I/O (album)

I/O is the working title of a planned studio album by British musician Peter Gabriel. It was initially intended to be the follow-up to his 2002 album, Up. It has continued to be developed through 2022, and is currently being recorded. It is currently set for a 2022 release.
History
The history of I/O is closely connected to that of making the album Up, which notoriously took Gabriel almost 10 years to complete, with some of the songs being first recorded during the Us recording sessions. After the Secret World Live World Tour, Gabriel spent much of the 1990s writing new material, and in interviews circa 2002 he said that four albums would come out of this period of writing (he reportedly wrote and prepared over 130 songs during this time, of which ten were selected for Up).
Originally the album was set to be released in 2004, or 18 months apart from Up, yet extensive touring (the Growing Up Live and Still Growing Up Live tours in 2003 and 2004) pushed the release far ahead.
According to a Rolling Stone magazine article from 2005, Gabriel had 150 songs in various stages, which he had been working on with engineer Richard Chappell and percussionist Ged Lynch. He also talked about the possibility of completing the songs, arranging them for a band, touring first and only then recording and releasing them.
In 2013, Gabriel uploaded pictures of himself and Ged Lynch in the recording studio. While a release date has not been announced, Gabriel intended to put more focus on this project before committing to anything else. In a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, he mentioned that he had 20 songs in the works. "I really need to stop doing other things and lock myself away for a while. It probably hasn’t moved nearly as much as I would have liked to in the intervening time. The songs are still there, but some of them I would redo now and there’s some new stuff as well. I keep arranging until the cows come home, which is sometimes a weakness.."
In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Gabriel revealed he was working on "some happy stuff" because "it’s very easy for me to fall into some moody stuff." He also spoke about how he had been writing some songs over the last two weeks that might end up on an "organic dance record". When asked if that was for I/O, he said he wasn't sure it will still be called I/O, noting there are already multiple albums with similar names. He also released a Facebook post in 2014 revealing he was working on a song called "Here Comes Love".
Throughout 2015 and 2016, Gabriel continued to post many Facebook and Instagram posts about working on the new album alongside Ged Lynch and Richard Chappell. He also revealed another song with the working title of "In and Out". In 2019, he released a new single titled "This Is Party Man".
In March 2020, Gabriel wrote back to an article in The Times and revealed he was working on a song about aging, called "So Much".
Gabriel was interviewed by UNCUT magazine for their July 2020 issue. In this interview, Gabriel was asked about new music to which he said "I'm excited by what is being cooked at the moment - I have been slowed down quite a lot by lockdown, we've not been able to have Dickie my engineer here - but I have enough songs that I like to make a record I'm proud of." Gabriel was then directly asked, "So we can expect a new studio album anytime soon?" to which he replied, "It would depend on how you define 'soon', but the answer is yes!"
In October 2021, Genesis News reported that Gabriel, in an interview with Italian news magazine SPECCHIO, said that he and his band had recently worked on 17 songs in the studio for 10 days. Later in the month, Peter was asked about his new album during an event in Milan, Italy, while promoting his daughter Anna's book. He mentioned that he had been in the studio two weeks ago, recording 23 songs alongside Manu Katche and his "usual" band. Soon after, Gabriel posted to his Facebook and Instagram a series of photos containing himself, Katche, bassist Tony Levin, and guitarist David Rhodes in the recording studio at Real World Studios.
In June 2022, Katché told the French magazine L'Illustré that the album was nearly complete and would be released later that year, pending an official announcement.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu