Warthur The Incident had a somewhat mixed reception as far as Porcupine Tree albums go, and heralded the start of the hiatus which was only alleviated just recently with the release of Closure/Continuation. Octane Twisted, then, is one of the last documents of the pre-hiatus version of Porcupine Tree, hailing as it does from the Incident tour and leading off with the 55-minute song cycle which formed the first CD of that album in initial versions. (More recent rereleases take the less wasteful and more economical approach of putting all the songs on one CD - for they will fit.)

As it stands, I think I faintly prefer this live rendition of the epic to the version on the album - it feels a bit looser, more organic, the band a little more comfortable with the direction it represents. Following this up with a nicely selected clutch of tracks from across the Porcupine Tree back catalogue, Octane Twisted is about as good a presentation as this material had.

Nonetheless, I don't find it as compelling as, say, the live albums from the Fear of a Blank Planet period, the band feeling perhaps a touch tired at this point - suggesting that the hiatus was, perhaps, a creatively necessary and inevitable thing at this point. It's also hard to deny that things perk up a bit on the second half; The Incident has its merits, but it still feels like it wasn't quite the album it could be, that something was a little askew in the process which prevented it from hitting the standards of preceding albums.

Warthur Recorded on the Fear of a Blank Planet tour, this show from (as the title implies) Atlanta was one of several considered for a live release, before the band eventually settled on the show from Holland to form the basis of the Anesthetize live album and blu-ray.

Eventually, Atlanta would see release on a download basis (initially to raise some money to help Japan bassist Mick Karn's family during his final illness), and whilst its set list has much in common with Anesthetize, the atmosphere here is so absolutely electric that many Porcupine Tree fanatics will want to have both shows to hand, and the slightly shorter track list makes the thing more digestible to boot.

This is absolutely the sort of thing you could put on to instantly hook a curious listener on the late 2000s sound of Porcupine Tree, with an excellent group of songs drawing heavily on In Absentia, Deadwing, and Fear of a Blank Planet, with a pinch from Nil Recurring and some archival dives into Stupid Dream and Signify to round out the running time.

By this point, Porcupine Tree had honed their sound wonderfully, intensive gigging having refined the Blank Planet material to perfection. Whilst prior phases of the band could be pigeonholed as space rock or indie-prog, here the group were in a sonic realm all of their own, following no bandwagon or genre and guided only by their own inspiration. The result is marvellous.

Warthur This is an intriguing live release sourced from a Porcupine Tree appearance at a Florida record shop. Due to the constraints of the venue, a full band performance proved impossible, so the band adapted and instead offered up a trimmed-down unit of just Steven Wilson and John Wesley, performing trimmed-down arrangements of some of their material.

Though this is not quite an "unplugged" set - Wesley is backing on electric guitar, Wilson uses electric guitar at points - there's enough focus on Wilson's acoustic guitar to give it that sort of vibe, and this casts the material in a very different light, like a matured take on the indie rock-influenced direction the band took around the time of Stupid Dream, Lightbulb Sun, and Recordings. Still, despite that point of comparison it's a unique entry in the band's discography, and it's perhaps a strength of these songs that they lend themselves to this sort of very minimalistic interpretation just as much as the lusher incarnations we are more used to.

Warthur This is one of several live releases which capture Porcupine Tree performing in the wake of Fear of a Blank Planet, perhaps the height of their 2000s powers before 2009's The Incident split opinions and took a little of the shine off the band.

As the title implies, it's taken from their appearance the Isolaarirock Festival in Finland, and as is often the case with festival sets that makes it a somewhat different beast from live releases sourced from a concert where the act in question is headlining. The necessity to stick to a festival running time prompts Porcupine Tree to pick out a setlist tightly focused on more immediately gripping songs, and whilst it also limits the extent to which they can zoot off on flights of fancy, this nonetheless is a capably performed set performed for a clearly appreciative crowd.

Save for Lightbulb Sun, only songs from In Absentia, Deadwing, and Fear of a Blank Planet are included, and on the whole the setlist makes a good case for the band's 2000s-era output.

Warthur Nil Recurring is a fairly simple EP to review in some respects. Did you like Fear of a Blank Planet? Would you like more Porcupine Tree in that particular vein, consisting of a brace of songs (some devised in those sessions, some only coming together afterwards)? Does the idea of Robert Fripp paying a visit to lend his guitar and some blessing to a band as important to progressive rock in the 2000s as King Crimson was in their heyday appeal to you? Then you probably already have listened to Nil Recurring - but if you haven't, don't snooze on it, because whilst some secondary Porcupine Tree releases are a little ancillary (Metanoia, for instance, is an acquired taste), Nil Recurring is of much the same standard as the album that preceded it.

Or do you think Fear of a Blank Planet was rubbish? I don't agree with you... but Nil Recurring won't persuade you to like this phase of Porcupine Tree any more than you already do.

Warthur Porcupine Tree's live performances in the wake of Fear of a Blank Planet are pretty well-documented - as well as this live release you also have live albums like Atlanta, Ilosaarirock, and We Lost the Skyline from this era - but Anesthetize deserves to stand head and shoulders above all but Atlanta, which is close to the same standard but a mite shorter. Released both as audio and as a DVD of the performance, it's a stunning performance which sees them offering a host of compelling tracks from what at this point was a very rich repertoire indeed. After this would come the Incident and then the hiatus, but for my money this perhaps represents the peak of what Porcupine Tree were doing in the 2000s.

Warthur Focusing on the more metal-oriented material from Deadwing and In Absentia - though notably steering it back in a more rock-oriented direction in order to allow this material to sit a little more comfortably beside the "indie prog rock" stylings of Stupid Dream, Lightbulb Sun and Recordings (picks from all of which surface here). Fans of their earlier psychedelic and space rock styles might be disappointed that those aren't represented, but on the plus side there's a liberal sprinkling of rarities here such as the glorious Buying New Soul as well as Revenant, So-Called Friend and Mother and Child Divided, those three songs having only appeared on various special editions of Deadwing. Not the definitive Porcupine Tree live experience, but a pretty decent one nonetheless.