Peter Gabriel unveils new lunar cycle single, "I Belong to the Sky"

"I Belong to the Sky" was written and produced by Gabriel. The Bright-Side Mix by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent arrives today, while the Dark-Side Mix will be released on the next new moon, following a string of previous singles released according to the same timing. Speaking about the track, Gabriel explains: “It's another song which has taken a while to grow. It was a candidate, in some form, for the i/o record, but didn't get finished off, but it was always one of my favourites.

"The starting point of the song was the timpani tom-tom pattern which was inspired by an old film called Jazz on a Summer's Day and also a wonderful drummer called Chico Hamilton. I think he was the pioneer of the use of timpani sticks on the toms and I always loved that sound; calm and hypnotic. It set a really strong mood for me and the song grew up around it."

"I'm a strong believer that reality is more malleable than we imagine and that if you really make strong pictures of something happening, you really affect the chances of it materializing. Visualising… how dreams leave their nest, is the main topic of the song," he continues. "One of the things that the technological revolution is doing is accelerating the time for thoughts to become material things. The time it takes to transform an idea into something material is being radically cut. In the song, the verses have a more dreamlike ‘on your back and look up at the sky‘ feeling and then in the chorus it's about the execution, the materialising."