Peter Gabriel ‘Sledgehammer’ video remastered in 4K

The fully restored and remastered video for “Sledgehammer” is available to view on Apple Music or download on iTunes

Peter Gabriel’s ground breaking video for the song ‘Sledgehammer’ has been newly remastered in high definition 4K by the team at Aardman and is available on Apple Music.

Aardman have used the original negatives for the remastering, working through the two thousand feet of film that was shot for the video. The end result of this meticulous process gives the new version of “Sledgehammer” the high definition clarity of 4K whilst remaining true to the vision of director Stephen R. Johnson and the spirit and distinctive look of the original video.

“The remastered video looks fantastic,” Gabriel says. “It brought it all back to life.”

“Sledgehammer” was the lead single from Gabriel’s fifth solo album, So, and its accompanying video became the most played video ever on MTV and won a raft of awards including nine MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year and Best British Video at the Brit Awards in 1987.

“No-one expected it to do quite what it did” says Gabriel, “I think we knew that it was very fresh, and that mix of hand made with its imperfections, when everything else was getting smoothed out and digitised, really made it stand out”.

“One of the things we love about ‘Sledgehammer’ is that it did have that slightly rough edge,” agrees David Sproxton, co-founder of Aardman. “CGI was just coming in so we were seeing some quite slick stuff coming out and this video had a different feel, a different roughness and a kind of magic to it.”

The success of the song, its video and the So album propelled Gabriel into the music mainstream. “It was my time in the sun as a pop star,” he says “which wasn’t my natural place but I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time” whilst it also had a profound effect on Aardman too, “It was an extraordinary conversation starter,” says David Sproxton, “a fantastic door opener from our point of view and a great calling card that had an impact on our career.”

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com