Peter Gabriel's Full Moon Club update for March 2023, where he discusses the launch of Playing For Time, the third track to be taken from the forthcoming album I/o.

Listen to the full track Playing For Time from Tuesday 7 March: lnk.to/PG21
Deep Dive into the tracks from i/o on Bandcamp: petergabriel.bandcamp.com/subscribe

‘‘Playing For Time is a song that I have been working on for a long time and have performed live, without lyrics, so some people may be familiar with it. It’s been an important song for me. It's about time, mortality and memories and the idea that each of us has a planet full of memories which get stashed inside the brain.
It is more of a personal song about how you assemble memories and whether we are prisoners of time or whether that is something that can actually free us. I do think it’s good to push yourself towards more bold or interesting experiences because then you will have richer memories to feed you when you get to my age. You also get taught by every meaningful experience that you go through.’

Written and produced by Peter Gabriel, Playing For Time was recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire and The Beehive in London, and features Tom Cawley on piano. The orchestral arrangement, by Ed Shearmur, was recorded at British Grove Studios in London with a number of players who previously featured in the New Blood Orchestra.

Cover image: Mes voeux (avec nos cheveux) by Annette Messager
'I’d seen the work of Annette Messager, who is a wonderful artist, many years ago and nearly got her involved in the Art from Us project, but this time I thought she’d be exactly the right person to ask to do something for this song.'

Gabriel’s thoughts about time were, in part, influenced by the work of the Long Now Foundation, and Danny Hillis’s extraordinary invention, The 10,000 Year Clock, which is an idea designed to try and encourage us to think long-term. ‘I’m sure that if we have a chance of surviving the existential problems that we now face we have to start thinking much bigger and longer to make some real headway. So, I think what they do is enormously valuable and there are some amazing talks on their website, so for those that want a deep dive into the role of time and long-term thinking, the Long Now Foundation is a wonderful place to start.’
- longnow.org/

The deep-dive Peter mentions in the film will be available to subscribers over on Bandcamp: petergabriel.bandcamp.com/subscribe

You can also join the mailing list here: lnk.to/PGmailinglist