PETER GABRIEL – Shares New Single “One By One” Out Now – From Forthcoming Album ‘o\i’
By PETER GABRIEL
Shares New Single
“One By One”
“One by One” is the newest song to be released from the forthcoming Peter Gabriel album ‘o\i’, out today on the full moon.
“One by One” is written and produced by Peter Gabriel and the first mix to be released is the Bright-Side Mix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent.
“This is another song that comes out of the brain show that I am working on and the character has been effectively torn apart and is trying to reassemble himself one piece at a time. I needed a character for the story and I’d always wanted to do a little more with Mozo, who I had introduced many years back, and I thought, well, let’s give him another blast here. He’s been brought back from the dead.
“What was interesting for me about Mozo was that he was not fully of the world and not fully outside it. For the original second album narrative he was found on this waste tip and there was a reference to alchemy, and how you only really get the opportunity to create gold out of the lowest material; shit. In Japanese culture they also have kintsugi (kin: gold, tsugi: repair) where a broken cup is repaired with gold or precious metals and the repaired cup with its faults showing ends up more valuable than the original. It’s a beautiful symbol for humanity, because we’re remarkably easy to break and trying to reassemble self, psyche and sanity, is really the journey of the song.
“There are two or three story songs on the record and I actually like the length of time they occupy and I like the fact that you have to stay in it for the ride to understand the story. It’s like when you arrive in some hut in the woods and it takes a while just to settle in and get yourself tuned-in to the pace of that place. I wanted a bit of that in the song. If people are on for the full ride, they’re going to take it through to the end. It’s a long journey, but I think its place in the show, which is percolating in my head, it’ll be towards the end, if not the end.”
The cover art for “One by One” is called ‘Pieces’ by Canadian sculptor David Altmejd. Gabriel had discovered David Altmejd’s work through his 2022 piece, 9x9x9 and then asked him to create a new work in response to the music.
“One of the things I loved about what David does is that he seems to get these images and ideas and then cuts them up and reassembles them. Almost like moments of time or maybe like an old-fashioned flick book where you get just an incremental movement from one image to the other. It looked like David had a similar direction in that he’s taking the same thing and cutting it up and reassembling it. That worked perfectly for this song and I was excited that David was happy to be part of this project.”
“One by One evokes a kind of spiritual evolution by piecing together the broken parts of oneself,” adds David Altmejd. “This resonates deeply with me because I understand my sculptures as being made the same way. They start by forming themselves in matter, then they are destroyed, and finally reassembled in a way that makes them transcend materiality.”
The Dark-Side Mix of “One by One” will be released on the next new moon.
Further details on the release plans for the full album will follow.
PGS42
One by One
Written by Peter Gabriel
Published by Real World Music Ltd / Sony Music Publishing
Real World
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