Peter Gabriel – Put the Bucket Down (Dark-Side Mix)
Peter Gabriel continues his monthly release format with the Dark-Side Mix of “Put the Bucket Down”, arriving on the new moon of February 17th. Like “Been Undone” before it — which we covered back in Week 01 — this is another track pulled from his upcoming album “o\i”, the follow-up to 2023’s “i/o”. Same system: full moon gets a new song, new moon gets the alternate mix. Both “Dark-Side” and “Bright-Side” versions of each track will be out before he moves on to the next one.
This time the Dark-Side Mix is again in Tchad Blake’s hands, and the song itself carries a fascinating backstory. Gabriel traces it back to a conversation from around 40 years ago, when director Stephen R Johnson — the man behind the “Sledgehammer” video — introduced him to Mary Lou Jepsen, who at the time was attempting to project images onto the moon, possibly with Coca-Cola money. That project never happened (Gabriel admits that’s probably for the best), but Jepsen went on to become a significant figure in brain-computer interface research. Years later, reconnecting at TED, she told Gabriel about technology that could potentially read and write thoughts. That idea stuck. “Put the Bucket Down” is one of the songs to emerge from his ongoing “brain show” project.
The lyrics run with that concept. Lines like “I am the sum of all the signals that move inside the head” and “Who’s mind is this? Just tell me who” sit at the intersection of neuroscience and identity. Gabriel’s not doing sci-fi abstraction here — it’s personal. He’s genuinely interested in the human rights implications: what happens when there’s no privacy inside your own head, when authoritarian states can potentially extract or implant thoughts. “This is one of the reasons that the brain show came up”, he says, “so that people will have a chance to see some of the realisation of these ideas, see how they feel about it and where we should be leading things”.
As Gabriel himself puts it: “It’s quite long, but I think my job now is to tell stories and take people on trips…”. That’s an understatement given what’s packed into this one.
The next full moon — and the next new track — lands on Tuesday, March 3rd.
