petergabriel.com

"did he really have to make the choice between meetings with Mandela, Tutu and co and singing The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway?"

There are some great mixes of the Dub Colossus track Shima Edy beginning to flow in to the site, and we've had a few requests asking us to explain how the competition voting works, so here goes....

To vote in the competition you need to log-in to the site, then on each remix page you will see a button 'Add to comp chart' Clicking this button adds the remix into a list on your 'remixer page' which you can access from the log-in panel in the side bar. When you are on your 'remixer page' you can drag the tracks up and down in your competition list until you have the remixes in the right order. At the end of the competition we will combine all the charts and a winner will emerge.

Maybe it all sounds a little complex, but we created this system to try and get around the ratings war that has occasional broken out in other competitions. You can still rate and comment on these mixes as with any other, and the site generates it's top 20 each week, but the competition voting is a separate system.
Let us know how it works for you at webmaster@realworldremixed.com.

...oh and don't forget there's a Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin going to the winning mix in this vote.

Take a look behind the scenes of Peter's Writing Room with Richard Chappell at sonicstate.com.

Visitors to the Fan Attic will be relieved to find that Tina's update is at last in place (apologies from The Web Team) , bringing with it many answers, more questions and the chance to win a host of Big Blue BAll related items.

Remix Sima Edy by Dub Colossus and you could win one of two Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin iPod Speaker systems.

Dub Colossus in A Town Called Addis is An extraordinary collaboration between contemporary Ethiopian artists and Dubulah, bringing hidden gems from Addis Ababa back to England. Dub meets dreamy blues, hypnotic grooves, jazz piano and driving funk brass. Flavours of traditional Azmari singing, 70s reggae and Ethio-pop infuse one of the most alluring and soulful genres of African music.

The album recorded in Addis Ababa and Real World Studios will be available next month exclusively as a lossless download from the Bowers & Wilkins Music Club

Take a look at the film on the Children Of The Khmer artist page for a look at the world behind some of the entertainment at this weeks WOMAD Charlton Park. The film was shot by Peter Gabriel's engineer Richard Chappell on his visits to Cambodian Arts Association in Phnom Penn with whom he has been working to bring this group to the UK this summer.

Children Of The Khmer can also be seen with The Zawose Family at The World at St George's West as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Today on Mercedes-Benz TV? Yes, the car people.

This year's Womad will have the most eclectic line-up in its history, reports Tim Cumming...Womad 2008 has a lot to live up to as it enters its second quarter-century. In 2007, it moved to its current site at Charlton Park, a 17th-century pile in 4,500 idyllic acres near Malmesbury, Wiltshire.

This will be the second year at our new home in Wiltshire's Charlton Park.

It's a fantastic venue in a beautiful location. This year they have very kindly let us have more land and we've put measures in place to improve and enhance the site.

Musically, this is one of the best festivals we've ever had, and I don't always say that. There are very many I want to watch including Orchestra Baobab, Martha Wainwright and the rocking Algerian-French trio, Speed Caravan.

WOMAD is thrilled to announce that Peter Gabriel and Karl Wallinger will be taking part in the In Conversation sessions at this year's WOMAD Charlton Park. They will be playing tracks from upcoming Real World release, Big Blue Ball, and discussing how the project has evolved since its inception in the early '90s.

18 years in the making, Big Blue Ball is an album of wonderful and unexpected musical collaborations between The Holmes Brothers, Billy Cobham, Joseph Arthur, Iarla O'Lionaird, Deep Forest, Hukwe Zawose, Natacha Atlas, Papa Wemba, Sinead O'Connor, Joji Hirota, Guo Yue, Peter Gabriel, Karl Wallinger and more.

You can catch Peter and Karl from 16.15-17.00 on Friday in Little Sicily.

Toumani Diabaté, David D'Or, Celso Alvin from Monobloco, Wasis Diop, and members of Orchestra Baobab and Siyaya are also confirmed for this year's In Conversation sessions.

Get the Big Blue Ball CD in advance of its official release date (on July 28) - on sale in the on-site WOMAD Shop. Plus, buy the WOMAD Souvenir Programme and get a £2-off voucher!

If you've been intrigued by Peter Gabriel and Karl Wallinger's descriptions of Francis Bebey in the Big Blue Ball video and podcasts available on the site, this charming clip is for you.

Peter said of Francis Bebey, "We were hypnotised...he embodied wisdom in lots of ways and it was a real delight". Karl Wallinger, Peter's co-pilot in the Recording Week sessions talks of his amazement at the music Francis produced from his tiny, single note, bamboo flute, describing the sound as "one of the prime numbers of music".

Now available to download - over 23 minutes of music and conversation with Peter Gabriel and Karl Wallinger - featuring excerpts from all the tracks on Big Blue Ball.

We're happy to report that Peter and Meabh are proud parents of a second son.

Luc was born on Saturday 5th July, a bouncing 7lbs 2 oz. Big brother Isaac reports that mother, father and baby brother are all doing well, and requests that any congratulatory flowers people may contemplate sending be left to grow in the ground for all to enjoy.

The Peter Gabriel/Thomas Newman track 'Down To Earth' from the Wall • e soundtrack is now availably on iTunes USA.

You can hear Peter Gabriel, Karl Wallinger and Stephen Hague talking about Big Blue Ball on NPR's 'Weekend Edition Sunday' from the Sunday June 22 show.

"It was just like a musical health farm, really," Wallinger says. "There wasn't any considerations other than the sounds you heard in the room, which were always pretty extraordinary and played by people who had been mastering their instrument in whatever way for however many years. I think the collective musical years that had gone down amongst everybody there would have been well into the thousands."