Posts by Ngankarrparni

Quote from dirtdigger

The only thing that I'm missing from the studio version is Ayanna's "To be brave enough to listen..." that sort of responds to Peter's verses. I'm sure it'll be on the official live version, but I would have loved to hear on the studio version as well.

If you have access to the In-Side mixes, that "To be brave enough to listen" response bit can be heard at around 6:15! Curiously enough, both the Bright-Side and Dark-Side mixes omit this, so I was beyond happy when I listened to the In-Side mix and it was finally there, being one of those small yet larger-than-life moments for me.

Looking at the credits for the song, the singer in question might be Phumla Nkhumeleni (credited with "female ululating and chanting") or Phello Jiyane (credited as choir solo soprano).

A thank you message from PG for being #1 in the UK.

Do you have a Blu-ray drive or player with which to open it? (The third disc is a Blu-ray disc and not a CD.)

What a special feeling to finally see it come together as a whole. I’ve listened to the album nonstop from start to finish the whole day whenever I’ve had the chance, and it's a privilege to be able to do so from now. In my books it’s going to go down as one of his best work. Varied but cohesive. Each song is so impeccably written, performed, produced, engineered, etc. it boggles the mind, but also speaks of the care PG still puts into his music.

While I have listened to the songs on a playlist as if the album were out, now that the whole thing is finally finished, it’s easier to see how each song fits so well in their place. The flow is amazing. I’ve loved ”Panopticom” from the start, and now hearing it and ”The Court” opening the album, knowing it’ll end with the triumph of ”Live and Let Live”, adds to those songs, too. The slower songs fit so well in their place, too. ”So Much” is an example of a song that benefits so much from being sandwiched between ”Road to Joy” and ”Olive Tree”. It’s remarkable how different the song feels now, instead of when I listened to it it isolation: the energy of ”Road to Joy” still lingers, and when one finally settles into the contemplative mood of ”So Much”, we get to ”Olive Tree”.

And yeah, ”Live and Let Live” is just perfection. In the In-Side mixes there'a a nice moment when the bird song we first hear in "i/o" gets repeated at the very end of "Live and Let Live".

I’ve been subscribing to Bandcamp, so got the digital copy from there, and I’m an Apple Music subscriber, too, so that’s how I’ve been listening to it so far this year. I don’t have a turntable, so I did order the CD+Blu-ray combo mainly because I just wanted to, having bought the previous albums as well in a physical format. And it’s a nice bonus to have the Atmos tracks on a physical disc.

Happy listening, everyone!

Quote from FeelItComing

This time I won't wait for Backdrifter to support me. For the umpteenth time, there are markets outside Europe & the US. In my wildest dreams, if a tour occurs, surely it's going to be somewhere he hasn't been since.... oh,, I don't know... 1994. To quote Aerosmith, dream on.

A person living in Spain is completely entitled to hope that he's going tour Spain/Europe again. You don't have to take it as a personal slight every time.

Here I am listening to a song I've only occasionally listened to after hearing for the first time in April. I remember Megan Rooney's powerful art from that concert, and this very brooding, atmospheric and complex song that seemed to have it all when it comes to PG as a musician and storyteller of personal stories (a kind of darker and out there version of Father, Son), and how well a song like this would have fitted Up. For this reason, if — in a parallel universe somewhere — PG did release i/o in 2004, this is what I'd imagine it might have sounded like, with songs like Animal Nation and Baby Man as counterpoints.

Anyway. I also remember thinking how gorgeous this will sound on the album, and how difficult a song it is to perform live due to the very subliminal things going on in the song. This is partly why I've abstained from the fan recordings (whereas Live and Let Live I've been listening a lot from that Berlin show that's been on YouTube for months now) of this particular song. So in a way it feels like this is indeed a new song for me, because I've been least familiar with it.

The production does not disappoint. I'm in awe of how great it sounds, there are so many things to pick up and concentrate on. It’s bleak and with the occasional hopeful release, very layered, quite close to So Much, obviously, but also Four Kinds of Horses in terms of production, probably mostly because of that machine drum track.

A long, complex, majestic piece of writing and music production.

Quote from The Hogweed

A bit strange he decided to play "What lies ahead" again towards the end of the tour. I thought he dropped that one early on because he knew it won't be on the album ...

I think it makes sense to reintroduce it now at the end of the tour.

Clearly a song he wanted to play live, he introduced it early and then dropped it since it would have been strange to have a song to be an integral part of the setlist and not have that song appear on the new album. But towards the end of the tour, what with people already largely familiar with the i/o material, he could reintroduce it without stealing any thunder from the new album and songs that are actually part of it. Had he suddenly dropped a completely unheard of song like Put the Bucket Down people would be going crazy right now and talk about it instead of i/o.

I think of it as a gentle reminder — with just the right amount of emphasis — that there indeed is more to come after i/o. I'd imagine this is also his way of saying that we don't have to worry it's going to end up in complete obscurity even if it's not on this album.

Quote from Phil Morris

There's a poster in the box set.

As I mentioned, I'm getting that CD/Blu-ray edition — I don't have a record player, and buying the boxset with 4 LPs just to get a poster would be a bit too much.

Hurrah!

Many editions to choose from, which is no surprise. My music collection and listening habits have been digital for so long that even by the time of New Blood and Live Blood I didn't really buy CDs anymore — yet had to get those in a physical format, of course. I think I'll go with the edition with the Blu-ray, even though I don't see myself parting ways with Apple Music anytime soon.

But some sort of poster of the cover would be nice to frame and hang on the wall...

Quote from The Hogweed

Didn’t expect that. But nice fans get some setlist variations towards the end of the tour. I wonder if there will be more shows in 2924 or not …

I see you share my innate cautiousness about PG doing anything sooner rather than later!

What Lies Ahead is such a gorgeous song. To think that he's releasing his first album of new material in over 20 years and a song like this doesn't make the cut! (I know it would have dipped the scales had it been included, and it might have even come down to decision between two sparse songs like So Much and this one.)

Happy to know he's releasing more music sooner rather than later (I know he's said 2024 but come on, Peter, seeing is believing!). Who knows, hopefully we're getting more surprises like this during the last few gigs of the tour now that the LA and Palm Springs shows are in the can. Still three shows to go.

Also immensely happy that he's now filmed two shows, and while I never doubted a live Blu-ray — considering his track record with live footage and the extravagant visual makeup of this tour — it's still something to not worry about anymore. It will be released whenever it will be released. I'm quite confident he'll give us an Atmos track, but hopefully this will be in 4K, as well. Anyway, I've already warned my family that whenever it's released, we're going to be watching it on a daily basis then. It would be a cherry on top if they included The Tower there, even as an extra.

Speaking of an upcoming Blu-ray release, I'm not entirely sure why some people think this particular fact somehow confirms there won't be any more live shows for next year. We got confirmation of Europe in November, six months before the tour began. The US leg comes to an end this Saturday, and if we give him six months of "family man" time, we're still only in April. I don't expect a concert Blu-ray to be released before next fall, honestly, which would give him plenty of time to tour in the summer or fall 2024, either with this same visual setup, or then with something different in mind, before a potential release. He could release tour dates as late as April and we'd still have a possibility for a late-fall tour.

Maybe this all just means that we won't be hearing any new music before April, and there's going to be no tour, but I'm definitely not reading any of the information we've received this past week as indication there wouldn't be.

The selected photo is superb, so I'm immensely happy with it. This also fits in perfectly as the continuation of the greyscale cover of Up. Maybe we'll get the rest of those gorgeous Kander portraits we've seen during the tour inside the album sleeve.

Certainly a long way from the initial yellow/pink graph that was our first introduction to i/o a year ago.

I was really impressed with the laid back mood this had when I heard it on tour, and it really comes through in this version as well. Added to this is a very warm, cozy feel — it wouldn't sound out of place next to some material from Us, which I also love for its warm soundscapes.

Quite a complex song in terms of structure, actually, and also features one of the best PG melodies in the verse in recent memory — in terms of showing his range as a singer. Just lovely!

Edit: Since PG himself mentions it in the video related to This Is Home, I don't feel it's amiss to mention here that new John Metcalfe album Tree is absolutely gorgeous. I've been listening to Xylem a lot since its release, and now that the whole thing is available, it's indeed a beautiful album. A great artist PG has collaborated with, and another high quality Real World release. (The Appearance of Colour from 2015 is also stellar.)

That string section in the second bridge is one of my favorite parts in the whole song.

Quote from THOM

I see it coming: At the end we will have a veritable war between the two camps...

For me it’s been whichever mix has been released first — I’ve listened to those versions so many times that by the time the second mix arrives, it sounds stranger and takes actual time and work to get used to. Especially since both underline certain instruments that — when missing from the other mix — I sorely end up missing.

But I’m happy to stand with Team Buff, though, if push comes to shove. Those Atmos mixes have, in my mind, the best of both worlds, because he can bring in more sounds around you, and while he also underlines certain things, I feel like nothing is altogether lost in the process. They sound great on AirPods Pro as well, but there’s that added feeling of zen when I have to sit down on the sofa and not run around while listening. (Edit: by which I mean is that I have an Atmos soundsystem in the living room, not that it’s not possible to sit down and listen attentively with headphones/earphones.)

Love Can Heal is no exception. Really an amazing feeling to have Peter whispering to you from all around you.

Here's the setlist.

For me this strategy has been the best possible experience and I'm very thankful that PG's doing it and sticking with it to the end.

Personally I find it immensely rewarding, after having waited for over 20 years, to get the new material not all at once but during an elongated period of time. Sure, would have been great to get the album out already, but who wouldn't want to stretch out a nice feeling? Makes up for that foreboding sense of "is there any material coming?" of the past two decades since now my mind is conditioned to the idea of new PG material every month. (Which makes the idea of possible new material released during full moons beyond the completion of i/o a wet dream, really!)

And as others have pointed out above, this release schedule has allowed me too — and pushed me to — listen to each song carefully. Had they all dropped immediately, I might have listened to the full album a few times and then unconsciously picked out a few favorites and put them on an infinite rotation or something, but now each new song is getting their rightful attention. Now I've been listening to Love Can Heal non-stop since release, and the same thing will happen come next full moon.

What a song, my gods!

Certainly a very odd feeling listening to a complete studio version it after listening to the live version for almost 7 years. I was already off the mark when I started singing "whatever mess", since he delivers it differently on the album version (feels good to be able to say that — album version). I was waiting for him to let it rip near the end, and it was positively shocking how it was mixed into the background. Very nice, mind!

Which brings me to the mixing. There's so much going in this song sonically (there's even that hint of San Jacinto there in the intro and outro) that — again — it's going to be a great thing to have all three mixes, and since it's a slow, moody song, those mixing decisions certainly have power to alter the overall feeling so much.

Busy day so haven't had the time to watch the video yet — makes me want to dim the lights and have a glass of wine with that and make an event out of it.

Quote from agentsage

I just saw this as well! Looks like a great album. The last four songs, still to be released, will make a spectacular end section, given their live versions.

Indeed!

Can't believe we finally have this information. At 65 minutes, it's Up there as one of his longest albums as well. I'm so glad And Still is there, too. When rumors started about the album having to fit in that 60-minute slot, I was worried it would be dropped since it's one of the longer songs. But it's there, and makes such a great counterpoint in mood with Live and Let Live.

I absolutely love everything about Panopticom and it's such a great opener. Also fitting since it started all this way back in November when we heard the first snippet of it.

Edit: And damn, there's something about Playing for Time as #2 that gives me a big smile.

Quote from agentsage

For me, nothing will likely ever top Passion or Security (my two favs).

Hey, those are my favorites, too! Passion is my all-time favorite album, and it's Security when it comes to his "regular" discography.

And while I'm no ecologist, I know what you're talking about since there's so much of that in W. S. Merwin, my favorite poet, so I've been so stoked about these songs because they've been so relatable: impermanence of life, of us as the inhabitants of this planet, and the universe, the interconnectedness of it all, and getting older and finding meaning not always from rushing forward but staying still — not that there's not that immense sense of curiosity and "wanting to know more" in the songs, too. The state in which I'd like to go out, too, when the time comes.

Quote from agentsage

Indeed! In fact, I'm really keen on all of the remaining tracks. Live and Let Live sounds like a good final track, a nice summary of the album.

Yeah, that would be an amazing final track for the album!

I’m always wary of saying this when it comes to new work from artists I love — since the best of the best have already stood the test of time — but this album is turning out to be Peter’s best work. All of the songs have been superb, and that’s also true of the remaining songs.

”Olive Tree” is another energetic song I’m dying to hear a studio version of, and whenever I’ve listened to it, it stays in my head. ”This Is Home” is exactly the type of mid-tempo jam I love, and the rest of the slower songs are gorgeous as well. ”What Lies Ahead” has been a strong favorite of mine for a long time, but the more I’ve listened to ”And Still”, the more I love it. There are textures there that should sound mindblowingly good once we get to the studio version.

And ”Love Can Heal” has been haunting me ever since I heard it on YouTube from the Rock, Paper, Scissors tour. It’s already up there when I think of the best songs he’s ever written.

It’s crazy to think that some of those amazing songs are probably not going to make it onto the album, which is a testament to Peter’s high form and artistry. It’s been a long wait since ”Up”, but this year has been so rewarding, getting a masterpiece each full moon that as much as I’m dying to listen to the whole thing, I’m also not wanting it to end.

But since Peter is now seriously in the groove, who knows if we’ll get new music each full moon that will continue into the next album after ”i/o”? I was preparing myself for this to be Peter’s farewell, but it seems he has so much high quality material that another album is not at all an impossible thought.

Not that this wasn’t the case after ”Up” 21 years ago, though.