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Steven Wilson has revealed how he persuaded former Doctor Who star David Tennant to appear on his new album.
Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor between 2005 and 2010, adds narration to the Porcupine Tree frontman’s ninth solo album, the folk horror-inspired Requiem For A Village.
“In my head, I wanted an Irish or Scottish voice for it,” Wilson tells Prog. “My first thought was that [Scottish poet and humourist] Ivor Cutler would be perfect for it, but then I realised he was dead, so that made it a bit tricky.
“I’d tried a few voiceover artists, but they sounded like they were reading a script,” he continues. “We needed someone with gravitas. I vaguely remembered seeing a photo a few years ago where David Tennant was wearing a Raven That Refused To Sing T-shirt. My manager contacted his agent and he came back straight away and said he’d love to do it.”
Tennant was away filming, so Wilson talked to him on the phone and sent him the script of the narration. “Literally within 24 hours, he’d recorded it and sent it all back to me. I mean, I think I’ve got a pretty good work ethic, but that’s something else.”
The narration for Requiem For A Village was written by former XTC frontman and semi-regular Wilson collaborator Andy Partridge, centres around the mysterious, eerie village at the heart of the album’s concept and the strange people and happenings that occur around it.
“It encapsulates everything – the nostalgia, the question of whether the village really exists, and does it really matter?” says Wilson. “It’s about immersing yourself in this world, and the feeling of something beautiful yet a little bit scary, a little bit weird.”
Requiem For A Village was partly inspired by ’70s folk horror kids TV show Children Of The Stones.
“It’s an absolute classic and it was fucking terrifying,” says Wilson of the show, which was filmed around Avebury, Wiltshire, famous for its trio of Neolithic stone circles. “The story revolves around a kid who goes to live in a village with his dad, who is an archaeologist there to study a stone circle. It turns out that all the people in the village have this weird relationship with this stone circle. Without wanting to spoil it too much, it transpires that this stone circle has some kind of direct connection to alien life.
“What appeals to me – and this comes back to the whole idea of the album – is that it’s a village in our country an hour away from here, but it exists in this little insular bubble of fucking weirdness. To me, something about that is the scariest thing ever: that places like this can exist without you really knowing.”
Requiem For A Village is released on November 6. Wilson plays the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 28 and 29.
Read the full interview with Wilson in the new issue of Prog, on sale now.
