By Fiona Shepherd

Published 1st Dec 2023, 13:36 BST

Peter Gabriel: i/o (Real World Records) ****

Trevor Horn: Echoes: Ancient and Modern (Deutsche Grammophon) **

Craig Armstrong: Love Actually – The Love Themes for Orchestra (CMA Records) ***

Tommy Perman: The Resonant Viaduct (Blackhill Audio) ***

Peter Gabriel has taken so long to perfect his new album – his first since Up in 2002 – that the album tour preceded the album release. He has been working on i/o – standing for input/output but also referencing one of Jupiter’s moons – since the mid-Nineties. But no matter – Gabriel operates in his own musical world, one which harnesses top drawer technology to create cosmic, elemental pop, so what’s a few years in the early days of the current millennium?

Much of i/o will be familiar to Gabriel acolytes already, as he has released a new track each month on the full moon for the past year. The finished album now appears with two mixes – the Bright Side mix by Mark “Spike” Stent and Dark Side mix by Tchad Blake, who are described respectively as a painter and a sculptor by Gabriel, and for those who just can’t get enough, a third In-Side mix features on the triple CD version.

Dramatic, pounding opener Panopticom turns themes of surveillance on its head with the notion that the people police the politicians, but retains a haunting quality with those evergreen vocals. The synthesis of technology and emotion is eminently Gabriel and much of the album feels like welcoming back an old friend, hearing his news over a quiet drink.

He is heard to husky effect on the timeless ballad Playing For Time, garlanded with swelling strings from the New Blood Orchestra, philosophising simply on the title track, lamenting human frailty over mournful brass on So Much and “trying to make some sense of it, where I’m going now” on the more spirited Olive Tree.

The mood continues to oscillate between upbeat and downbeat with the slick pomp prog of Four Kinds of Horses and delicate Love Can Heal, while the tender ache of And Still, written for his late mother Edith, is tear-to-a-glass-eye stuff. Gabriel keeps the messaging simple on closing track Live and Let Live, a gently uplifting peace appeal, delivered with the soulful reinforcement of the Soweto Gospel Choir and Swedish male voice choir Oprhei Drängar.

Gabriel’s fellow production whizz Trevor Horn also has a new album out but he’s looking backwards, rather than outwards and inwards, to the songs of his Eighties heyday. Echoes: Ancient and Modern revisits classics from his and other catalogues in the company of contemporary singers. Joe Jackson’s Steppin’ Out is slowed down and smoothed out further by Seal – at least the tune remains intact, if not the freewheeling spirit.

There are some odd matches – Andrea Corr tackling Billy Idol’s White Wedding, Rick Astley singing Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart, and Toyah Wilcox and husband Robert Fripp on a breathy Relax – but Lady Blackbird’s lusty vocal compensates for the neutered arrangement of Slave to the Rhythm and Marc Almond relishes chewing the scenery on Love is a Battlefield.

Horn himself helms a tasteful, twinkling Avalon and he strays beyond the Eighties for an overly melodramatic orchestral version of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Glasgow-based film composer Craig Armstrong is also in re-interpretive mode, marking the 20th anniversary of Love Actually by revisiting its love themes with fuller arrangements rendered by the Budapest Art Orchestra, such as the sweeping expanse of PM’s Love Theme. In contrast, Wrapping the Necklace has a pizzicato spring in its step, complemented by characterful woodwind.

Edinburgh-born sound artist Tommy Perman’s The Resonant Viaduct was originally commissioned and delivered as a site-specific installation to mark the renovation of Manchester’s Castlefield Viaduct as a public space, using field recordings redolent of its industrial past and its urban parkland future to create the stately, ambient wash of The Verdant Viaduct and the shimmering clank of Six Million Rivets, featuring Nancy Elizabeth’s wordless croon.

CLASSICAL

Beyond Twilight: Music for cello and piano by female composers (Delphian) ****

It’s unlikely you’ll recognise many of the composers on this fetching disc by cellist Alexandra Mackenzie and pianist Ingrid Sawers. The music is entirely by British female composers from a period (1880s-1950s) when women weren’t encouraged to pursue such a career. Thus the need for Sawers and Mackenzie to delve into hidden treasures within the Royal Academy of Music archives. What they unearthed is both revealing and predictable. Of particular interest are a Suite by one Isobel Dunlop, teasingly progressive, especially its edgy, rustic Dance; music by Marie Dare, once the lead cellist in Edinburgh’s famous Reid Orchestra, whose Hebridean Suite conjures up fresh, vibrant images; and songs by Avril Coleridge-Taylor (daughter of composer Samuel), neatly transcribed by the duo. Other unknowns reveal genuine artistry and a common feel for the prevailing style. Charming and consistent as that is, there’s a sameness throughout that leaves you itching for more variety. Ken Walton

FOLK

Show of Hands: Roots 2 (Hands On Music) ****

After three decades of touring, from village halls to the Albert Hall, the folk phenomenon that is Show of Hands have announced an “indefinite break” and released this copious two-CD “best of” to mark the event. The West Country duo of singer-songwriter Steve Knightley and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer – empathetically backed by bassist-singer Miranda Sykes – can boast an impressive body of story-spinning songs, encompassing quasi-trad, biting social comment and anthemic folk rock. These 31 tracks range through the winsome pastoral of ‘Twas on an April Morning, theatrical excursions such as Recuerdos, historical epics like Breme Fell at Hastings, a bitter comment on rural decline in Country Life and a striking vocal outing by Sykes in Sea Glass. There is, of course, their blistering excoriation of corporate avarice, Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed, before ending on an ebullient note with a trumpet-bolstered live rendition of The Best One Yet. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: Peter Gabriel | Trevor Horn | Craig Armstrong | Tommy Perman