10 years in the making and an introspective, quieter sub-text to 1992’s dirt digging US album, UP is a return to the private porthole of Gabriel’s often remarkable imagination. And without hogweed to spoil proceedings – giant or otherwise – the album is a chiming declaration of positive intent.
Gabriel describes the album as ‘more vertical than horizontal’ a ‘bookend record’ looking at the beginning and the end of a life as opposed to the middle, reflecting on the life that grows out of death and recognizing patterns and forces at work above and beneath our normal focus.
Drawn against a backdrop of the influences of the moon and water both the album and the prospective tour design represent the magnetic pull and retraction of natural forces – the ebb and flow of consciousness – the residual activity of ghosts, the re-emergence of hope and the birth of the new.
The meticulous, African rhythms are still evident but on this occasion Gabriel has managed to tone down his sometimes indulgent preoccupation with gadgets and technically enhanced soundscapes and has whittled a far more pointed album for it: in fact it is the child of that same gorgeous simplicity that whittled out the same warped, eerie innocence of classics like ‘Here Comes The Flood’, ‘Family Snapshot’ and ‘Me and My Teddy Bear.’
But there’s more than expert whittling to this record – much more. ‘Darkness’ and ‘Growing Up’ are webs of tangled beauty: intricate, difficult to navigate but breathlessly compelling, whilst standout tracks like ‘My Head Sounds Like That’ are simply as good as anything Gabriel has ever produced so far.
In audio, the term ‘signal to noise ratio is used to signify how strong a sound signal is in relation to the background noise. Gabriel again provides a focus – a mindful signal – a ratio by which to measure the noise and the mindless static that obscures those more mindful voices beneath it.
Its timely, its’ welcome. It’s relevant.