Peter Gabriel's 2023 album "I/O"

[krabapple]

Since everyone is making their thread jokes clear, I do not in fact enjoy cat piss

No one thought you enjoyed it.

 

[krabapple]

I still remember when Up came out... 22 years ago! With the exception of "Barry Williams" I loved the whole album. Probably wouldn't have minded that cut if it wasn't the single every radio station jammed down our ear holes!

I remember it getting a fraction of the airplay that the hits from So and Us got. Thankfully. Like 'Steam', it just seemed a retread of something he did before.

Admittedly, I started seeing press for I/O so long ago that I had completely forgotten about it, even after it actually finally dropped for realsies. I'll check it out soon!

Always been a fan, not of everything he's done, but so much good music over the years.... Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack still gets air time around here! More telling is some of his songs do have a timeless quality to them that much in Pop does not; they can still sound fresh today.

Passion (the Last Temptation soundtrack) cries out for a surround mix. Some great stuff on there.

 

[DMill]

The whole things seems like a bit of a gimmick from someone who really should be above it. Peter should have picked the mix he wants for His music. Especially coming from someone as well versed in production. I’m a pretty big fan of his and he’s always been experimental, but this feels a bit wishy washy to me.

EDIT: I‘ll add that sometimes it’s fun to hear the takes the artist didn’t pick like Kate Bush Directors Cut album. But those songs were already iconic to her fans and it makes it an interesting to Hear a new take based on her position on the songs now. This is all completely new material.

 

[Axo1989]

The Genesis that Phil Collins played brilliantly with (and eventually fronted) in the 1970s was hardly the Genesis that he fronted in the 1980s.

The former should not be tarred with the lameness of the latter.

If I recall my above-mentioned Genesis history lesson correctly, my dad drew the line roughly where Steve Hackett left. And there the distaste for Collins began perhaps, passed down from father to ...

Anyway, enough of that. delivering the first digital multi-channel release is something interesting, and this 'two mixes' released is also, regardless of my personal taste.

 

[SuicideSquid]

Wow.

It's his best record in ages. It's almost as good as Melty Face Gabriel!

It's his only record in ages!


Seriously though PG has the most consistent, and consistently rewarding, catalog of any major artist, IMO. The only episode I'd rank lower than an 8/10 is 2/Scratch, and it's still a 7.

The best thing I can say about I/O is it sits comfortably alongside his other albums. It's every bit as good as anything else he's ever done.

 

[DMill]

The best thing I can say about I/O is it sits comfortably alongside his other albums. It's every bit as good as anything else he's ever done.

I stand by my previous comment. But I agree it’s a lovely album.

 

[SuicideSquid]

If I recall my above-mentioned Genesis history lesson correctly, my dad drew the line roughly where Steve Hackett left. And there the distaste for Collins began perhaps, passed down from father to ...

Anyway, enough of that. delivering the first digital multi-channel release is something interesting, and this 'two mixes' released is also, regardless of my personal taste.

I find this conversation *incredibly* tedious, but the real change in Genesis's sound came around Duke.

From Trespass to Duke, the band worked basically the same way - one or two members would write most of a song, bring it to the group, and the group would do the final bits and pieces and the arrangement collectively. Peter and Tony worked as a pair, Mike and Ant worked as a pair, then Ant left and Mike and Steve often worked as a pair, with Phil adding his bits and pieces here or there.

When Peter left they kept working this way, and the same after Steve left with the "And Then There Were Three..." album. However, on Duke, all three members of the band had recently done solo albums and only had a couple of songs each to contribute. Phil was also writing more, where he'd mostly contributed just on the arrangement side in the past. So each member brought two songs to the album, and then the rest of the album was developed out of improvised jams.

From Abacab onward, almost all the material was developed out of improvised jamming, with Mike, Phil, and Tony generally using the songs they wrote by themselves on their solo projects. This way of working gave Genesis a sonic identity distinct from their solo projects and gave them a reason to keep working together when they all had highly-successful careers outside of Genesis.

There's amazing music to be found across all of Genesis's eras. The "they sucked after Peter left" crowd are a bunch of grumpy old bastards who can't get over the fact that Peter left the band fifty years ago.

 

[SuicideSquid]

I stand by my previous comment. But I agree it’s a lovely album.

I agree about the bright/dark side mix thing. It's more annoying than anything else. But the music itself is stellar. I had the privilege of seeing Peter perform in Vancouver in October and he still sounds incredible live. Beautiful show.

[edit] the two mixes thing might make more sense if the mixes were more distinct. But overall they're mostly pretty close, minor tweaks and differences here or there. If one version was stripped way back to just lead vocals, drums, and piano/guitar, and the other was maximalist with all the horns and strings and layered vocals, for example, it would make more sense.

 

[DWPress]

The Genesis that Phil Collins played brilliantly with (and eventually fronted) in the 1970s was hardly the Genesis that he fronted in the 1980s.

The former should not be tarred with the lameness of the latter.

Yeah, I was there listening through all the iterations. Just personal pref and bad associations on my part. Probably worth checking out again 30-40 years later as my tastes have evolved a bit though tolerance has lowered.

Back OT, listening to the "bright" mix now. Still enjoying it and relieved not to be shocked by monkeys.

 

[Axo1989]

The whole things seems like a bit of a gimmick from someone who really should be above it. Peter should have picked the mix he wants for His music. Especially coming from someone as well versed in production. I’m a pretty big fan of his and he’s always been experimental, but this feels a bit wishy washy to me.

Maybe, but I don't agree entirely. One of my somewhat recent (2020) favourites is Arca's Riquiquí;Bronze-Instances(1-100) which is as you may guess, one hundred versions of the same track. I guess that crosses over from indecisive to obsessive? Re-arranging the material as well as the mix though, so a somewhat different thing going on.

 

[krabapple]

If I recall my above-mentioned Genesis history lesson correctly, my dad drew the line roughly where Steve Hackett left. And there the distaste for Collins began perhaps, passed down from father to ...

The two studio albums after he left are OK -- the second one (Duke) being fresher-sounding than the one before it (And Then There Were Three). After that...fuhgeddaboudit.

Anyway, enough of that. delivering the first digital multi-channel release is something interesting, and this 'two mixes' released is also, regardless of my personal taste.

I see people here complaining about the dynamic range of both stereo mixes being too...modern. It's not uncommon for a surround remix to have less compression than the stereo mix. If that holds for i/o, one could make less enloudened downmix to stereo.

 

[Prana Ferox]

I find this conversation *incredibly* tedious, but the real change in Genesis's sound came around Duke.

From Trespass to Duke, the band worked basically the same way - one or two members would write most of a song, bring it to the group, and the group would do the final bits and pieces and the arrangement collectively. Peter and Tony worked as a pair, Mike and Ant worked as a pair, then Ant left and Mike and Steve often worked as a pair, with Phil adding his bits and pieces here or there.

When Peter left they kept working this way, and the same after Steve left with the "And Then There Were Three..." album. However, on Duke, all three members of the band had recently done solo albums and only had a couple of songs each to contribute. Phil was also writing more, where he'd mostly contributed just on the arrangement side in the past. So each member brought two songs to the album, and then the rest of the album was developed out of improvised jams.

From Abacab onward, almost all the material was developed out of improvised jamming, with Mike, Phil, and Tony generally using the songs they wrote by themselves on their solo projects. This way of working gave Genesis a sonic identity distinct from their solo projects and gave them a reason to keep working together when they all had highly-successful careers outside of Genesis.

There's amazing music to be found across all of Genesis's eras. The "they sucked after Peter left" crowd are a bunch of grumpy old bastards who can't get over the fact that Peter left the band fifty years ago.

People also forget that as you work your way into the '80s the market really dried up for dressing up like a wizard and playing 20 minute organ solos

 

[krabapple]

The whole things seems like a bit of a gimmick from someone who really should be above it. Peter should have picked the mix he wants for His music. Especially coming from someone as well versed in production. I’m a pretty big fan of his and he’s always been experimental, but this feels a bit wishy washy to me.

EDIT: I‘ll add that sometimes it’s fun to hear the takes the artist didn’t pick like Kate Bush Directors Cut album. But those songs were already iconic to her fans and it makes it an interesting to Hear a new take based on her position on the songs now. This is all completely new material.

My experience with 'reconsiderations' by artists is that they almost never sound better to me than their originals. Case in point, Kate has jettisoned the original mix of 'Big Sky' on her current approved version of Hounds of Love and used an inferior mix instead.

 

[krabapple]

People also forget that as you work your way into the '80s the market really dried up for dressing up like a wizard and playing 20 minute organ solos

Not something Genesis is ever did, really. Their dress-up stage (really just Peter dressing up, though never as a wizard*) ended when he left. And he toned it down a lot after he left , though he was still wearing facepaint and stage uniforms well into the 80s. This from 1983:

*it's funny how many non-fans lazily associate prog rock with wizards and Tolkein. Genesis was all about classical mythology and sci fi and British humor; Yes went through a phase of capes but modernized in 1977, and lyrically to the extent anyone could decipher Jon Anderson's word salad, were more apt to reference sci-fi, nary a Tolkein or wizard reference that I can recall; pioneer capester Rick Wakeman in his solo years back then once donned a wizard's cap and made a duff album about King Arthur and an absurd concert on ice to promote it; ELP, nope; King Crimson, nope; Tull adopted faux Olde English styles for awhile but wasn't Arthurian or Tolkienesque at all. Rush, well, they were silly second-string proggers one's younger siblings were into: late to the party with their flouncy kimonos and Neil Peart's embarrassing Tolkein fixation. Honestly, the band who made the most famous Tolkein refs, by far, was....Led Zeppelin. In fact wizardry and dragons and high fantasy were far, far more prevalent in the heavy metal genre. See: Rainbow and the inimitable Ronnie James Dio.

 

[ryanosaur]

Rush, well, they were silly second-string proggers one's younger siblings were into: late to the party with their flouncy kimonos and Neil Peart's embarrassing Tolkein fixation.

LMFAO
Everybody kept telling me I should LOVE Rush.
I have yet to hear a song I didn't mind hearing a second time.

 

[SuicideSquid]

People also forget that as you work your way into the '80s the market really dried up for dressing up like a wizard and playing 20 minute organ solos

And yet, Marillion arrived on the scene making basically exactly the music Genesis had been making in the 70s and were hugely successful.

Not as successful as 80s Genesis, of course, but still had millions of sales and multiple hit singles. And Genesis still had multiple 10+ minute prog epics even in their most "commercial" period - Home by the Sea, Domino, Driving the Last Spike, Fading Lights.

Genesis weren't chasing trends, they were following their muse, which just happened to align, for a few years, with the trends.

 

[krabapple]

It's his only record in ages!


Seriously though PG has the most consistent, and consistently rewarding, catalog of any major artist, IMO. The only episode I'd rank lower than an 8/10 is 2/Scratch, and it's still a 7.

Whereas Scratch (PG II) is my favorite. (A minority view)

That Robert Fripp lead at the end of 'White Shadow' still sends chills up me spine.

 

[ryanosaur]

Almost through the full Dark Side.
Of course I would choose that to listen to first after reading the thread... and beside, two old FB quizzes said I WAS Darth Vader.
So Dark Side it is.


Not bad. There are some bones I could pick. But a solid effort. Some of it was very enjoyable and would dig deeper. At some point I'll try to differentiate between the Jedi and Sith versions.

Agree with @Chrispy , the horns sounded almost artificial, maybe overproduced or poorly recorded which wouldn't really make sense, but they lacked the exciting quality I would expect. *shrugs Oh well.

 

[WillBrink]

And yet, Marillion arrived on the scene making basically exactly the music Genesis had been making in the 70s and were hugely successful.

Not as successful as 80s Genesis, of course, but still had millions of sales and multiple hit singles. And Genesis still had multiple 10+ minute prog epics even in their most "commercial" period - Home by the Sea, Domino, Driving the Last Spike, Fading Lights.

Genesis weren't chasing trends, they were following their muse, which just happened to align, for a few years, with the trends.

Great song from a great LP.

 

[krabapple]

And if 20 minute keyboard solos bother you.....stay far away from the catalog of that hack Keith Jarrett.