Peter Gabriel’s New Song ‘This is Home’ Inspired By Motown and…Skrillex?
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There’s still no release date for Peter Gabriel’s new LP I/O, which he’s been working on for over two decades, but he’s been releasing individual tracks from it over the past few months, tied to the moon cycle. The newest one is “This Is Home,” a love song inspired by some of Gabriel’s favorite music of his youth.
“It began with inspiration from some of the great Tamla Motown rhythm sections so we’re trying to recreate that in a modern way, complete with the tambourine and handclaps,” Gabriel said in statement. “I did an unusual thing for me in that I tried doing this low voice / high voice thing, so you get this almost conversational voice at the beginning and the second part is a higher, more emotional voice. I thought that would be both intimate and emotive to put the two side by side.”
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Ideas for “This Is Home” also came from a much more unlikely source: Dubstep producer Skrillex. “I’d had a call from Skrillex, who’s a very talented musician, and I thought it would be interesting to see what he had in mind,” Gabriel said, “so he came to my home studio and we sat down and talked and tried to evolve bits and pieces and it was mainly for this song.”
He continues: “He was trying to encourage me to write a song about staying up all night in a night club and that sort of thing, but that’s not really my life so I made it more about family and home and I like it. Though we took the song in this other direction it was an interesting experience nonetheless, and I think it is good for me to be taken outside my normal comfort zone sometimes.”
“This is Home” is one of eleven new songs that Gabriel plays in his ongoing North American arena tour, which wraps up October 21 in Houston. That’s an astonishing number of untested tunes to present to audiences accustomed to greatest hits sets, but it’s gone over remarkably well every night so far. At a recent Madison Square Garden show, the crowd sat in hushed, captivated silence for “Four Kinds of Horses,” “Olive Tree,” “The Court,” “And Still,” and other I/O tunes.
The unusual move of touring an album before it comes out is doing nothing but building excitement for I/O. And the show is still packed with old favorites like “Sledgehammer,” “Red Rain,” “Big Time,” “Solsbury Hill.” It wraps up with a jubilant “In Your Eyes” and an emotional “Biko.” Let’s hope he comes back for an encore run once the world finally gets the hear I/O. Maybe this time, he could bring his new buddy Skrillex for one of the craziest double bills in music history.
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