Peter Gabriel has unveiled the new single Till Your Mind Is Shining, the latest track to emerge from his forthcoming album O\I, continuing the artist’s lunar release schedule with a debut timed to April’s pink full moon.
by Paul Cashmere
Peter Gabriel has released the new single Till Your Mind Is Shining to coincide with the pink full moon. The track is the fourth song revealed from Gabriel’s forthcoming eleventh studio album O\I.
The version released first is the Dark-Side Mix, created by long-time collaborator Tchad Blake. A companion Bright-Side Mix by Mark “Spike” Stent is scheduled for release later in April to coincide with the new moon, continuing the distinctive lunar rollout strategy Gabriel established with his 2023 album I/O.
The release continues a project structure that has become one of Gabriel’s recent signature approaches, where songs are issued individually according to lunar cycles before the complete album arrives later in the year.
Gabriel wrote and produced Till Your Mind Is Shining himself, describing the song as one of the most accessible compositions from the new project. “To my ears it’s the closest I get to a pop song on this record,” Gabriel said. “The song began around a chord sequence which I liked and which felt quite poppy and playful, so I just kept on playing around with it till I had something.”
Gabriel explained that the piece connects him to the songwriting instincts he explored long before his career as a progressive rock innovator. “Of all the songs that I’ve written for I/O and O\I this is probably the poppiest for me,” he said. “It takes me back to my schooldays, in some ways, because before there was Genesis we were effectively trying to be songwriters more than musicians, pop songs or soul and R&B songs.”
The track reflects Gabriel’s long-standing creative method of allowing songs to evolve over extended periods. “Some elements of this are a few years old,” he said. “Most things I work on take a while to mature. I leave songs for a while and go and do something else and when I come back to them and they smell alive, I will want to complete them.”
Gabriel also praised the musicians involved in the recording sessions. “I really enjoyed singing this one, particularly the end, and I think the band had a good time playing it too. You can hear some wonderful performances from all the band. It was really a fun thing to create.”
Lyrically, Till Your Mind Is Shining explores themes that have appeared frequently throughout Gabriel’s later catalogue, including consciousness, empathy and humanity’s evolving relationship with technology.
“I’ve always been fascinated by explorations of consciousness and attempts to understand from where it originated,” Gabriel said. “In some ways it’s about opening up the mind and stepping inside to understand a little more of ourselves and the world we live in with the hope that we respond a little more responsibly and compassionately.”
The single artwork for the release comes from Japanese contemporary artist Tatsuo Miyajima, featuring his piece Warp Time With Warp Self, No.2. Miyajima gained international attention in the late 1980s after exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and is also known for the Kaki Tree Project, an art initiative centred on saplings descended from a persimmon tree that survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Gabriel said the artwork reflects the balance between technological development and human introspection explored in the song. “I really wanted an image that felt like a mixture of something cold and structured and informative as well as being soft and self-reflective,” Gabriel said. “There’s an interaction between the human and the mechanical AI world that we’re creating.”
O\I follows the release model Gabriel used for I/O in 2023, where each song debuted on a full moon with alternate mixes appearing on the new moon. The concept allows individual tracks to receive focused attention before the album eventually arrives in full.
The upcoming album is expected to be Gabriel’s eleventh studio record and the follow-up to I/O, which ended a 21-year gap between full-length studio releases following 2002’s Up.
Material for O\I partly emerged from the same extended recording period that produced I/O. Gabriel has spoken previously about having a substantial archive of unfinished songs developed over decades of studio experimentation.
The first single from O\I, Been Undone, arrived in January 2026 aligned with the wolf moon. It was followed by Put The Bucket Down in February and What Lies Ahead in March.
Gabriel first came to international attention as the original frontman of Genesis before launching a solo career in 1975. His 1986 album So became his most commercially successful release, driven by the global hit Sledgehammer, while later albums explored global music traditions, digital recording innovations and socially conscious themes.
Beyond music, Gabriel has also been active in humanitarian and technological projects, co-founding the WOMAD festival in 1982 and the human rights organisation Witness in 1992. His Real World label and studio complex have played a significant role in promoting global artists and collaborations.
With Till Your Mind Is Shining now released, further songs from O\I are expected to continue appearing throughout 2026 in sync with upcoming lunar phases.
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