Peter Gabriel has revealed his new single owes a debt to Skrillex.
The music legend is on the march once more, sharing new material to align with phases of the solar calendar. It’s a year-long endeavour, too, with the results compiled on incoming album ‘I/O’.
New single ‘This Is Home’ is out now, and in a note Peter Gabriel has revealed an unlikely collaborator – EDM hero Skrillex.
Meeting up at Gabriel’s home studio, Skrillex inputted fresh ideas towards the track – which the British musician then steered into more familiar climes. “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,” said Gabriel. “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.”
Out now, ‘This Is Home’ is available as a Dark-Side Mix by Tchad Blake, while the song also features the Swedish voice choir Orphei Drängar and an orchestral arrangement from John Metcalfe.
Curiously, amid this abstraction there is also a classic pop feel – thanks to an oblique Motown reference. Peter Gabriel said: “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. The groove I like a lot, Tony Levin does a great bass part there.”
He added in a note: “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.”
Check it out below.