of Porcupine Tree, Wilson (who wrote nearly all the songs) was an excellent songwriter.
It was fascinating to hear the changes that the band made to beloved material. Some of the original samples were no longer used where, in Edwin’s view, it was ‘of its time maybe for Steve to have used them.’ Where they were important to the song’s structure, such as on Voyage 34, they were retained, as they tell the story of ‘Brian’s’ ‘crushing’ 34th trip on LSD. And the most bizarre sample was kept on And The Swallows Dance Above the Sun. ‘I want you to put Felix’s penis on me!’ (don’t ask…*)
*If you really must ask, the sample comes from the 1970 sexploitation movie, The Amazing Transplant, in which the central character, Arthur, has a penis transplant following the death of his friend, Felix.
LEF [Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari] has got a different approach to keyboards than Richard [Barbieri]. I think of Richard’s approach as being more sound design stuff. He didn’t have a classical music background or a pianist background, whereas LEF has got that ability. Colin Edwin
Musically, keyboard player and vocalist LEF [Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari] brought a different proposition to the band. His keyboard playing was very different from the subtle soundscaping that Richard Barbieri brings to Porcupine Tree. At times, he brought to mind Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright: the introduction to Dark Matter recalled Wright’s work on Shine on You Crazy Diamond from 1975’s Wish You Were Here. He added bluesy Hammond organ-like riffs to Shesmovedon.
But the most remarkable aspect of his performance was his singing, which brought a whole new dimension. LEF has performed as a singer in contemporary opera, and he brought a rich baritone voice and a wide vocal range, with some vibrato, to songs like Dark Matter, where his tone was sombre and melancholic like that of the great Ian Curtis from Joy Division. On the second encore, Radioactive Toy, he sang a wordless vocalise high in his range, reminiscent of Clare Torry on Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky (so memorably recreated recently by Vanessa Haynes at the Prog Rock Prom).
LEF was sometimes joined by John Wesley on harmony vocals, and Wesley sang lead vocals on some songs. A highlight was The Sky Moves Sideways (Phase One). This was a vehicle for his gorgeously melodic guitar; on the words ‘We lost the skyline’, his voice was strangely moving, bringing out the deep loneliness of the song, an idea that Wilson revisited much later in his solo career as the astronaut floating in space on The Overview.
On Waiting (Phase One), Wesley played an elegant solo, with lyrical legato, and his soloing throughout the generous two-hour set was superbly varied and inventive. That song was driven by Edwin’s impossibly funky bass, as was And the Swallows… The looping bass on the instrumental Up the Downstair was a delight, but the highlight of the evening was his playing on Hatesong, probably the finest Porcupine Tree bass line (other fine bass lines are available…) Edwin also acted as a witty and avuncular MC, joking before Radioactive Toy that he hoped the band could come again before ‘the next nuclear apocalypse’ (did I miss the last one? I thought this was amusing until on the drive home I heard a Radio 4 programme about ‘prepping’, or preparing for the next disaster by stocking up on food and water; is Tesco’s still open?)
Drummer Alessandro Vagnoni also sang vocals on tracks like Sever, his voice surrounded by a maelstrom of sound, perfectly capturing the track’s spirit with its disturbing vocal line. His drumming on Signify and Hatesong was suitably fierce, and on The Sky… he was subtly majestic. His playing throughout was measured and virtuosic.
The icing on the psychedelic cake was the superb visuals, a clever combination of the witty (the caterpillar on The Nostalgia Factory), the slightly scandalous (the saucy, Pythonesque nun on The Swallows, and the young lady getting wrapped up in rope in Signify), the nostalgic (the red phone box from the cover of The Sky Moves Sideways), the frankly terrifying (Brian’s face on Voyage 34) and the dystopian (nuclear war on Radioactive Toy).
Hopefully, we won’t have to suffer (another?) nuclear apocalypse before we join Voyage 35 on their next journey. Unlike Brian’s crushing 34th voyage, the trip with Voyage 35 was a delight.
Now read on…