Each full moon they came. Emerging from sonic ether – one new Peter Gabriel piece like clockwork or somewhere in the vicinity, slow-incorporating over close to 12 months into his most memorable full-length collection of new material in north of twenty years, permitting his reliable and progressive devotees to live inside it, a building raised around them.
For every one of its references to cutting edge advances – monster artificial intelligence globes keeping reconnaissance over our chiefs; headsets that transform our contemplations into pictures – I/o’s most noteworthy creation, right away, seemed, by all accounts, to be a genuine time machine. With the presence of the main tracks Panopticom and The Court maybe no time had elapsed since 2002’s Up. These were tunes saturated with the grating modern danger of Dimness from Up, the snapping synth noir of Diving In The Soil from 1992’s Us and the hazily astounding afrobeats of Gabriel’s mid 80s collections.
Their topics, be that as it may, put them solidly in 2023 and then some. The unique Panopticom depicted a computer based intelligence time reversal of Jeremy Bentham’s most extreme observation panopticon working, rather utilizing satellites to walk out on the managers and their worldwide wrong-doings.
The frightful The Court, in the interim, seemed to target web-based entertainment’s unpredictable chaos through which ‘we’ve lost the line between the normal and the distraught’. As a sort of tech-headed post-prog Bowie, Gabriel was never going to step Up’s modern waters excessively lengthy. Slowly I/o developed perpetually intelligent, natural, pioneer and surrounding. It developed into Gabriel’s most reliable and firm post-80s record and the most philosophical of his life.
The title track, a celebratory marriage of 2000’s vaporous Disadvantage Up and a Springsteen chorale, investigates the interconnectivity of man and nature straight up to the worms Gabriel pictures eating up him in his grave. Piano anthems So Much and the grand, organized Playing For Time (Randy Newman doing Here Comes the Flood) courageously face down mortality.
Gabriel’s late-in-life insights normally go towards the world-recuperating. Graceland-ish groover Incline toward toleration, in convenient design, envisions what could occur assuming the resilience and self-absolution one obtains with age were applied to wrathful and disdain filled global adversaries. There are funk pop party pieces as well; best is the cheerful Street To Satisfaction. At the end of the day I/o will remain as Gabriel’s dim, harmony making armistice with a wild world.