Classic Rock
Peter Gabriel releases new song “Four Kinds Of Horses”
Since the beginning of 2023 Peter Gabriel is releasing a new song from his upcoming album “i/o” every full moon. The most recent one is “Four Kinds of Horses“, the fifth track available to fans so far. The musician had already released the songs: “Panopticom”, “The Court”, “Playing For Time” and “i/o”.
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Written by Peter Gabriel and produced by Peter Gabriel and Richard Russell, “Four Kinds of Horses” was recorded at Real World Studios in Wiltshire, The Beehive and Copper House in London.
“Four Kinds of Horses actually began on Richard Russell’s project ‘Everything Is Recorded’. He’s a friend (and founder of XL Records) and he asked me to pop in to his studio.”
“I came up with some chords, melodies and words on top of a groove he was working on. We tried a few things that didn’t altogether work and so it laid dormant for quite a while. Then I started playing around with it again and changed the mood and the groove and something else began to emerge with a better chorus,” Peter Gabriel said.
Hear the new Peter Gabriel song “Four Kinds Of Horses”:
Gabriel revealed that the main influences for the song were the Buddhist parable of the Four Kinds of Horses, that describes different ways to a person to approach their spiritual practice.
“The interesting overlap of religion and peace on the one hand and violence and terrorism on the other. There was also a wonderful film by Hany Abu-Assad called ‘Paradise Now’ which shows two young men who end up being trained to become terrorists and it’s a real insight into where the head goes,” Peter Gabriel said.
The song also features Brian Eno on synths which “sounded like electric worms to me,” Gabriel said. “As soon as I heard one I thought they would make a great three dimensional wall paper of sound and asked Brian to create eleven more.”
John Metcalfe also provided the string arrangements, “beautiful work and as the song progresses, the strings play a key role,” Gabriel said. The backing vocals were done by Peter’s daughter Melanie, “another lovely moment for a dad,” The ex-Genesis vocalist said.
