Peter Gabriel, photo by Nadav Kander

The celestial rollout for Peter Gabriel’s o/i continues today with “Till Your Mind Is Shining,” the fourth single from his 11th studio album. Like 2023’s i/o, which brought Gabriel back to the studio for his first new release in 21 years, the icon’s new project has been slowly unfolding with the lunar calendar since January, with “Dark-Side” and “Bright-Side” mixes by Tchad Blake and Mark ‘Spike’ Stent landing on the full moon and new moon of each month. Gabriel says the latest preview, after “Been Undone,” “Put the Bucket Down” and “What Lies Ahead,” is “the closest I get to a pop song on this record.”

With today’s Pink Moon, he’s shared the Dark-Side Mix of “Till Your Mind is Shining.” It’s certainly more upbeat than the atmospheric, contemplative leanings of the previous cuts, powered by a growling bassline and sliding into an indelible hook, but Gabriel’s sustained focus on unconventional song structure qualifies these with sparse verses and an intricate drum pattern. Like the prior singles, some of its elements date back decades into his long and exploratory career. “The song began around a chord sequence which I liked and which felt quite poppy and playful, so I just kept on playing around with it till I had something,” he shared:

“It takes me back to my schooldays, in some ways, because before there was Genesis we were effectively trying to be songwriters more than musicians – pop songs or soul / R&B songs. I think this song connects me back to some of those roots and the sort of thing that I was working on then and trying to master. 

Some elements of this are a few years old, I mean pretty much most things I work on take a while to mature. I leave songs for a while and go and do something else and when I come back to them and they smell alive, I will want to complete them. I really enjoyed singing this one, particularly the end, and I think the band had a good time playing it too. You can hear some wonderful performances from all the band. It was really a fun thing to create.

I’ve always been fascinated by explorations of consciousness and attempts to understand from where it originated, along with all the recent investigations into animal and plant sentience.

In some ways it’s about opening up the mind and stepping inside to understand a little more of ourselves and the world we live in with the hope that we respond a little more responsibly and compassionately.’”

“Till Your Mind is Shining” is paired with artwork by Tatsuo Miyajima titled Warp Time with Warp Self, No. 2. Gabriel says he selected the piece for the interaction it evokes between the human and mechanical worlds, a dynamic that very clearly informs his inventive production across the album. “I really wanted an image that felt like a mixture of something cold and structured and informative as well as being soft and self-reflective,” he said.

Listen to “Till Your Mind Is Shining (Dark-Side Mix)” and watch Gabriel’s explanation of the track below.