Peter Gabriel – Panopticom (Dark-Side Mix) Review

Essentially copying what Björk did on Biophillia and the lead-up to that release over a decade ago, Peter Gabriel slides in with Panopticom, an at-first interesting project that has immediately slumped. What a shame. Gabriel’s return with the standard release was a towering track, a genuine bit of quality from an artist many fans had not heard from for some time. All he had to do was tease a few more tracks, throw a bit of mystery in the middle of it all, and Gabriel would be as good as gold for a quality release. Instead, Panopticom (Dark-Side Mix) slumped out under the excuse of the moon, stars and sky. Thankfully this does not cheapen the original effort, just the project as a whole.

Identical in length, with barely inconceivable differences to the initial mix, Panopticom (Dark-Side Mix) is definitely a different mix, but too close to that of the Bright-Side Mix. Gabriel has presented not a new track but a test of the ears, something to keep fans on their toes and keep their ears in good working order. Unlucky, Mr. Gabriel, some of us have crippled our hearing by playing music too loudly, too often. To Gabriel’s credit, the changes are minutely perceptible, and the production is clearly different. Certainly not different enough to release on its own, that is a grift, to say the least. If this is what the album will be, a Bright-Side and Dark-Side mix, then this project is done for.

Not because the mixing is bad, far from it, these are both two solid, but unfortunately similar mixes. Tchad Blake’s Dark-Side Mix and Mark Stent’s Bright-Side have no major, discernible differences to them. Not enough to warrant individual releases, anyway. It is too early to call whether i/o will be a project of two halves, but if it is, it is a sincere disappointment. Stent and Blake would have their production stylings challenge the listener if their differences were more in the fundamentals, rather than the simple strokes of instrumental presence and minimal changes. The core of the song is identical, and unless Panopticom’s two versions are the only tracks in a favourite’s playlist, those differences will fall on deaf ears.

At a time when John Cale, Brian Eno and the generation of Gabriel’s intensity and creativity are releasing challenging, exciting and interesting works, Gabriel feels he must top both with a confused push to connect himself to the skies. Dark-Side Mix is not as impressive as the Bright-Side Mix, not just because it has no fundamental differences but also because it attempts to mark itself as a sincere difference. The difference of good and bad as a core to the singles releases feels like such a washout, not just because that strain of creativity is as dead as the beaten horse that perceives good and evil in the entertainment industry, but because it is not a grand enough change to warrant separate releases. A misfire, a continual one. There is only one version worth listening to, and it has since been released twice. Uneventful. The track itself is slightly worse, Panopticom (Bright-Side Mix) is the superior of the two. Or is it? Depends on which one you hear first. Doesn’t matter.