BLACKFIELD

Over the past few years Steven Wilson’s Porcupine Tree have made the transition from a solo project to genuine international stars. The 2009 release, The Incident, is the band’s bestselling album to date, and the band has continued to raise its profile around the world, recently playing sold out gigs at London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

However, Porcupine Tree is just one of Steven’s several musical projects, which also include Blackfield, No-Man and Bass Communion. Steven is also a Grammy nominated producer and mixer working with the likes of Opeth, King Crimson, and Yoko Ono. He also co-wrote and sang a song on the recent UK number one album by Pendulum.

The son of esteemed Israeli poet Yehonatan Geffen, and the nephew of Moshe Dayan, Aviv Geffen is Israel’s leading counter culture rock musician. A huge star in his native country, while his frank political views have caused huge controversy his records have been greeted with equal amounts of adulation, earning him a string of gold albums.

An outspoken peace campaigner, he controversially refused to do compulsory military service and his lyrics have been fiercely critical of the Israeli military and their actions.

At a peace rally in Tel Aviv in 1995, Geffen performed his ballad, ‘I Cry for You’, in front of over 300,000 people. After the show Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin congratulated Geffen backstage. Little did Aviv know but he would be the last person ever to embrace Prime Minister Rabin, as only moments later, yards from where Geffen stood, Rabin was gunned down. From that moment onwards Aviv became the national peace symbol for Israel's youth, and ‘I Cry For You’ would become an unofficial national anthem.

Aviv Geffen has recently released his first English language solo album (produced by Trevor Horn) and in addition to supporting U2 and Placebo during 2010 he has also has worked with various artists including Elbow and Belle And Sebastian but it has been his partnership with Steven that has proved the most fertile.

Formed after a meeting in 2000, the partnership blossomed into a cross-cultural collaboration called Blackfield.

Aviv had discovered Porcupine Tree in the mid ‘90s and followed their career development. In 2000 he invited the band to perform some concerts in Israel and met with Steven in London to discuss working together. Before long they had collaborated on the first Blackfield song. In 2001 the two met in a studio in Tel Aviv with the intention of recording a one-off EP.

The results of the session were so impressive however, that the EP was cancelled and the decision was made to continue writing and recording a full length album. Over the next 18 months the pair fitted in Blackfield writing and recording sessions whenever they could between their other commitments and finally in October 2003 the debut album was complete.

The collaborative songs alongside songs written by each separately brought a unique meeting of cultures, which resulted in the self titled album, which was hailed at the time as 'hypnotically effective' (Classic Rock) and ‘another strike of genius from Steven Wilson’ (Eclipsed).

Blackfield II arrived in February 2007. The pair’s return was greeted by an equally enthusiastic media response with Clash describing it as ‘a lush but soulful mix of separate cultures, deep sounds and touching lyrics,’ and CMU proclaiming it as ‘simply another complete triumph from the duo.’

The third Blackfield album Welcome To My DNA will be released on Kscope in March 2011 and the band will be embarking on their first tour in four years in April.