Peter Gabriel - Up album interview

In July 2002, Peter was interviewed about his forthcoming album UP at Real World Studios. This EPK was created from the interview and was primarily used to circulate to international media who were not able to speak to Peter in person.

Why is the album called UP Peter is asked...
“UP was conceived as a title about 8 years ago. I had a lot of material even then and still a lot of it was quite positive. I was thinking about rivers and also playing with Up the Khyber, Up the Ganges, Up the Mississippi series where I would send the record off to a group in different countries and they would do their interpretation of it and then we’d try to pull something together out of that, or put it out as individual things. So it was a sort of UP package, but I think I mentioned that to Michael Stipe and they (REM) were the first to come out with a record called UP. Although I think Shania Twain is going to have a record called UP and Ani di Franco had a record called Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up.

UP is final part of the two-letter, single-syllable trilogy.... So, Us, Up. The album was produced by Peter Gabriel and mixed by Tchad Blake and Stephen Hague. Hundreds and hundreds of hours of recordings were made, ultimately being slimmed down to the final ten tracks.

UP soon reveals itself to be another deeply personal statement, with birth and death being near-constant themes. Mostly recorded at Real World (although some initial recordings were made in Senegal, France and on a boat on the Amazon), the album sees contributions from the likes of Peter Green, Danny Thompson, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Daniel Lanois, the Black Dyke Band, Peter’s daughter Melanie and the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

The album was released on 23 September, 2002.