Steven Wilson will release his ninth studio album, Requiem For A Village, through Fiction Records on 6 November 2026. The title track is available now alongside a live Village Session video. Where Wilson’s eighth album, The Overview, explored the scale and isolation of deep space, Requiem For A Village turns towards a tiny, unknown corner of the British Isles. Its story leaves the modern world behind for a village existing beyond a defined time and place.
Wilson adopted an equally unconventional recording process. Avoiding AI and corrective studio technology, he used organic instrumentation, analogue synthesisers and the unexpected results of imperfect performances.
The album was recorded with regular collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine, drummer Russell Holzman and vocalist Katherine Priddy. It also features narration written by Andy Partridge of XTC and voiced by David Tennant.
“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints,” Steven Wilson said. “Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can’t be created using software.”
He added that the approach led him to play instruments he did not fully know. “For example, using only analogue synths with all their unpredictability, or not having instruments perfectly in tune. But it also led 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.”
The title track introduces this lost corner of Britain through flying drums, a driving bassline and scratchy guitars before opening into what the release describes as the soundtrack to an approaching apocalypse.
Requiem For A Village Track Listing
- Swirl In A Lark’s Eye
- Requiem For A Village
- The Same River Twice
- Now Departing
- Hiraeth
- On Chapel Slope
- Murmuration
- Curcus Fingerprint
- A Basket Of Bees
- Great Green Map
- Wheel
- The Old God Is Buried
Requiem For A Village will be available on CD, Blu-ray, 140g double black vinyl, double oxblood-coloured vinyl and as a box set containing two CDs and a Blu-ray disc in a 96-page hardback book. Limited signed CDs will be offered through Amazon, while HMV will carry a CD edition with exclusive packaging. Pre-order the album.
Wilson will preview the album’s influences with a DJ set titled Songs From The Village at The Social in London on 22 September. Proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to charity. He will also play two sold-out Royal Albert Hall concerts on 28 and 29 October with his band, the Parallax Orchestra and the Sansara choir.
