Passion-Music for... [Original recording remastered]

So unexpected from a rock artist. Gabriel has surpassed himself. The music carries a theme throughout the album, yet each track has its own individuality, even though they often run into the next one without a break. Such a smooth understated beginning to Track 1, but wow, how it continues! A promise of the fantastic musical experience to follow. The driving rhythms, the off beat 'vocals', the sudden change of tempo; so easy to imagine the Holy Land and visualise of the story of Christ.

I thoroughly enjoyed this music the first time I heard it, it was performed with modern dance. The combination of the images and the music left me with an overwhelming feeling of wanting to touch the music. The interplay and tension of the harmony with the beats and Middle Eastern themes is lovely. Do listen to the little snippets and see what you think.

Of all the albums in my music collection, I regard Passion as the most important in my musical journey. I don't say this lightly and by this I'm not saying that it's "the best album ever" (I'm of the opinion that such titles are essentially meaningless, just profile-raising devices). Everything has to be regarded within the context of each person's experience, and for me Passion, which I've the great fortune to have known since it was new, has been the single most pivotal album of my life. A masterpiece in itself (I understand that Peter Gabriel considers this to be his finest work), but perhaps more importantly for me it acted as a beautiful doorway through to a world of fantastic music.

Passion is the music that Peter Gabriel composed for Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation Of Christ, it is a powerful, coherent body of pieces by itself and watching the film is not a prerequisite to appreciating it (I saw the film in the early 90's, hoping that its effect upon me might be as profound as the soundtrack, but for me this album overshadows the film by a long stretch). Peter Gabriel's vision for this work was very ambitious: epic soundscapes peopled by musicians rarely experienced within the cosy confines of the typical movie soundtrack, and far beyond the scope of the vast majority of popular music.

Here Peter Gabriel played an array of synthesizers and other electronics, including the Fairlight sampler, provided occasional, discreet vocals, a little flute and piano, and percussion. Joining him were numerous musicians and singers from north and west Africa, including the stellar vocals of Youssou N'Dour and Baaba Maal, the Indian Sub-continent and the Middle East, as well as fellow sound-architects David Rhodes and David Bottrill, and an English boys choir, amongst many others. Hossam Ramzy's intricate layers of percussion and Shankar's otherworldly soaring double-violin are both intrinsic to the album. The title track, at 7.36 the longest individual piece, embodies the spirit of the album as a whole, and features transcendent Qawwali singing from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. "Sandstorm" evokes images of a procession of people battling through furious flying sands, coming in and out of view, resolutely moving forward. "Before Night Falls" is gorgeous and gentle, delicate finger cymbals and tabla trace an airy framework over which ney flute dances, echoed and then superseded by brooding double-violin. There is also an avant-garde element at play in repeating samples and unconventional patterns, as with the haunted "Troubled" and the fragmented flutes of "Gethsemene". More familiar spaces to a western ear appear amongst these converging fusions of electronica and ethnic folk music, in particular on the two versions of "With This Love", the first led by oboe and coranglais, the second by the boys choir.

I can trace backwards from here in time to other east-meets-west musical fusions from my childhood that perhaps steered me towards Passion, pop songs like "The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum" by Fun Boy Three, "Ever So Lonely" by Monsoon, "Living On The Ceiling" by Blancmange, and onward to Peter Gabriel's earlier albums, and the questing Kate Bush, but this was the moment for me when the doors burst wide open and I felt compelled to really go exploring, leading initially to checking out the excellent accompanying compilation Passion Sources, then onward from there, keeping abreast as Realworld Records began to blossom, and going off exploring beyond its bounds.