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Rating: "Ovo" (part II and last), the story of humanity...
I arrived in Debaser with an album, "Ovo", but what I intended was not a review, rather a personal opinion on the expressive capacity of music and on what I spontaneously felt at that moment ... that's just how I am.
For Peter, eight years of silence before arriving at "Ovo", in general terms, it is not one of his masterpieces, but to me, it's worth 7 stars.
"Downside up", not to mention "Make Tomorrow", "Low Light" 6.37 minutes of deep and total regret and extraordinary beauty, "Father Son" an intense testimony of the pain for the loss of an irreplaceable part of your life, and in "White Ashes" where he duets with Omi Hall, as he once did with Kate Bush, and for all the other tracks, making differences is quite difficult.
All tracks are composed and produced by him, but besides himself, as he has done in the past, he employs great international composers who have landed at his Real World and artists like Richie Havens, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins, Neneh Cherry, Paul Buchanan, singer of the Blue Nile, Jocelyn Pook, Iarla O'Lionard, the Ney flute master, the Egyptian singer Kudsi Erguner, and his longtime companions Tony Levin, Manu Katche, David Rhodes, Shankar, Steve Gadd.
An album full of research and global sound (nothing new for Peter) but always evolving with time without ever contradicting himself, is a work rich in research and rhythms, with new ideas full of Afro, Celtic, techno-rock melodies and more.
It's not an album that's easy to accept and understand on the first listen, you have to listen to it with great concentration, tranquility, and absolute silence to perceive the smallest details and to incorporate the thousand reverse facets, thus being able to appreciate its most complete beauty.
Ovo, the culmination of the evolution of three generations, the present, past, and future, technology and nature that must and try to find the capability of union (practically a dream, nowadays).
Ovo is a rich essence of moods composing a universal puzzle calibrated with futuristic progression, a lover of the lost simplicity of simple prehistory.
It was born from a project developed for the Millennium Dome and its magical world, in its own image and likeness.
Extraordinary explosive beauty, a complete shake of the heart, never falls into banality, he is a genius artist with a capital A, able in an Album to circumscribe the essential of what generally gets lost along the way, I would say he is of a total polyhedral intelligence.
He loves communication or transmission, through direct contact with the audience, I remember when at the concert of "So" as always, he turned around and threw himself onto the audience to be carried on dozens of hands like human rollers, but even the concert of "Up" at the Forum in Milan was enchanting; as always, he was a truly unleashed stage animal, with warm blood, and an oceanic soul.
And as I already wrote in the review of Disintegration the triangle of Eden, in my personal opinion, where nothing is so profound, consists of Peter Gabriel with "Passion", the Album of my life, The Cure with "Faith", the song of my life, David Sylvian, the expressionist icon of love, as I see it in my life.
The three are circumscribed in the total essence of all that can exist in the soul, something that differentiates them from other Greats of Music.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
05 Father, Son (04:56)
Father, son
Locked as one
In this empty room
Spine against spine
Yours against mine
Till the warmth comes through
Remember the breakwaters down by the waves
I first found my courage
Knowing daddy could save
I could hold back the tide
With my dad by my side
Dogs, plows and bows
We move through each pose
Struggling in our seperate ways
Mantras and hymns
Unfolding limbs
Looking for release through the pain
And the yogi's eyes are open
Looking up above
He too is dreaming of his daddy's love
With his dad by his side
Got his dad by his side
Can you recall
How you took me to school
We couldn't talk much at all
It's been so many years
And now these tears
Guess I'm still your child
Out on the moors
We take a pause
See how far we have come
You're moving quite slow
How far can we go
Father and son
With my dad by my side
With my dad by my side
Got my dad by my side
With me
06 The Tower That Ate People (04:49)
There’s a bump in the basement
There’s a knocking on the wall
In the pumping of the pistons
I swear I heard you call
There’s a bump in the basement
There’s a hole in the floor
There’s a guard in the garden
Locking up the door
There’s a rumble in the floorboards
No shutting out the sound
And the workers down below me
Digging underground
Feel the building all around me
Like a wrap of armoured skin
But the more we are protected
The more we’re trapped within
Tell it like it is
Till there’s no misunderstanding
When you strip it right back
Man feed machine
Machine feed man
Tell it like it is (And on this land, we cast our fortune)
Till there’s no misunderstanding (And on this ground, we make our home)
You make up what you like
Man feed machine
Machine feed man
…
Brick by brick by brick by brick we’re building
Brick by brick by brick by brick we’re building
Brick by brick by brick by brick we’re building
Brick by brick by brick by brick we’re building
Brick by brick by brick by brick we’re building
Brick by brick by brick by brick we’re building
12 Make Tomorrow (10:18)
Put on the dress in which you were married
Pull down the veil til your eyes are hid
Can you remember where we both came from
Let us do as we did
Look at tomorrow today
Making tomorrow today
Making tomorrow today
Making tomorrow today
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow today
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow today
Put back the photo under your window
Put down the phone that you hold in your hand
Put away these things that stand in between us
Let us be what we can
When it seems
Hopeless
When it seems
Hopeless
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow today
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow today
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow today
What better measure of what you were doing here
Then what you can leave behind
All the children of your children's children
Do you ever think what they're going to find
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Where the sacred meet the scared
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
Where the dreamer's dream is dared
In each of us
A dream can burn like the sun
Let's try it all one more time
To get this lesson learned
Sitting up in a spaceship
Looking down at the earth
You wonder what they all struggling for
What's it all really worth
Making tomorrow today
Making tomorrow today
Make tomorrow
Make tomorrow
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By Mariaelena
Peter Gabriel is an extraordinary angel with multiple abilities, who manages to fulfill his role of communication between earth and the infinite, between man and God.
He gives sensitive people the opportunity to reconnect with their deceased loved ones.
