Anil Prasad has an in-depth interview with singer and multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine for his Innerviews website. About his new solo album Mutual Hallucinations:
The album title refers to the idea that we’re sharing a space in which algorithms and politics intersect and divide us into hyper-individualistic perceptions of the world. We’re all walking around with a different take on what the world even is, much less what’s happening in it. It’s a hallucination of sorts. What I think happens these days is we try to form a sense of everything that’s going on, and mostly converse with people who land on the same side of a particular issue. These are the people we band together with. But it’s all happening within a vortex of information and disinformation. The distinction becomes “my truth” and “your truth.” So, Mutual Hallucinations is about how society has crossed the point to arrive where we’re together and completely apart, simultaneously. It’s also about the things we’re ignoring at our own peril.
About getting home after walking his dog and finding out he had quite a few missed calls from Gavin Harrison, who offered him the job of joining the Porcupine Tree tour as a guitarist:
We got on the phone and after a minute of niceties, he told me that Porcupine Tree was coming back with a new album and tour, and asked if I would like to join them as their touring guitarist and backing vocalist. I immediately said yes and scribbled down some vague details about how things would progress.
After getting over the shock of that, there was this period of three or four months during which there was very little communication. And that was laid out to me from the start, but I still had many moments when I thought, “Is this really happening? Am I going to get a call that says they’ve changed their mind and are getting someone else?” I started getting in my own head about it. But at the turn of the year, everything started kicking into gear. That’s when my communication with Steven Wilson started and I was sent the Closure/Continuation record so I could start studying it and figuring out how to approach it in a live context.