SECRET WORLD LIVE

This is a really great concert film from my personal favorite phase of Peter Gabriel's solo career. Captured from the performance in Globen of Stockholm, the impressive musician line-up breathes healing life to Peter's compositions from "Us" album and the classics from 1980's recordings. Tony Levin plays the bass guitar, Manu Katché evokes both rhythmic and melodic tones from the drum set, and there are also visits of Shankar on violin and Paula Cole singing the supportive vocals. The fine melancholic and ethnically colored compositions allow a pleasant evening of 1990's artistic pop/rock aesthetics, and also giving some stimulation to the senses seeking any intellectual aspects from the music too. Touching "Come Talk to Me" opens the set, showing us some of the stage mechanics of the concert hall. Some favorite picks here are the melodic and peaceful numbers like "Blood of Eden" and "Washing of the Water", but the band manages also to kick out some nice afro grooves from the positive rocker songs too. "Digging in The Dirt" works here well, melting with the man's hit "Sledgehammer", which is the best version of this song I have yet heard. Also the long "Secret World" is a truly powerful highlight here. One of my most favored pop/rock concert films from modern times, focusing to my fascination of being able to see the musicians and trying to get impressions from the concert event. Though I grow to unlearn my personal contradictions towards studio recorded albums, the live concert stage remains as the optimal context for sensing musicians' emotions and searching channels between the artist and audience on short strands of our experiencers on the vast oceans of space-time.