PETER GABRIEL WORKING ON NEW STUDIO ALBUM

Date: Monday, November 07

Topic: Rock News

A new Peter Gabriel album might be on the horizon. While he often takes a long time between releases, rollingstone.com reports that for the past few months, he's been working on material for a new record that's got a working title of I/O, which stands for "input/output."

He hasn't yet called in the full band, because he said, "My mental process is so slow that it's not really fair to take that time out of anyone else's life."

Gabriel told that part of what takes him so long to make records is that he has trouble getting the words down on paper:

"I'm much quicker getting the musical ideas than I am sort of sorting out and finishing lyrics, which, to get past my editor, is a lot harder. That's me, I'm afraid. You know, your own sort of quality control, but the point at which you say, 'OK, that's all right to go out. I'm not gonna be embarrassed by that one,' I can do that very quickly with music and very slowly with lyrics."

There's no word on when I/O might come out, but Gabriel is already thinking about a tour, and he said he might preview some of the songs live. He said, "What I've always wanted to do is finish the songs, get them arranged for the band, tour for a month or so, then record them. That would give me a different type of immediacy -- because sometimes when I work and work on stuff, people feel that it loses some of its flair."

Gabriel's last studio album was UP, which came out in 2002.

His next release is a DVD called Still Growing Up -- Live And Unwrapped. It's due next Tuesday (November 15th).