Peter Gabriel - I/O (2004)

My next post by Peter Gabriel was going to be the final album in the trio that I derived from the 'Rare' collection, but I happened to come across mention of a proposed release made up of songs recorded during the sessions for 'Up', and so decided to see what this album could have sounded like. One of the songs has already turned up on my 'At The Movies' collection, so all I had to do was track down the rest to piece together the unreleased 'I/O' album. It was originally planned for a 2004 release, but his two tours of 2003 and 2004 pushed this date back further and further, until eventually it was abandoned altogether. Some of the songs were used for other projects, with 'Animal Nation' turning up on 'The Wild Thornberries Movie' soundtrack, and 'I'm Amazing', which was inspired by the life of Muhammad Ali, being released as a single in 2016, even though it had been written around 2002/2003. 'Courage' also came out as a digital download in 2013, and with these as a starting point I discovered that 'Feed The Flame' was also known as 'Downside Up', and a demo of that had leaked online, along with a number of the other songs that I was looking for. Of the 18 suggestions for tracks that might have made it to 'I/O', I've managed to find nine, which make up a perfectly acceptable 44 minutes album, and on listening to the result it sounded so good that I just had to share it ahead of my planned Gabriel post. 

Track listing

01 I'm Amazing

02 Nocturnals

03 Feed The Flame

04 Animal Nation

05 Quiet Steam

06 Courage

07 Baby Man

08 Wild

09 This Is The Road