Millenium hopes

I ordered this special import thinking it was a live CD of the now legendary millenium show. In case you are harboring similar misconcenptions, it's not live. It's the OVO album with a few extras. It has an OVO rap single (you may or may not like it), a fairly cool color booklet with pictures from the show and some PC extra video from the show--abstract looking aerial shots of show choreography.
If you already have the standard OVO disc, you won't be getting much new here. It all depends on how serious a collector you are. Fortunately, I hadn't bought OVO yet, so the import, though a little pricey, filled the bill. Unlike some Peter Gabriel fans, I happen to like OVO very much. I think it is one of the most interesting and innovative musical projects he has designed. Hopefully one day he will release a DVD of the show (certainly someone must have filmed it!). It was an historic occasion, apparently a very big show, and many of us Gabriel fans across the world were unable to see it.

C'mon Peter. Share the fun.

OVO/Millennium -- underrated and worth discovering

... Taken in the right light, this underrated set of compositions is worth discovering and should satisfy Gabriel fans who enjoyed Last Temptation or, even more so, Birdy (except that this is all original material).

It would have been nicer to have Peter take all the lead vocals, given that his voice is one of his best strengths. However, he appears more director than performer in the project, playing and arranging the music rather than being the rock star behind the mic, and his vocal stand-ins, Ritchie Havens and Paul "Blue Nile" Buchanan, are perfect analogs for him. Standout tracks are "Downside Up," " Make Tomorrow," "The Time of the Turning," and the hard-edged "The Tower That Ate People."

Millennium makes a better listening experience, so I'd start with it if buying it for the first time, but people who already bought OVO don't really need to trade up. Millennium gives a better package (comic book for the kids, cardboard slipcover, different artwork, expanded CD booklet with photos and commentary on the Millennium Dome Show) and improves the playing sequence slightly by adding a brief extra tune, the celebratory marching-band number "The Tree That Went Up," while placing "The Story of OVO" rap on a separate CD single. This also features the same video clip of the Show, scored with "Nest that Sailed the Sky," as that on both versions of the album. The brief time-lapse video can't do the Show justice but is still lovely to watch and the only way most people will ever get to see it.

OVO/Millennium is great listening, especially once the details of the story are sorted out. The atmospheric, polyrhythmic, mostly instrumental melodies shouldn't be considered a commercial follow-up to Us, but they fit nicely in the sequence of Gabriel's music, continuing his same rough alternation between pop album and non-commercial project.

The great "lost" album in PG's career

Because it is an import-only soundtrack to an obscure project,
"Ovo" was completely overlooked in the USA, where most people believe his first studio project since "Us" was the 2002 ambient instrumental soundtrack "The Long Walk Home", and then finally the proper rock/pop followup "Up" which has now just been released. However, like all Gabriel projects "Ovo" is an essential purchase, and one which will delight and surprise in unexpected places. First, although it is the soundtrack to the "Millenium Dome" project, it is not an instrumental work--8 of its 12 cuts feature lyrics and vocals, which would make it the proper studio followup to "Us" (indeed, several of the songs for this and "Long Walk Home" actually derive from the initial sessions for "Up"), the only deviation being that Gabriel chose several other singers to work with him on his songs. Second, it has a narrative storyline, which would be the first time he has attempted such a thing since Genesis' "The Lamb" (or maybe the abandonded late 70s concept "Mozo"). Thus, "Ovo"'s ambitions are indeed quite grand; the amazon[.com] reviewer is right in that it is at times over its head, with bright moments getting lost in a tapestry that may be a little *too* eclectic, but there are more than just a few "OK" songs here.

The only real regret I have about "Ovo" is that, although I like Paul Buchanan, Richie Havens and Elizabeth Frazer, I think Gabriel should've taken the lead on every track and used them only for backup vocalists. This would have made the album sound more consistent, for his voice is still supreme and these are his songs; they all bear his stamp so vividly that even when someone else is singing, I hear Peter. The songwriting is very strong, the melodies are as melodic and the rhythms as innovative as ever, with all of it reminding one of his past work while pointing to a further evolution of the sound: one
unexpected feature of the album is that while Gabriel has been particularly fond of Middle Eastern and North African world music elements in his music for nearly two decades now, in the attempt to be truly global for "Ovo"'s millenial aspirations, elements of indigenous Western forms are blended to the mix to
create a fusion unique to the record but that would then inspire the sound of the following "Up".

Highlights include the touching minimal piano ballad "Father Son" (which could be on any of his albums), the grindingly energetic and innovative techno-rocker "The Tower That Ate People" (a potential hit if only it had been promoted more), the graceful opening "Low Life", "Downside-Up" (Frazer's best moment here) and the 10 minute (!) closing "Make Tomorrow", an epic which involves all four singers and the kind of atmospheric, multi-sectional writing that would mark "Up". This edition of the CD is better than the other, which opens with a rap rendition of "The Story Of Ovo" that is unnecessary, and is replaced with the innocuous but better-fitting instrumental "The Tree That Went Up". I don't understand the couple of reviewers who charge this album is boring--"Long Walk Home"'s ambient instrumentals may have provoked a snooze or two, but "Ovo" is constantly changing styles, moods and singers, and at least one track ("The Tower That Ate People") ranks with his toughest and most danceable rockers. In short, "Ovo" is a great PG album, and makes a good pair with "Up"; I just wish he had sang all the leads.