BIG BLUE BALL

Originally recorded at Real World studios over numerous sessions between 1991 and 1995 this album has finally seen the light of day. Like a large jigsaw puzzle and through mainly the erstwhile efforts of Peter Gabriel, Karl Wallinger ( World Party fame) and mixer/producer Stephen Hague after many hours and hard labour, Big Blue Ball is now available to the listeners.

The music is a collaboration of sorts from various artists. Much more useful to view the credits section , but mainly Karl Wallinger, Joseph Arthur, Tim Finn ( Split Enz/Crowded House fame), the ubiquitous David Rhodes on guitar, Deep Forest and Tchad Blake to name a few. First class production and sound quality gives this album the distinct Gabriel wall of sound with the Passion,Us world music elements also.

The album kicks off with the typical Gabriel rocker Whole Thing. In fact if you are looking for similar strong songs in this vein on the album check out also Exit Through You and ' Burn You Up, Burn You Down ( the last one also off his recent Hits album release. Joseph Arthur works well with Peter Gabriel as does Karl Wallinger in delivering three solid tracks. Other noteworthy songs are the beautiful Altus Silva and the highlight for me River with world renowned Hungarian vocalist Marta Sebesteyn delivering a perfectly plaintive voice. The final track is the self titled Big Blue Ball written and sung by Karl Wallinger and is a very uplifting positive song to end this environmentally conscious album on.

For any Peter Gabriel fans I strongly recommend getting this. For me this even stronger than the Ovo release. A solid three and a half stars.

Buy yourself a couple of these and you'll have a pair of big blue-balls... If that ball was to roll down that hill it would crush those poor sheep!

This is not a Peter Gabriel album, nor is claimed to be anywhere on the album cover. It's more of a Peter Gabriel and Friends album along the lines of an LP I have from years back, the WOMAD album. And what a bunch of friends, many names from the world of prog and far too many artists I'm not familiar with.

To be certain, Peter did produce all of the tracks which were recorded at his Real World Studios, spanning 1991 to 2007, but was not present as a musician on all of them. The tracks he did appear on: Whole Thing, Exit Through You, Burn You Up Burn You Down, Rivers, and Big Blue Ball would be a comfortable fit for a Peter Gabriel album.

It's a mostly world music oriented album, but don't dismiss the non-Gabriel tunes, they're cool in their own right. If you're not close-minded to world music there's stuff here that might just expand your musical horizons.

This is NOT a Peter Gabriel Album ? but It's Not Bad

BIG BLUE BALL is another of the Peter Gabriel's Real World projects, not a solo album by any means. As most know, Gabriel has been active in promoting world music for nearing 30 years now. In the 80's he coordinated the WOMAD festival, and his work (along with Paul Simon's) were instrumental in the world fusion surge in popularity during the 90's. Gabriel still spends most of his time recording and promoting various world artists, and this disc may have simply been a fundraiser for that effort. BIG BLUE BALL is a record of three collaborative sessions in 1991, 1992, and 1995 at Real World studios covering a huge span of musicians. Strangely, this project was not put in to finished form until 2007 for 2008 release.

There is one good Gabriel song on the album, the opener "Whole Thing." It's fairly typical of the US era, featuring plenty of world percussion along with Gabriel's big studio sound. The melodies are good, and it would have stood up as a nice album track had US had a real follow- up (which many of us would have appreciated in the mid to late 90's).

The rest of the album is a sampler of other bands and Gabriel friends. Karl Wallinger of World Party and the Waterboys actually had a large musical role in the album, and singer Joseph Arthur leads several songs. The variety is quite nice, from African voices and percussion to Middle Eastern tonalities to Celtic flavors. Some of the programming is pretty dated, with the ethno-rap "Jijy" sounding particularly dinosaur-like. Overall, this is a pleasant disc to put in on a drive, seamlessly returning to track one for a continual world beat background music. Unfortunately, none of the songs really blow me away. They are all good, but none are truly excellent aside from the world instrumentation.

It's also very hard to give this much prog cred as it wasn't released until long after these sounds were part of common culture. Even in 1995 when the last session was recorded, listeners already would have been somewhat familiar with these sounds. (Thanks in part to Gabriel's own efforts). I got the disc used and certainly don't feel cheated, but this is a non- essential novelty. 2/5 stars.