It started with a cover.

Following a suggestion from Co-Producer Greg Gibaldi, Gabriel began reworking a Stevie Wonder hit from the 80s. "What if we slowed it down, let the lyrics breathe, and make it sound richer?," said their collective conscience (really they can't remember who said what). So they slowed it down to nearly a third of the tempo of the original, and engineered it to sound like more of a Wonder song that was produced in the 70s. Part-Time Lover is the song, and it's re-imagining set the tone for No Time For Compromise-Gabriel's second independent studio album.

With a whole set of new ideas and influences, Gabriel has completely changed the sound of his music from the first record. "I knew a lot more about what I wanted sonically, and even though sometimes we didn't have the resources to get that authentic vintage sound I was hearing in my head, we really nailed the rhythm and blues feel that I was aiming for." But don't be fooled by that statement, this is not just an album of R&B songs, Compromise will go from the smokey blues, piano-driven Some Kind of Genius to the fuzzed out, driving rock of Veggie-Powered Femmes in the jump of a needle.

"I wanted to show people that I could completely change my sound. To accomplish this, I had to somewhat abandon my 'singer-songwriter' roots." Nowhere is this statement made more clear than when one listens to Island. This synth-rock uptempo song is given a strong pulse from the rapid-fire drumming of Byron Preston and the strong, agile bass line from Mike Alvarez. Cardinal Bay is another wild-card song whose creepy lyrics and dark undertones transport the listener to an alternate state of mind. Is it the story of a bad dream, or a harsh reality?

Yet Gabriel does touch upon those 'singer-songwriter' roots in the acoustic ballad Summer Rain and the playful vintage rock of When I'm Feeling Down. "One of my favorite parts of making this record was letting the musicians develop their own ideas during recording. I could've never described the tasteful drum part on The Finest Line that Byron laid down, or the Bonham-like barrage of percussion that Josh Bess recorded for Veggie-Powered Femmes. These, and many other parts were a product of collaboration, not the product of one mind."  

Compromise covers a wide variety of styles, yet it is all interconnected with the strong tenor of Gabriel, a voice whose timbre has noticeably changed since the first record. A number of factors went into this change-maturation, recording technique, and possibly the biggest factor was an elective tonsillectomy. "When i recorded From Print to Script, my tonsils were the size of grapes, and I would constantly be getting sick from them. After having them removed, I feel much more healthy and my voice literally has more room to breathe."

Surprisingly, Compromise is composed of DIY techniques when it comes to recording. Besides the live studio recording of Melody Gardot's My One and only Thrill, a majority of the album was recorded in Gabriel's and Gibaldi's home studios. Despite this, no listener would be able to tell definitively that this wasn't all recorded in a professional studio. "Contrary to what you may think, buying the equipment ourselves freed us up to shape and perfect the sound rather than doing it all at a professional studio. Studio time is expensive, and you often have to settle because you run out of funds."

From conception to completion, No Time For Compromise took nearly a year and a half to finish. If you ask Gabriel and Gibaldi about all that time, they wouldn't have done it any other way. "We didn't compromise despite wanting to finish earlier. The album title was born from our experience of recording and our approach to the album.