“A sixty ton angel
falls to the earth
A pile of old metal, a radiant blur”
Although this was not the first song I heard from the record In Absentia, it was one of the tracks whose imagery stayed with me for some time.
That was a time I don’t want to go back to. But life has a funny way of taking turns that lead you somewhere, just not here.
7th November 2025, Aquatica, Kolkata. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is playing softly on speakers as a music thirsty crowd slowly starts swelling around me. Steven Wilson is in town and at 7:30PM, he is going to perform less than 20 feet away from where I am standing. I’m wearing a t shirt my friend drew for me and he’s standing next to me chatting with my elder brother from another mother whose t shirt says it all. A strip of cloth on my wrist reads “Overview Tour 2025. Diamond.” I am miles away, in the mind of a confused and hurting 20 year old, whose mother has just hit him again and whose father isn’t there to stop her (he never was). I recall listening to Steven Wilson then. The year was 2015. Hand. Cannot. Erase. had just come out and somehow Ancestral and Regret #9 made so much sense to me back then, because here was a man who understood. Apparently, in half an hour that man was going to be in front of me, spectacles and long hair and guitar in hand. Was I ready? I did not know. Was I scared? No. I was not 20 anymore. I had grown beyond that, and I wanted to come and see the man who was there for me and to just enjoy myself.
The Kolkata concert was a masterclass in sound and VFX. It also boasted a fantastic setlist with songs like King Ghost, Lazarus and (of course) The Raven That Refused to Sing as the closing song.
Kolkata has become a different sort of place to be these days. One of the friends who came with us started headbanging when Staircase was being played. He was a bit skeptical about how much he would enjoy the concert, but in the end…there was a moment when something in his eyes shifted.
Behind me, a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time suddenly passed his beer can to me and kept saying, “Do send me the photos” and of course I will. To my right was a group that burst into tears at the end of Pariah and when Luminol came on, I cast a backward glance to see a mini moshpit.
When it was over, the crowd started to slowly dissipate. In a daze, I ambled off a bit and I wondered…these songs that helped me when I was sick came back to me 11 years later and I could enjoy them, film some of them and I could see the concert through to its end. I was going to be fine. I’d come a long way. It was nice to know.
A sixty ton angel glided over Kolkata yesterday night.
Thank you, Steven Wilson
The Bilge Master
