Up

Up is the seventh studio and thirteenth album overall released by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. The album rose to number 9 in the US, number 11 in the UK, and captured the number 1 position in Italy. Most critics reviewed it positively, though Rolling Stone said Gabriel was "out of touch". Gabriel supported the album with a world tour in 2003 called Growing Up, his first in ten years since the Secret World Tour. Gabriel's Growing Up tour included backing vocals by his daughter Melanie, age 26–27. Select dates were filmed and released as Growing Up Live. Background Gabriel started work on the album in the spring of 1995. He and engineer Richard Chappell travelled between different locations during the initial writing stages of the album using a portable setup (recording at Real World Studios in between): the first two months were spent in a rented chalet in Méribel, then three months in Senegal starting in October 1995, followed by another trip to Méribel in Spring 1996 and a brief recording stint on a friend's recording-studio-equipped boat along the Amazon in Summer 1997. From then on, the rest of the album work was based at Real World Studios, where further writing, recording, overdubbing, editing and mixing took place over the next four to five years. At one point, work was being done simultaneously on both Up and the OVO soundtrack for a few months, separately by engineers Chappell and Richard Evans (respectively). However, in November 1998, both engineers decided to focus on completing the OVO soundtrack, so work on Up was temporarily put on hold. By late 2000, work on the album was finally gathering renewed pace, with a string section recorded at AIR Lyndhurst Studios in London amongst other things. Renowned mixer Tchad Blake was invited to Real World Studios in early 2001 to begin the final mixing stage. He would work on the mixes in the Big Room in Real World Studios, while Gabriel and Chappell continued recording in the Writing Room. Between them they'd figure out which of the newly recorded parts would be used in the mix or not.