Peter Gabriel's I/O finally dropped and it is a good morning

December 1, 2023 2:04 PM

"Peter Gabriel's I/O finally dropped and it is a good morning for some new music." - theBigRedKittyPurrs from earlier today. It's a complicated release [linktree] with three different mixes of the album [Peter explains, 3m] including one immersive audio mix. But I'm here to bring you the music videos from i/o. The first to be released was the disturbing AI hallucination The Court (Dark-Side Mix) (Oranguerillatan Official Video).

Second to be released was Panopticom (Dark-Side Mix) (Vnderworld Official Video) another AI project. Followed by Aardman Animations' Love Can Heal (Bright-Side Mix) (Official Music Video). [Ed note: I have no idea if this is AI generated or hand-created.]

Peter complicates things when he releases The Court (Dark-Side Mix) (Junie Lau Official Video), another AI video that plays with his own likeness. Followed quickly by AI generated Panopticom (Dark-Side Mix) (Lamson Official Version). Rounding out the double trilogy of first videos is Love Can Heal (Dark-Side Mix) (Official Music Video), again by Aardman.


Next up is the title track, i/o (Bright-Side Mix) (Official Music Video).

I have no idea how many videos he's going to release from this album. He's been paying artists for custom art works for each track, like he as for many of his previous releases. And with this many videos so far, it's possible we'll get a lot more.

The use of AI for the videos should be addressed -- all the videos selected are contest winners using Stable Diffusion, Peter very obviously wanted to do this. A good part of the messaging around this album that that technology can and should be a unifying force for good on the planet. That said, there are videos that look like AI that I'm not sure ARE made by AI, just mimicking their qualities. Which is in and of itself an interesting concept.

Also, do people who have never done psychedelic drugs understand how nearly precisely psychedelic some of these AI videos are?

posted by hippybear (18 comments total)

Was at the show in Montreal and it was amazing.
posted by zouhair at 2:08 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you want to listen to this album properly you must wear a jacket.
posted by interogative mood at 2:18 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I listened to it this morning as I was doing other things and some of it sounded pretty good. A lot of albums have come out over the last couple of months so I'm finding it hard to give everything as much listening time as they deserve, but that's a good problem to have.

I've never done psychedelic drugs so I'll watch the videos and consider them educational!
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:47 PM on December 1, 2023

Worth noting that the competition for the video ended in April of this year. Haven't checked it in a while, but https://deforum.art/ is what I was using to make similar videos.

Making keyframes for the prompts and camera movements was very primitive back then, mad props for the winner.
posted by daHIFI at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2023

Seattle show was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. All of the new tracks from this album were fantastic, as well.
posted by milnak at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2023

Oh wow, I am honored to be quoted.

I saw him in at the show in Pittsburgh and was mesmerized. He made a point of crediting the artist/artists who designed the background imagery for each piece. I really need to check out the videos.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 3:24 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I saw him in SF recently. He cited the artists involved in the tour’s art every. Single. Time. Every song. Everyone got credit always, to the point where it cost the show some momentum here and there. I certainly didn’t care; I had wanted to see him live for 20 years.

I was expecting the staid dignity of an Oxbridge Don, and there’s definitely some of that, but he was almost bursting with excitement to talk about the art people were making in collaboration with his music.

Absolute class.
posted by hototogisu at 3:58 PM on December 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

The show at the Forum in Los Angeles was fantastic -- and even had a minor hiccup when Peter got one of the singing parts wrong during "Don't Give Up" which he moved on from with the aplomb of a decades-long professional.

I think the album is great, and like nearly all of his albums will reward many very careful listens, but it lives somewhere on a metaphorical plane with Third by Portishead. It sounds like a great follow-up to the previous album and sounds like it could have (maybe should have) come out only a handful of years later, not one or two decades later.
posted by tclark at 5:04 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, do people who have never done psychedelic drugs understand how nearly precisely psychedelic some of these AI videos are?

You've hit on something quite important here about perception and consciousness that I am not skilled enough to fully unpack. But the basic idea, that if we tweak our perceptions just a bit we can get trippy psychedellic imagery, and that this is also what AI can often parse when riffiing on imagery, is very compelling.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:21 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I saw him in SF recently. He cited the artists involved in the tour’s art every. Single. Time. Every song.

I saw the tour too, and he even thanked the roadies and showed a few of them on the screen. That's the first time I ever remember an artist explicitly thanking the road crew. I know it's a concert, but Gabriel came across as a genuinely humble and self-effacing guy who really just wanted a focus kept on the music, art, and other artists. It was really refreshing, and of course we got to hear Sledgehammer and Solsbury Hill too. He still sounds great, by the way.
posted by fortitude25 at 6:37 PM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

I read this as Peter Gabriel's IQ dropped and I thought, it's about time. He's always been kind of a smarty pants.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:10 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I guess I'm just going to have to start going outside now to find out when it's a full moon.
posted by fairmettle at 8:14 PM on December 1, 2023

We saw him in Dallas. It was a bucket list show and worth every bit of trouble and pain (I was getting sick and feeling terrible) I dealt with to see it. Excited to listen to the album in one go now!
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:55 PM on December 1, 2023

I don't think I've heard anything he's done since, really, the So era. I'd have to say this isn't a lesser effort at all; it's pretty terrific. Thanks for clueing me in.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:18 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've never done psychedelic drugs so I'll watch the videos and consider them educational!

I'm pretty sure you'd find Mr. Gabriel is with you in this regard unless he's made some lifestyle changes in the past decade or two. I do remember reading an interview with him (the 1980s probably) where he went into depth on one of the very few times he got high on anything. It was hashish and we went for a walk in the nearby countryside and got quite confused, didn't like it at all.

The Genesis song Supper's Ready is about many things but at it's root is an evening when his wife had over-imbibed in psychedelics and was having a genuinely horrific experience.
posted by philip-random at 9:44 AM on December 2, 2023

The visual creativity and complexity is mind blowing. I hope at least one is Oscar-eligible and submitted.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:04 PM on December 2, 2023

Toronto show was jaw dropping. My sole fanfare thread to date to discuss it, if you were there.
posted by hearthpig at 6:31 AM on December 3, 2023

This has been a tough album for me, because I really don't like it, but other people seem to, and so I keep dipping back in to see what I might be missing. But I think, for me, this is an album by Peter Gabriel that isn't, y'know, a Peter Gabriel album.

Where are the pop sensibility, the experimenting with new sounds, the raw anguish and the sense of humor? Where's the life? The idea of each song having a light and dark version sounds interesting, but doesn't really go anywhere; the versions simply don't have anything to say to one another, they're not in conflict or contrast, they're just slightly different ways of playing the same dull song.

(I erased a bunch more stuff--you can't follow someone for decades, having their music be a central part of your life, without finding you have a LOT to say about them...but, y'know, nobody needs a lecture on why the thing they like isn't any good. So I'll just stop here.)
posted by mittens at 3:38 PM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]