Between 2002’s Up and 2023’s i/o, Peter Gabriel produced no new albums of pop/rock material. However, he remained active in other ways, one of which stemmed from the studio album New Blood.

This involved Gabriel’s re-working of his own songs via orchestral arrangements. Although the New Blood album didn’t arrive until 2011, Gabriel took this idea on tour in 2010, an outing from which this Taking the Pulse video stems.

Recorded September 26, 2010, Pulse finds Gabriel and the “New Blood Orchestra” outdoors at the Arena di Verona in Italy. The disc comes with 16 songs that spanned Gabriel’s career to that point.

2002’s Up provides “The Drop”, “Darkness” and “Signal to Noise”. 2000’s OVO - the soundtrack for a London show to commemorate the new millennium – brings “The Nest That Sailed the Sky” and “Downside Up”.

Back to 1992’s Us, we find “Digging in the Dirt”, “Blood of Eden”, and “Washing of the Water”. 1986’s hit album So delivers “Mercy Street”, “Red Rain”, “Don’t Give Up” and “In Your Eyes”.

Off of 1982’s Security, we locate “Rhythm of the Heat” and “San Jacinto”. 1980’s Peter Gabriel boasts “Intruder” and 1977’s Peter Gabriel provides “Solsbury Hill”.

Note that this doesn’t include the entire Verona concert. Indeed, Pulse covers only the second half of the show, as it omits the 13 songs in the evening’s first set.

In 2010, Gabriel released Scratch My Back, a collection of songs by others that he covered. With the exception of the set-closing “Wallflower” – a Security track - the opening half of the Verona performance focused on those Scratch tunes.

Why does Pulse omit all those songs? I don’t know, but it comes as a disappointment.

Gabriel previously released a March 2011 concert called Live Blood that brought a full set from London. It offered a smattering of Scratch songs but not the full complement found at the longer Verona show.

Though I’ve seen Gabriel multiple times since 1986, I skipped the US 2011 tour, partly because it became a limited run. Gabriel only played 11 US shows that year, and the closest was about 150 miles from me.

I often travel for events and have done so in the past for Gabriel, so that doesn’t fully explain my decision to skip the New Blood show. Instead, my decision stemmed mostly from a general disinterest in the format.

Orchestral arrangements of pop/rock songs just ain’t my thing. Nonetheless, I found myself curious to check out the performances here on Pulse and hear what I avoided almost 15 years ago.

Do I regret this decision? Not really, for although Pulse offers an intriguing experiment, I can’t claim it really connects with me musically.

Gabriel does adapt the songs for the new arrangements pretty well, largely because he picks songs that suit these instrumental alterations. Objectively, the tunes sound good in their altered iterations.

That said, can I claim I prefer any of these versions to the originals? No, as I think each and every one works better as previously recorded/released.

This makes Pulse moderately enjoyable musically from my POV but nothing more than that. In this era, Gabriel spent a lot of time burying the same bones, as noted by his lack of new material for more than two decades.

This means the orchestral renderings can seem more like someone trying to find inspiration via fresh views of his work but who doesn’t quite know where to go. Sometimes Gabriel’s excursions displayed a burst of life such as via his dynamic co-headlining tour with Sting in 2016 that featured both on stage together through the night.

Pulse doesn’t really show a challenged Gabriel. The orchestral versions of the songs fail to do a lot to separate themselves from the originals and that makes me wonder why he bothered.

Sure, these takes tend to run a little slower but otherwise, they don’t stand out as substantially different from what fans already know. Gabriel did little to truly reinvent the songs, so we get renditions that essentially just strip away the usual rock trappings to replace them with instruments associated with classical music.

Again, none of this makes the songs unenjoyable, though they can feel a little neutered at times. For examples, the more gentle take on “Digging in the Dirt” lacks the primal menace of the standard version.

Ultimately, I find the orchestral performances perfectly acceptable but will I ever want to play them again? Probably not, as I can’t imagine I’ll ever feel the urge to go with these versions instead of the originals.

At least that remains a question, as maybe someday I’ll decide I’m in the mood for Classical Pete. What I can say for sure is that I strongly doubt I’ll ever want to watch this concert again.

Some of that stems from the general monotony of the presentation. 60 years old in 2010, Gabriel slowed down over the years and was no longer the dynamic presence of his 30s or 40s.

Nonetheless, Gabriel compensated in other ways. Even if he didn’t dance and jump around as much, the Gabriel of his 60s and 70s still created a vivid and commanding stage presence.

Which we don’t see here, though this seems like an outgrowth of the format. Gabriel has worked with the same core band for decades, and they give him on-stage foils with whom to interact.

None of them appear here, so Gabriel enjoys no other performers who can easily mix with him during the show. With only a few exceptions, this leaves Gabriel firmly rooted in one spot at his microphone.

This strips Pulse of much of the appeal of a Gabriel concert. Always such a visual performer, the concert loses a lot of its impact given how “stuck in place” he remains.

Perhaps to compensate, director Anna Gabriel – Pete’s daughter – lays on lots of visual gimmicks. These come at us fast and furious right out of the gate, as Anna frequently cuts from the stage for images like sheet music on fire for “Rhythm of the Heat” or Pete buried in muck for “Digging in the Dirt”.

I get it. Pulse offers a largely uncompelling visual stage performance, so Anna likely felt the need to find ways to enliven the proceedings.

However, these choices mean we rarely get a sense for what it felt like to sit in the arena for the concert. Pulse becomes an uncomfortable attempt to mix concert footage with “artsy” choices that doesn’t work.

Even though the performance lacks much variety, I still wish Anna just relied on that material without all the flourishes. These become a distraction and make it impossible to follow the show in a normal manner.

Ultimately, Pulse offers a moderately interesting musical experiment but not one that I think does anything to really impress. We get vaguely intriguing orchestral updates on a mix of Peter Gabriel songs but nothing memorable, and the visual presentation of the concert doesn’t click.

Peter Gabriel: Taking the Pulse appears in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 on this Blu-ray Disc – mostly, as the picture occasionally went with a more narrow ratio to allow for two images side-by-side to appear.

I couldn’t find information on the equipment used to shoot Pulse, but one would assume it used hi-def cameras. At times, the show looked very good, but it lacked consistency.

Some of the iffy visuals related to obvious post-production choices. We got more than a few intentionally degraded shots for artistic reasons.

However, plenty of moments came across as oddly indistinct and “off” for reasons that seemed to stem from subpar cameras. Much of the piece offered appealing accuracy but it came with much more variation than I’d anticipate.

Thanks to some of those decisions, occasional instances of jagged edges and shimmering occurred. At least artifacts – unintentional ones, that is – remained absent.

The program’s palette leaned toward strong blues and ambers. These seemed overdone and heavy much of the time, though they occasional felt more appropriate.

Blacks came across as somewhat inky, and low-light shots could feel somewhat murky. Although it appeared clear some of the issues with the visuals resulted from conscious filmmaking decisions, that didn’t explain all – or even most – of them, so this turned into a concert with oddly unappealing picture quality.

Like all Peter Gabriel concert Blu-rays, Pulse objectively sounded great. Like all Peter Gabriel concert Blu-rays, I couldn’t help but question how much of the DTS-HD MA 5.1 actually came from the performance in question.

Gabriel concert recordings tend to show pretty obvious signs of being redone in the studio, as they simply don’t “sound live”. That continued to be the case with Pulse.

Maybe I’m wrong and maybe every note of Pulse came from that September 2010 evening in Verona. However, the audio simply felt much more “canned” than I’d expect from any live recording, much less one taped in a cavernous outdoor setting.

Again, in an objective sense, Pulse offered strong quality. Vocals came across as bold and clear.

Instruments showed solid clarity and distinctiveness, with taut highs and deep lows. If only they “sounded live”, I’d feel really happy.

Although the program’s visuals can’t resist the urge to wild, the 5.1 soundscape remained pleasingly restrained. This meant a nice stereo spread across the front that isolated elements in a positive manner.

A bit of instrumental reinforcement spread to the surrounds, but crowd noise became the prior factor in the back speakers. That worked for me, as this meant a soundfield that suited the setting.

If you don’t mind the less-than-live-sounding audio, this turns into an “A” mix. If you don’t like the canned vibe, it works less well, so I went with a “B”.

No extras appear on the disc but we do find a booklet with photos and credits. It adds little to the set.

Musically, Taking the Pulse comes with well-performed orchestral renderings of many Peter Gabriel songs, but I can’t claim any of them work better than their more rock-centered predecessors. The directorial choices involved also make this a less than involving concert presentation visually. The Blu-ray comes with erratic visuals, high quality but semi-“canned” audio and no supplements. Gabriel fans who like these alternate versions of his songs may enjoy Pulse but it left me cold.