Peter Gabriel‘s Big Blue Ball project has finally been completed for release as an 11 track album, 18 years after recording began.

Constructed from three week long recording sessions at Realworld studios in Box, Wiltshire across 1991, 1992 and 1995; Gabriel and Waterboys’ Karl Wallinger enlisted the help of over 30 artists to create the music for the album.

Amongst the musicians who appear, as well as Gabriel and Wallinger, are Sinead O’Connor, Jah Wobble, Tim Finn, Natacha Atlas.

Speaking about the circumstances the record first started in 1991, Gabriel who writes, performs and produces on the album says: “We had this week of invited guests, people from all around the world, fed by music and a 24 hour café. It was a giant playpen, a bring your own studio party. There’d be a studio set up on the lawn, in the garage, in someone’s bedroom as well as the seven rooms we had available.”

“We were curators of sorts of all this living mass. We had poets and songwriters there, people would come in and scribble things down, they’d hook up in the café. It was like a dating agency, then they’d disappear into the darkness and make noises –and we’d be there to record it.”

A 23 minute podcast hosted by Gabriel and Wallinger which includes excerpts from the new album, is available here.

Big Blue Ball’s complete track listing is:

Whole Thing

Big Blue Ball

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