Fear of A Blank Planet - Premiere and Release

Premiere and Release

Seven months prior to the release of the album, all the songs debuted live during the tour in support of the Arriving Somewhere DVD that ran from 13 September to 29 November 2006, though their titles were not revealed at the time. People attending the concerts could hear 50 minutes of brand new music during the first half of the shows. The only song not included in the set list was "Way Out of Here" (a song co-written between all the band members), as it had not been written yet. The song that later would be titled "Cheating The Polygraph" (conceived by drummer Gavin Harrison and Steven Wilson) was used in its stead.

On 12 January 2007, Robert Fripp from King Crimson posted in his blog that he contributed on a track called "Nil Recurring" (another band written song), during the Fear of a Blank Planet recording sessions. A few days after, the mixing and recording processes was finished, so Wilson unveiled the 5.1 mix edition of the album at two listening parties at New York's Legacy Studios, and London's Abbey Road Studios, where the official track list was finally unveiled; there was a third pre-release listening party without the presence of Steven Wilson in the Club Phoenix of Brisbane later on 14 April, organised by OzProg.com along with Roadrunner Records. A medley of the album tracks was posted to the band's MySpace page and the Fear of a Blank Planet microsite on 21 February. Then on 6 March, the title track was released in the US iTunes Store as a bonus track with Blackfield II, the second album from Wilson's side-project, Blackfield. On 12 April, the CD came out in parts of Europe four days earlier than intended, and was soon leaked onto the internet.

On 16 April, the same day as the European release date of the album, the music video for the title track debuted on Porcupine Tree's MySpace, though it was temporarily removed a day later in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre due to the band finding the content, namely children wielding guns, distasteful at the present. Wilson expressed his opinion about the tragedy:

"Unfortunately this whole culture we live in promotes this idea that if you’re somehow insignificant then you’re worthless. If you’re somehow not successful, if you’re not popular, if you’re not famous, if you’re not a celebrity, you are somehow worthless. And the only way to become famous if you are that piece of shit on someone’s shoe is to go into a school and blow 25 of your classmates away. Instant fame! That’s fucked up. That’s what’s wrong with the world right now."

Meanwhile, fans were encouraged to purchase the album from record stores rather than from the Burning Shed online store, in order to have impact in the charts.

The video was finally launched on the Fear of a Blank Planet microsite to view in high resolution on 25 April; until October the same year, when it was replaced by the projection used for the live performance of "Sleep Together". The video is now included as a bonus along with the 17-minute film for "Anesthetize" on the DVD-A version of Fear of a Blank Planet.

"Sentimental" was NPR's "Song Of The Day" on 4 June.

On 6 August, on their official website, Porcupine Tree announced a new EP was going to be released on 17 September the same year named Nil Recurring, featuring four tracks (just under 30 minutes of music) that were written during the Fear of a Blank Planet sessions, including the title track featuring Robert Fripp on guitar, and "Cheating the Polygraph".

The song "My Ashes" was featured in the American television series The Shield in episode #81, entitled "Animal Control", which originally aired on 7 October 2008.