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Peter Gabriel Big Time: A Song of Ambition and Success



The drum parts were a considerable challenge to record, with Marotta, Manu Katché and Stewart Copeland each playing a take over a click track from the LinnDrum. Gabriel liked Copeland's drum take but felt that it did not quite lock in rhythmically.[6] He said, "I love Stewart's playing. He's not the world's best timekeeper, as he would be first to admit, but he can drive a track like very few others; it's always ahead of the beat, sits right up and forward, and his kit always sounds very alive."[8]




Peter Gabriel Big Time




To get around the problem, engineer Kevin Killen mixed down Copeland's drum parts to mono, sampling sections of his playing that lined up best with the click track and flew them in a few bars at a time. Gabriel additionally wanted to bring in the drum fills, which were also meticulously sampled, and adjustments were done to the speed to get them to line up with the track.[6]


An uneven if versatile cross-section of tracks from the original Genesis frontman, featuring one of his more memorable Top 40 hits. This import release has a couple exclusives that collectors will appreciate; first, the song "Curtains," unavailable elsewhere, is a lullaby of mystery and symbolism, gently propelled by a deep heartbeat of simple percussion and ghostly ambiance. Also here for the first (and perhaps only) time on CD is "Across the River"; a rather open-ended powerhouse of dark abandon featuring Ravi Shankar on violin and an early taste of the RealWorld music that Gabriel set about to showcase through other artists by the mid- to late '80s (this piece originally appeared as a B-side to the "Shock the Monkey" 45 from 1982). Also, out of left field, the cult-favorite "No Self Control" shows up in the middle of the disc, originally from the groundbreaking album Peter Gabriel III, with it's exotic marimbas and menacing guitars. By the time the disc comes to a close with the radio edit of "Big Time," listeners may feel a bit jarred, thrown back into a world of MTV and fast food. Perhaps there could have been a brighter selection of songs to enhance the single, but ironically the other pieces steal the show. Peter Gabriel is the master of mood rock, and other than the rather polished title cut and extended version of the same, this is a gloomy and beautiful EP. 2ff7e9595c


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