Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel 2 [REAL WORLD]

Why you'll love it

This half-speed remaster on 180g vinyl, cut at Alchemy, comes with a hi-res download code. Produced by Robert Fripp, the album reached No. 10 in the UK and gave Gabriel the single "D.I.Y."

This edition

• Half-speed master
• 180g vinyl
• Download card included
• Remastered

About the album

Peter Gabriel's first four solo albums all share the same name, so fans did the sensible thing and named them after the covers. This is Scratch: Peter Christopherson's photo of Gabriel with grooves apparently torn through the picture to his fingertips, made by gluing torn paper strips onto the print and touching up the joins with Tipp-Ex.

Robert Fripp produced it, recording between November 1977 and February 1978 at Relight Studios in the Netherlands, the Hit Factory in New York and Trident in London, and kept the sound strikingly dry. Tony Levin plays bass and Chapman stick, Roy Bittan and Larry Fast handle keys and synths, and Jerry Marotta drums. "On the Air" opens with a rush, "D.I.Y." is a jittery manifesto, "Exposure" is built on Fripp's tape-loop Frippertronics, and "White Shadow" closes side one in style.

Fripp wanted the sleeve to say it was produced by him for Peter Gabriel, a credit that sounds like a polite note left on the fridge. It's the record where Gabriel's art-rock and Fripp's experiments meet head on, and it sounds wonderful at half speed.

Also at Kops: more Peter Gabriel on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Real World (cat# PGLPR2), a reissue of the 1978 album.