Pitchblack Playback Premiere: Steven Wilson's Requiem For A Village

Steven Wilson's new album, Requiem For A Village, gets its premiere at Showroom on Friday 30 October. It's being presented as a Pitchblack Playback session, which is a specific way of listening: the room goes dark, phones are put away, and there's no talking. The idea is to hear the record without any distractions, just you and the music.

Requiem For A Village is Wilson's eighth album, set in a remote corner of the British Isles and narrated by David Tennant, with the narration written by Andy Partridge of XTC. On the making of it, Wilson says he eschewed AI and corrective studio technologies, turning instead to organic instrumentation and embracing studio mistakes. The session plays the album's 5.1 mix loud on the venue's cinema system, and a recycled cotton Pitchblack Playback eye mask is included with the ticket.

Pitchblack Playback bills itself as the world's biggest deep listening session, running classic albums, exclusive pre-release premieres and bespoke DJ mixtapes on immersive sound systems in the dark. It's drawn praise from Rick Rubin, Jay Kay, Max Richter and Nihal (BBC Radio 5 Live), and has been recommended by The Guardian, What Hi-Fi?, GQ, Time Out, FT Weekend and BBC 6 Music.

The session runs from 17:15 to 19:45, 115 minutes including a ten-minute interval. Showroom is at 15 Paternoster Row, S1 2BX. Doors close promptly at the start, latecomers aren't admitted and tickets are non-refundable.