Grammy-nominated British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree’s first concert in the subcontinent was everything it promised to be. A capacity crowd of more than 10,000 screaming fans, some blazing guitar solos by Steven Wilson and Colin Edwin, insane drumming by Gavin Harrison, accompanied by some stunning lights and visuals, made the year’s biggest Indian rock concert worth every Rupee of its ticket.

The concert, which was a part of IIT Mumbai’s inter-college festival, Mood Indigo, was a start-to-end, roughly one hour fifteen minutes long gig, that saw the band play some of its best-known tracks, and left the crowd asking for more.

Well-performed gig
Tracks like Deadwing,  Lazarus, The Incident and Fear of a blank planet were among the numbers that Wilson sang, but it was the encore that featured their most-loved songs, Halo and Trains, that had the crowd in an unforeseen frenzy.

Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy, frontman of Mumbai’s metal outfit Scribe, and a fan of Porcupine Tree since four years, felt that the gig set some great standards for international acts to follow. “The great thing about playing at IIT is that you get a jam-packed auditorium, and that spreads a good word about the concerts here,” he says.

“As for the concert itself, it was visually very impressive, and some of the stuff was really Tool and Adam Jones-like. Halo was great, Trains was perfect, but I felt they played Lazarus too early in the set. Plus, The Incident slowed things down because it came at a time when the crowds were on a high.”

 Neysa Mendes, who hadn’t heard the band’s music before, also loved the performance. “It was like a ‘show’, in the true sense, with the lights and sound,” she says.

Few glitches in between
“And there’s something to be said about an excited audience of 10,000 people. At a point in the show, the entire place was lit, and the audience waved in unanimity. It was such a beautiful vibe, because you felt that you were part of a larger thing.”

Most of the concert went smoothly, since it was reportedly preceded by an astonishing seven-hour sound check, but there were a few technical glitches towards the middle, possibly with the drums, since the band seemed a bit agitated on stage at one point.

Wilson agrees to the glitches but adds that he was quite pleased with the entire concert. “It was great to see so many fans, and I definitely want to come back again to India, possibly next summer itself,” a visibly contended Wilson said after the gig.

A few organizational glitches in the beginning of the concert put off fans though. “The validation process before the gig was like trying to get into another country, and it was beginning to get annoying,” says Krishanmoorthy, who waited for two hours in the line before the concert. “It’s okay if I had to wait in the queue, but they had some really stupid rules like you can’t take candy or medicines or even camera phones inside.”

In the women’s queue, Mendes faced problems too, “I was already irritated because after buying the pass online, we had to go to pick them up during office hours on weekdays,” she says. “And after that, they had rules like you can’t take cosmetics inside. Plus, there were people cutting the lines and it just didn’t seem fair. Thankfully, the concert made up for it.”

Chilling out post-event
Even post-concert, some Porcupine Tree fans had the night of their lives when Wilson decided to hang out with them. In fact, he hitched a ride with a fan to a Bandra bar, and hung with college students till late into the night, asking them questions about Bollywood, Mumbai’s music scene and about India, in general.

Krishnamoorthy, who also happened to be present at the same bar, has only good things to say about him, “I got a chance to tell him up close that they played a brilliant gig and got to chat with him for a bit. He was definitely quite pleased with the show.”

In a gig that lasted for almost an hour-and-a-half, the band played 17 of their best-known tracks from all their albums

Porcupine Tree’s playlist
Occam's razor
Blind house
Sound of muzak
Hatesong
Open car
Time flies
Blackest eyes
The start of something beautiful
Russia on ice
Anesthize
Lazarus
Octane twisted
The seance
The circle of manias
Way out of here
Bread
Trains
Halo