Fresh from his UK live dates, Peter Gabriel has released his latest single in conjunction with today's full moon. You can listen to the poignantly reflective So Much below.
"I was trying purposefully not to be clever with this," Gabriel explains of the new song, which has been performed on the current tour. "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 a bit of character to it.
"So Much is about mortality, getting old, all the bright, cheerful subjects, but 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. The countries that seem most alive are those that have death as part of their culture."
"The reason I chose So Much as a title is because I’m addicted to new ideas and all sorts of projects. I get excited by things and want to jump around and do different things. I love being in a mess of so much! And yet it also means there's just so much time, or whatever it is, available. Balancing them both is what the song is about."
So Much features artwork from artist Henry Hudson and his work Somewhere Over Mercia.
"I started looking at Henry's work and thought it was great," Gabriel continues. "He's done some dense and intricate work with plasticine, but then he also has this other more expressionist, horizon work with different colours and they're very simple and pure. I connected quite strongly with him.
"The works where Henry's got horizons are minimalist in a way. They are quite layered and there's a physicality or three-dimensional element to the way he puts the work together. The idea of cutting the horizon in a different colour, in this case he wanted it to be yellow, and then effectively letting it bleed onto the painting I thought was beautiful and powerful. In the one sense, the horizon is the infinite but it's also the limit. It had some good symbolism. I think it's a great piece of work."
As with previous full moon releases, So Much will come with differing mix approaches from Tchad Blake (Dark-Side Mix), released on 3 July, and also from Mark ‘Spike’ Stent (Bright-Side Mix) and Hans-Martin Buff’s Atmos mix (In-Side Mix), released later in the month.
"One of the privileges of working with these extraordinary mixers is that they bring personality, sound textures, pictures, environments out of the elements that you throw at them that have strong individual characters," Gabriel adds. "You can really hear what these very smart people are doing."
Details on the release of Gabriel's new album i/o will follow...
