STEVEN WILSON NEW ALBUM

6x GRAMMY® Award-nominated musician/songwriter/producer Steven Wilson has announced details of his forthcoming ninth studio album. Requiem For A Village arrives via Fiction Records on Friday, November 6. A wide array of formats will be available, including digitally, CD, Blu-Ray, 140g two 12” black vinyl, 2x Oxblood 12” vinyl, and a boxset featuring 2 CDs and Blu-Ray disc packaged in a 96=page hardback book box. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now.

PRE-ORDER/PRE-SAVE REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE

If Steven Wilson’s acclaimed eighth album, 2025’s The Overview, explored the depths, distances, and desolations of deep space, Requiem For A Village narrows its immersive focus to a tiny, unknown corner somewhere off map in the British Isles, a hauntological realm entirely divorced from modernity, where the paintings of Stanley Spencer hang in the local art gallery, the stories of M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood sit on the shelves of the public library, and the Children of the Stones play in the market square. Eschewing AI and corrective studio technologies, Wilson adopted an unorthodox recording approach to create music that willingly embraces both the macabre and the possibilities of error, turning instead to organic instrumentation, whether pristine or imperfect, embracing mistakes to see where they might lead. Intimate, ambitious, richly imaginative, and knowingly eccentric, Requiem For A Village features a hugely compelling narration written by the legendary Andy Partridge (XTC) and voiced by award-winning actor David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch, Rivals), with backing from longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine, drummer Russell Holzman, and vocalist Katherine Priddy. The album is heralded by today’s premiere of the revelatory title track, “Requiem For A Village,” a pummeling cluster of flying drums, driving bassline, and scratchy guitars that opens up into something close to the soundtrack for an approaching apocalypse, available now at all DSPs and streaming services. An official live performance video – the first in a series of Village Sessions recorded and filmed with McStine and Holzman – premieres today at YouTube. In addition, an exclusive extract from the album’s narration debuted earlier this week, along with a new online platform designed to look like an traditional parish council website for a fictional village, complete with song/lyric references and Easter eggs.

“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints,” says Steven Wilson. “Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can’t be created using software. For example using only analogue synths with all their unpredictability, or not having instruments perfectly in tune. But it also lead to me picking up the violin, the oboe, or trying my hand on the drums – playing things I don’t really know how to play but getting something out of them that inspired me in ways I didn’t expect. Approaching the music with a sense of innocence and seeing where it took me. And where it took me was to the village.”

LISTEN TO “REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE”

WATCH “REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE (VILLAGE SESSION)” OFFICIAL VIDEO

WATCH REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE NARRATION TEASER

Wilson will preview Requiem For A Village with a special DJ set at London’s The Social (5 Little Portland Street, London, W1W 7JD) on Tuesday, September 22. “Songs From The Village” will serve as an introduction to the music that inspired the album, from the gauzy otherness of Boards of Canada and Demdike Stare, the haunted ragas of Third Ear Band, to the creeping dread found in British children’s TV and other broadcasts from the ‘70s. All proceeds will benefit Here 2 Belong, a UK-based charitable organization that supports care-experienced young people as they transition into independent or semi-independent living.

Next month will then see Wilson headlining two sold-out performances at London’s venerable Royal Albert Hall, set for October 28-29. Wilson’s seventh career appearance at the historic venue will feature previously unheard orchestral arrangements of The Overview and more prepared especially for these shows, with accompaniment by his band, the Parallax Orchestra, and SANSARA Choir conducted by Tom Richards. Additional live dates will be announced. For updates, please visit stevenwilsonhq.com/tour-dates