IT is chilly afternoon in mid-January, exactly halfway between the Wolf Moon and the Snow Moon, at the very beginning of the year’s lunar cycles. Peter Gabriel is sitting in his studio, a retreat and laboratory for the 72-year-old nestled away in his West London home. Filled with synthesisers and keyboards, microphones and monitors, the space is as dark and cluttered as Gabriel’s ideas are bright and expansive. “It’s a real mess,” he says. “But it works.”
In 2023, this is very much Peter Gabriel’s modus operandi. A successful musician, with no traditional record company and unlimited studio time either at home or his Real World base, Gabriel is not mandated to create by anybody. If anything, he is now cosmically bound by the cycles of the moon. Gabriel is embarking on his latest music adventure – a grand scheme to release new music on each full moon, which will culminate later this year with the release of i/o, his first album of new music for 21 years.
As it transpires, Gabriel has other ideas percolating. “If I have the stamina, I may just keep going,” he says. “I’m an awkward sod. I like doing things differently, if I can. I’m 72. At this point, it doesn’t matter what other people say. I listen, still, to people who I think are wise and smart and have good taste. Generally, though, I’ll end up doing what I think will be either fun or interesting.”
The i/o album is the latest step on a career path that does not always appear obvious, but which incrementally builds Gabriel into one of the most compelling artists of his era. From prog shapeshifter to stadium overlord, human rights advocate, Oscar-nominated soundtrack composer and now a fully fledged astrotheologist. Occasionally, Gabriel’s interests have intersected harmoniously with the mainstream – notably his 1986 album, So – but for the most part he is not your standard industry veteran. Like his contemporaries and occasional collaborators Brian Eno or Robert Fripp, Gabriel is an intellectually curious, free-thinking artist, more interested in the journey, less so the destination. “We have a thing here where we say, ‘It’s the process, not the product’,” he acknowledges. “That’s pretty important for me.” Gabriel may take the road least travelled, but the scenery is colossal.
This might explain, too, why he’s spent so long working on a follow-up to 2002’s Up. Indeed, around the same time as he released Up, Gabriel announced that another album of fresh songs – tentatively titled ‘I/O’ – would be released within 18 months. Since then, however, a covers album, various tours, collaborative projects and reissue campaigns have eaten into his schedule, leaving ‘I/O’ as tantalisingly unfinished business.
All that finally changed on November 8, 2022, when Gabriel announced The i/o Tour – his first European trek for nearly a decade, which will lead up to the release of . On January 6, 2023 – the first full moon of the year – Gabriel debuted material with “Panopticom”. Along with February’s “The Court” and this month’s “Playing For Time”, these songs deliver the kind of sharp, creative curveballs that have defined his solo career, from the brooding art-funk synths of “Panopticom” to the lyrical twists of “The Court” and the reflective piano ballad “Playing For Time”. Another track, “Four Kinds Of Horses”, is a slow-burning epic
