The last time Peter Gabriel released a whole album of original material was in 2002. Tony Blair was prime minister, Wikipedia was just getting started, and the Twin Towers in New York had barely been down a year. Given the passage of time, one has to wonder about the voice, which tends to weaken and lose precision when a singer crosses the threshold into senior citizenship.
Thankfully there are no such worries with i/o, Peter Gabriel’s 10th solo studio album, with his soulful larynx projecting even more gracefully than he did on Where The Sour Turns To Sweet, the opening track of Genesis’ 1969 debut album From Genesis To Revelation. Moreover, he has the same range he drew upon for Supper’s Ready – the surrealist prog opera from his old band’s fourth album Foxtrot – still at his disposal. Genesis themselves closed for business last year, so to hear Gabriel soaring undiminished feels like something of a miracle.
And there’s more good news. He can still write songs that turn the head and stir the heart, even if it takes him a little longer these days. Playing For Time, a ballad about mortality that begins with a motif from Chopin’s Marche Funèbre and takes in the hymnal shapes of an old spiritual, feels like a song for the ages. It has the gravity of a Blood Of Eden or even a Don’t Give Up, though where those songs were performed with Sinéad O’Connor and Kate Bush, respectively, here it’s Gabriel on his own.
Most of the songs on i/o have already been released, drip-fed throughout the year to coincide with the lunar cycle. Accompanying each track has been specifically commissioned art, created by some of the world’s most renowned artists, including Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson and Cornelia Parker.
The first of these singles was Panopticon, here taking its place as the album’s opening track. As the portmanteau title suggest, it references both philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s cylindrical prison, the panopticon, and the digital moguls who harvest our data and spy on us. It’s a barnstormer in the Gabriel songbook: cogent, catchy and thought-provoking, and also a signifier of i/o’s big themes.
i/o
VIRGIN MUSIC
And so it proves: there are songs about terrorism (Live And Let Live), injustice (The Court), locked-in syndrome (Road To Joy) and interconnectivity (i/o itself), all released as singles over the past 12 months. Despite their dark themes, these songs are really about uplift in difficult times, and in each case we’re in the safest of waters musically. Gabriel did apparently attempt to collaborate with EDM luminary Skrillex, a journey outside of his comfort zone that perhaps mercifully remains unreleased. Instead, we get the heartwarming This Is Home, about domesticity and composed in reaction to Skrillex’s suggestion to write a banging tune about partying all night. Punishing beats are eschewed for a Swedish male voice choir and the orchestral arrangements of John Metcalfe.
So far, so solid, though with Gabriel there always has to be some kind of innovation. In this case, i/o offers different mixes for each track by two of the world’s most celebrated engineers: Mark ‘Spike’ Stent (Madonna, U2, Ed Sheeran) who Gabriel describes as a “painter”, providing the Bright-Side mixes; and Tchad Blake (Elvis Costello, U2, Sheryl Crow), “a sculptor”, brings the Dark-Side mixes. They’re available to buy separately on vinyl, while the CD version includes both plus a Dolby Atmos mix by Hans-Martin Buff with the In-Side mix for anyone whose living room boasts an overabundance of hi-tech speakers.
In truth, what could have been an interesting exercise in exploring the minutiae of mixing actually falls down given how similar the results are between Spike’s version and Blake’s version. Clearly both have done sound professional jobs that make the best of the rich resources available, making ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ essentially misnomers, given that neither feel particularly bright or dark. The release of both versions of Olive Tree in August was supposed to highlight the variables but merely confirmed that most people are more interested in the song than the production. Only audiophiles with especially attentive ears are likely to pick out discernible differences, with the contrasts all but negligible to the rest of us. Still, given the elephantine gestation period of this album, we’ll take it in whichever format we can get it.
Gabriel recently joked that fans receiving a song each full moon was like them “getting a Lego piece each month”. By that measure, i/o is a veritable sonic Legoland, albeit one for grown-ups, given the weighty themes. The world has changed since 2002, mostly for the worst, but it’s a better place with i/o in it.
35 TAPES
Fabric Of Time APOLLON
Norwegian progophiles continue to channel classic influences.
On their third album release since forming in 2018, this Oslo-based collective of seasoned musicians seem to be finetuning their patchwork of vintage 70s prog inspirations and perfecting the skill of making a musical magic eye picture – something that appears chaotic on first encounter but weaves together beautifully once the brain tunes in.
When the listener is confronted with a lurching, three-legged time-signature there’s a fear that we’re heading for uninspiring generic prog territory, and on initial listens, it then feels as if they’re drifting along without much of a prominent melodic thread to follow. But then, when the central songcraft of Whistling For The Wind starts to cut through, and Jarle Wangen’s yearning vocal melody makes its mark on Crawling, the arresting guitar skytrails from Morten Lund suddenly make sense and the Banksian piano and Wakeman-style synth trills of the title track prick up the ears along with Hackett-like fret interjections. The duetting vocal contribution of Bel Canto’s Anneli Drecker in the album’s closing passages make for an earpricking finale, and the temptation to go round again becomes irresistible. JS
A FLYING FISH
El Pez Que Voló – Act I APOLLON RECORDS/GYMNOCAL INDUSTRIES
Kaleidoscopic lunacy from Mexico’s premier space opera operatives.
There’s a lot going on in El Pez Que Voló – Act I, a concept album from A Flying Fish, who are either a Mexican prog band or an “interdimensional storyteller” named Râhoola, depending on who you believe. It’s complicated. And so is the concept, which involves Teezûck, a depressed half-bird/half-fish creature who journeys to seek his destiny after receiving a stellar vision.
The spectre of Devin Townsend looms large, as if Ziltoid The Omniscient’s Monterrey franchise has turned in its annual report. There’s Disney strings, party whistles, silly voices, various clangs and gurgles and a brief flurry of space samba – bits of A He-Kuree Dream sound like Ary Barroso’s Aquarela Do Brasil played by the cantina bar from Star Wars. At other times, the music sounds like it was written for the West End stage but swiftly discarded for being too freakish.
Occasionally the melodies threaten to bounce into Andrew LLoyd Webber territory, but are saved by a demented instrumental interlude or a choir that sounds like it’s been busy crushing galaxies. And from time to time – as on Mama, Papa! – it’s also rather beautiful. Roll on Act II. FL
AIRBRIDGE
Openings AIRBRIDGEPROG.BANDCAMP.COM
Reformed Norwich neo-proggers continue their belated return.
When these veterans of the early 80s Marquee scene released their album Memories Of Water in 2021, it was no less than 38 years after their sole previous long-player.
On this significantly less belated follow-up, they retain a certain likeable yet frustrating amateurish feel, such that much of Openings resembles hippyish whimsy and sung-talk musings light on inviting access points. Lorenzo Bedini and Dave Dowdeswell-Allaway share vocals and their reedy tones fail to lift meandering, free-form tunes – even when they bank up vocal tracks with a guest singer on the à capella That Big Small Step. Elsewhere, the instrumentation frequently sounds loosely arranged and shambling. Brighter spots are penultimate track Europa, which builds from evocative acoustica into an anthemic soft rock swell backed by choirs and orchestral accompaniment.
A contrastingThere!, sung by Dowdeswell-Allaway from the point of view of his nine-year-old self, a Caravan-esque ditty laced with nostalgic humour. Yet elsewhere when they play for laughs, Dead Man’s Porn ends with heavy breathing suggestive of, well, guess what? An eccentric, uneven affair.
