Did you know, Aardman had a key role in the making of @itspetergabriel’s iconic Sledgehammer music video back in 1986? Blending claymation, pixilation and stop motion, the video won nine MTV Video Music Awards and is the most played music video in the channel’s history.
#Aardman #PeterGabriel #Sledgehammer #MusicVideo #StopMotion
The wait is almost over! Peter’s highly anticipated album, ‘i/o’, comes out this Friday December 1st.
“After a years-worth of full moon releases, I’m very happy to see all these new songs back together on the good ship i/o and ready for their journey out into the world.”- PG
photo: @nadavkander
Celebrating the classic track ‘Shaking the Tree’, from Peter’s 1990 compilation album ‘Shaking the Tree: 16 Golden Greats’.
‘And Still’ is arguably one of the most skin-prickingly personal songs that Peter has ever written.
“I wrote a song for my dad a number of years back, which I was actually able to play him, which was ‘Father, Son’. When my mum died, I wanted to do something for her, but it’s taken a while before I felt comfortable and distant enough to be able to write something”. – PG
Come Talk to Me, a jump back to the Back to Front tour and the O2 in London. Swapping the moonlight for the house lights…
Peter and the band performing ‘Mercy Street’ in the round at the centre of the Filaforum arena in Milan, May 2003.
‘Burn You Up, Burn You Down’ taken from the Still Growing Up Live concert film. A song from the Up album sessions that was finally released as a single to support the album Hit.
The first track released from i/o was Panopticom on the Wolf Moon of January 6th.
“The first song is based on an idea I have been working on, to initiate the creation of an infinitely expandable accessible data globe: The Panopticom.” – PG
Panopticom artwork ‘Red Gravity’ by @david_spriggs
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The forth track released from i/o during the full pink moon on April 6th was ‘i/o’.
“We are like packets of atoms. We think we are independent and isolated – little floating islands, controlling and steering everything that we do. But if you look under the surface you find we are all connected in multiple ways. We all fit into this bigger whole and that’s what I was talking about in the song.”
‘Colour experiment no.114’ is an art piece by @studioolafureliasson
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“My parents, once I was born, never moved from that house, and that is a rare thing these days. The house has now been sold, but it was full of memories, so I was trying to capture some of that”. – PG
The ninth track released from i/o during the full blue moon on August 31st was ‘Love Can Heal’.
“Love Can Heal is a dreamy, experiential piece with some abstract imagery. A carpet of sound, a tapestry where things are woven together, but not necessarily supposed to stick out, but just form part of a whole. I think the song fits right into the themes of the album in the sense that i/o is about feeling and being connected to everything and in a way, the next evolution of being connected to things is a feeling of love for everything.”
‘A small painting of what I think love looks like’ artwork by Anthony Micallef
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“I was trying also to write a little bit in the style of the music that my parents responded to, so I think there is some music from the 40s probably that had an influence on the song.” – PG
The second track released from i/o on the snow moon of February 5th was ‘The Court’
‘I had this idea for ‘the court will rise’ chorus, so it became a free-form, impressionistic lyric that connected to justice, but there’s a sense of urgency there. A lot of life is a struggle between order and chaos and in some senses the justice or legal system is something that we impose to try and bring some element of order to the chaos.’
The Burning of Lifting the Curse artwork by @timshawsculptor
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In a break from previous months, all three mixes are released simultaneously, the Bright-Side Mix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, the Dark-Side Mix by Tchad Blake and the Atmos In-Side Mix by Hans-Martin Buff.
The seventh track released from i/o during the full buck moon on July 3rd was ‘So Much’.
“I wanted to get a very simple chorus, but one which still had some substance to the harmony and melody – something that was easy to digest but still had some grit and character to it… I think when you get to my sort of age, you either run away from mortality or you jump into it and try and live life to the full and that always seems to make a lot more sense to me.””
‘Somewhere Over Mercia’ artwork by @henryhudson_bk
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When we were doing the string demos for ‘And Still’, @johnmetcalfeband was using a ‘Sul Tasto‘ sample which I loved and then incorporated into the top and tail of the song. He added some simple arrangements which set up the piece nicely.
The eleventh track released from i/o during the fulll hunter’s moon on October 28th was ‘And Still.’
‘I wrote a song for my dad a number of years back, which I was actually able to play him, which was ‘Father, Son’. When my mum died, I wanted to do something for her, but it’s taken a while before I felt comfortable and distant enough to be able to write something. She loved classical music, so we have a beautiful cello playing there. It took a while to get that right, it can’t be too emotional or too underplayed, but I think we got there in the end.’
‘And Still (Time)’ artwork by Megan Rooney.
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The tenth track released from i/o during the full harvest moon on September 29th was ‘This Is Home’.
‘It began with inspiration from some of the great Tamla Motown rhythm sections so we’re trying to recreate that in a modern way, complete with the tambourine and handclaps. The groove I like a lot.’
‘Conexión de catedral II’ artwork by @davidmoreno_art
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The fifth track released from i/o during the full flower moon on May 5th was ‘Four Kinds Of Horses’.
‘This is actually an odd one out of the album, in that this began on someone else’s project…’
Accompanying artwork by @corneliaparkerartist
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The eight track released from i/o during the full sturgeon moon on August 1st was ‘Olive Tree’.
‘I wanted it to have some speed to it but I also wanted some mystery, too. I think it is a celebration in a way and there’s a real sense of being alive.’
‘Chroniques avec la Nature’ artwork by Barthélémy Toguo.
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On this new moon, Peter releases the Bright-Side Mix of ‘And Still’ by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent and Hans-Martin Buff’s Atmos In-Side mix.
The sixth track released from i/o during the full Strawberry moon on June 3rd was ‘Road To Joy’.
‘It was actually very late in the record that we got to this. There had been a song that musically I’d started, I think, around the OVO project called Pukka. It was very different to this, but it was actually the starting point for coming back to this song. I just felt there was a good groove there, and I wanted something else with rhythm and so we tried a few things when I was working with Brian Eno. The excitement and energy in the song was something that I was getting off on. I felt we didn’t have enough of that for this record.’
‘Middle Finger in Pink’ artwork by @aiww
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The third track released from i/o on the worm moon, 7th March was ‘Playing for Time’.
“Playing for Time is a song that I have been working on for a long time. It’s been an important song for me. It’s about time, mortality and memories and the idea that each of us has a planet full of memories which get stashed inside the brain.” – pg
‘Mes voeux (avec nos cheveux)’ which translates to My vows (with our hair) is an art piece by @annettemessager
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‘First, only working from the memory of Peter’s song so that I could find my way into the world he had created. And slowly, as I started to listen to sections of the song, a feeling of longing grasped hold of me and I was transported back to my mother’s garden. I typically paint in rapid, concentrated bursts and Peter’s song has a slow, undulating pace to it. The song really cradles you in its arms as much as it lets you soar, so I had to be patient to find a way to respond.’ – Megan Rooney.
