Peter Gabriel has announced that he has a new album ready to go. Indeed, its first single has already been released.
The album’s title is o\i and so you have to conclude that it’s a companion piece to 2023’s i/o. Certainly, it’s got a similar release strategy to that album, which was slowly revealed over the course of 12 months with one new track emerging every full moon.
Saturday (3 January) saw a full moon – the wolf moon, so named because Native Americans would hear wolves howling around this time of year because they were hungry in the depth of midwinter.
Anyway, Been Undone came out on Saturday. Like the singles from i/o it comes in Dark Side and Bright Side mixes, by Tchad Blake and Mark Spike Stent respectively.
In a statement to accompany, Gabriel explained a little more about the project. "The songs are a mix of thoughts and feelings,” he said. “I have been thinking about the future and how we might respond to it. We are sliding into a period of transition like no other, most likely triggered in three waves; AI, quantum computing and the brain computer interface. Artists have a role to look into the mists and, when they catch sight of something, to hold up a mirror.”
"These are my lumpy bits - i/o: the inside has a new way out and o\i: the outside has a new way in.”
He continued: "We are not, and have never been, the exclusively self-determining, independent beings that have been given the run of the world. We are something else, a part of nature, a part of everything and feeling a connection, shaking our booty and giving and receiving some love can help us find our place - and put a big smile on our faces.”
There’s no news yet as to when the album will get a full ‘proper’ release. Given that i/o only came out in December 2023 once all twelve tracks were revealed, expect o\i (note that the punctuation mark is a backslash rather than its forward equivalent, the ‘oblique’) to arrive some time towards the end of 2026.
