Progressive Rock
Peter Gabriel will release “o\i” on 27 November through Real World. The album had been announced on 3 January and until Thursday had no date.
It holds thirteen songs. The running order is “Been Undone”, “Put the Bucket Down”, “What Lies Ahead”, “Till Your Mind Is Shining”, “Won’t Stand Down”, “Who Are We Talking To?”, “Yes, It Will Go”, “One by One”, “A Hard Lesson”, “Face the Wall”, “I Belong to the Sky”, “Looking for the Happy” and “Sacrament”. January’s announcement gave no number: it promised one song for every full moon of 2026, and the year turns out to have thirteen because May holds two. The last one falls in December, almost a month after the record comes out.
Gabriel presents it as the second half of a single set with “i/o”, which is from 2023, the two of them adding up to twenty-five songs. “This is how I see the lumpy bits — i/o: the inside has a new way out and o\i: the outside has a new way in,” he says. And on the work: “This record has been more of a marathon than a sprint — it’s the longest album I have ever put out.”
The editions keep the mixing game “i/o” already had: two separate vinyl pressings for Mark “Spike” Stent’s Bright-Side mix and Tchad Blake’s Dark-Side mix, a four-CD box with both records in both mixes, and a third version, the In-Side in Dolby Atmos, which will be digital only.
David Rhodes plays guitar, Tony Levin bass and Manu Katché drums, and Brian Eno, Leo Nocentelli, the trumpeter Paolo Fresu and his daughter Melanie pass through the record, among others. Three years have gone by since “i/o”, the shortest gap between two of his albums since the early eighties.
Text by Guillem Cardós