There are a few chilling moments in rock music; the kind that
\nmake you shudder with a weird mixture of delight and apprehension.
\nOne of those occurs at about 0:16 of Peter Gabriel’s 1982 release
\nSecurity<\/i>, where he wails a five-note line across thrumming
\ndrums in the intro to “Rhythm Of The Heat”. From that moment on,
\nyou are aware — or you damn well should be — that this is not
\nyour average pop\/rock album and that you’re going to be challenged
\nbefore you’re done.<\/p>\n
\nSecurity<\/i>, the fourth solo release by Gabriel, was arguably a
\nmajor breakthrough. If
\nSo<\/i> was where he finally became ‘Peter Gabriel, Worldwide
\nSuperstar’, this is the CD where he became more than ‘the former
\nlead singer of Genesis’. It resulted in his first US Top Forty hit,
\narguably his widest critical acclaim to the date it was released,
\nand was one of the first — if not the first — CDs to make the
\naverage American music buyer in the shallow and pre-fab 1980s to
\nrealize there was a whole wide world of music and sounds outside of
\nRonald Reagan’s us and them mentality. In many ways,
\nSecurity<\/i> was the first global CD.<\/p>\n
But in these latter days of the Internet, how does it hold up?
\nThe answer is — pretty damn well, mostly.
\nSecurity<\/i> is almost a tribal album, with its elements of
\nshamanic journeying (“Rhythm Of The Heat” and “San Jacinto”) and
\ncross-culturalism (“Kiss Of Life”). As such, its production is
\nuncluttered, flat, and perfect for the type of percussion-driven
\nsound Gabriel never really stopped doing after this CD.
\nUnfortunately, I don’t have the 2002 remaster; my original CD
\nrelease lacks a little dynamic range, but I’d bet the remaster
\nsolves that.<\/p>\n
The key, though, is the songs. “Rhythm Of The Heat” and “San
\nJacinto” may be the best one-two punch in pop music history,
\nopening the CD with a breakneck psychic impact that never lets up.
\n“The Family And The Fishing Net” opens with what sounds like alien
\nflutes interwoven with orchestral premonitions of doom. “Lay Your
\nHands On Me” is triumphant, brilliant, with a magnificent crescendo
\non the refrain. Only “Shock The Monkey” — ironically enough
\nGabriel’s chart hit off this CD — falls flat; the eighties
\nsynthesizer hits haven’t aged well, though it’s still not a bad
\ntune.<\/p>\n
Peter Gabriel’s
\nSecurity<\/i> is a CD that any serious music fan should know, and
\nanyone interested in the growing world music scene should own as a
\nlandmark in the genre’s early development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5924],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37914","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-peter-gabriel","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37914"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}