Tag: Pink Floyd

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Steven Wilson – The Overview – Album Review Part Three: ‘The Overview’ 

This is an analysis of the second half, and title track, of Steven Wilson’s eighth solo album, The Overview. For an introduction to the album, click here. For an analysis of the first half of the album, ‘Objects Outlive Us’, click here.

The Earth Seen from Apollo 17. Source: Wikimedia Commons

THE OVERVIEW

Perspective  

Perspective begins with radio transmissions from deep space. They sound like the radio transmissions at the opening of another space rock song, ‘Astronomy Domine’ from Pink Floyd’s 1967 album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. In March 2024, Wilson said in a YouTube interview with Rick Beato that one of his favourite albums, by Pink Floyd – ‘still my favourite band’ – is Ummagumma (1969), which includes a live version of the song (although without the spoken words). When The Piper was released, Pink Floyd were managed by Andrew King and Peter Jenner. The latter read out the names of planets, stars and galaxies through a megaphone.

‘Perspective’ includes spoken word commentary from Wilson’s wife Rotem, just like the two previous albums, The Harmony Codex and The Future Bites. She names various cosmic phenomena, and their distances from Earth. Wilson used a website called scaleofuniverse.com to provide scientific facts. The distances involved are hard to comprehend – see below:

A megametre = 10^6 = ten to the power of six = ten with six zeroes = 1,000,000 m = a million m

A gigametre = 10^9 = ten to the power of nine = 10 with nine zeroes = 1,000,000,000 m = a billion m 

Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System and Callisto is Jupiter’s second largest moon:

Size beyond one megametre 
Ten to the power of six 
Ganymede, Callisto

A still from The Overview Film by Miles Skarin

Rotem’s voice is tuned down in pitch. Wilson told The Rockonteurs podcast that he wanted her voice to sound dispassionate, and ‘emotionally flat… to recite these scientific facts.’ He had in mind HAL, the talking computer in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the spacecraft Discovery One, who memorably says, ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.’

The red camera eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Source; Wikimedia Commons

What intrigues Wilson is not just the scientific facts about the space phenomena that Rotem describes, but also the effect such facts have on human consciousness. In the BFI roundtable discussion to launch the album, he said that the sense of perspective shows who and what we are in relation to the vastness of the universe. He referred to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and the Total Perspective Vortex. This machine allows the user to take in the whole universe, by extrapolating ‘the whole of creation… from one small piece of fairy cake.’ Built to annoy his wife, when the inventor turned the machine on, she saw ‘in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it… to [the inventor’s horror] the shock completely annihilated her brain.’ Despite this, the inventor had proved to his satisfaction that ‘the one thing [we] cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.’ The machine was later used as a punishment; the first person to survive it was the Betelgeusian, Zaphod Beeblebrox, who promptly ate the fairy cake.

A Still from The Overview Film by Miles Skarin

The opening music is the most electronic on the album, following on from the more electronic sound of parts of The Future Bites and The Harmony Codex. Wilson told John Earls of NME that it’s something that the English electronic duo Autechre might have produced. Wilson isn’t the first musician to use electronic music on a prog rock album. Pink Floyd opened The Dark Side of the Moon with ‘On the Run’, which used the VCS3 analogue synthesiser to create the electronic sequence. Roger Waters can be seen manipulating the synth sounds, cigarette in hand, on Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii (1972; re-released in 2025 as Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII with new mixes by Wilson).

EMS Putney VCS 3 Synthesiser, of the Type Used by Pink Floyd on The Dark Side of the Moon. Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

The fiercely rhythmic, jerky synth tracks and electronic drums – all played and programmed by Wilson – contrast with Rotem’s deadpan delivery of scientific facts. At the same time, they create a futuristic soundscape that suggests that science is more dominant on the second side of the album. Wilson told Dave Everley of Prog that Objects Outlive Us is more of a ‘human’ story, whereas in Everley’s phrase, the title track ‘evokes the sparseness and coldness of space.’ At around 2:00, slower, more human-sounding chords begin to take over. We hear Wilson’s voice at around 2:30, albeit partly stripped of its humanity in a wordless vocalise, transposed up an octave, so that it sounds more like a synthesiser than a human voice.

A Beautiful Infinity I/ Borrowed Atoms/A Beautiful Infinity II  

The protagonist is now on the other side of the universe, reflecting on his life back on Earth. He considers the time it takes light to travel long distances across space to reach the Earth; we see stars as they were hundreds or thousands of years ago. There’s a strong parallel with Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar. The line ‘Each moment for me is a lifetime for you’ could apply to the film’s plot. It stars Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper, a widowed former NASA test pilot who leaves a devastated Earth on a mission to find other habitable planets, leaving his young daughter Murph behind. Cooper and his crew travel remarkably close to a black hole called Gargantua. The scientific adviser to the film, Kip Thorne, wrote in his 2014 book The Science of Interstellar that time reaches a complete halt at the surface of a black hole.


A Still from The Overview Film by Miles Skarin

When Cooper travels near Gargantua, he ages only a few hours while Murph, on Earth, ages eight decades. There’s a profoundly moving moment when he receives a transmission from his daughter, and he realises that he has missed 23 years of his daughter’s life. They are now the same age. When he left Earth, she was a child. Wilson encapsulates the emotion of this moment in the simple but deeply poetic line, ‘Back on Earth, my loving wife’s been dead for years.’ Although the title track concentrates on science, there is room for humanity, too. The protagonist’s distance from Earth puts everything in perspective: ‘what seemed important [is] now like dust inside the squall.’ There’s perhaps an echo of the dust storms in Interstellar, which make Earth uninhabitable.

‘A Beautiful Infinity I’ is the first time we hear Craig Blundell on drums. He plays in a more robust, rockier style than Russell Holzman on Objects Outlive Us; both drummers are superb. Wilson’s vocals are treated with a delay effect; the final part of each phrase is repeated, ‘from here… from here… from here.’ Pink Floyd used this effect on ‘Us and Them’ from The Dark Side of the Moon to add emotional depth. Wilson used the same effect on ‘Arriving Somewhere But Not Here’ on Deadwing (2005).   

The slide guitar adds to the Floydian feeling of the track, but the guitar solo isn’t Gilmour-esque. Wilson asked Niko Tsonev to play the solo – his only solo on the album – in a style that combined the classic with the contemporary.’ The acoustic guitar, played by Wilson, is an Ovation in Nashville tuning. He used the same guitar and tuning on ‘Chimera’s Wreck’ from the 2022 Porcupine Tree album Closure/Continuation. He told Amit Sharma of Total Guitar that he used his Ovation guitar in Nashville tuning – the lowest four strings are tuned up an octave, creating ‘a very crystalline, musical box kind of tone.’

‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’

The ‘Borrowed Atoms’ section begins at around 2:40 with a piano break. The delicate musical backdrop of piano and synthesiser accompanies one of the most poetic moments on the album, with the words ‘The clouds have no history’, and ends ten lines later with the words ‘Is this a dream?’ Wilson’s lyrics express profound complexity in simple language. He reverses the ‘pathetic fallacy’, a poetic device where human emotions or characteristics are attributed to nature. (A good example is I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth, which describes the daffodils as human dancers, ‘tossing their heads in sprightly dance.’) Wilson does the opposite, stressing that nature has no human emotion: ‘The clouds have no history/And the sea feels no sorrow.’ This is another aspect of the album’s perspective theme. Nature ignores us, so we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. Wilson says our atoms are just ‘borrowed’; when we die, they return to the universe. This is ambiguous – if our atoms are only ‘borrowed’, we are insignificant, but we should also take good care of our atoms, as we only have temporary stewardship. Wilson’s meditation on the nature of selfhood ends with a moving expression of existential angst, warmly sung, ‘Is this a dream?’

 ‘A Beautiful Infinity II’ begins at around 4:00 with the words ‘There’s no reason for any of this.’ Wilson’s personal view – with which some would disagree – is that the universe was created out of chaos, not by design or by a supreme being,  

‘There’s no reason for any of this 
Just a beautiful infinity 
No design and no one at the wheel 
Just an existential mystery.’ 

The idea of no one being at the wheel is reminiscent of ‘The Creator has a Master Tape’ from the Porcupine Tree album In Absentia (2002). We discover that ‘the creator had a master tape’, which suggests design, only to find that – ironically – ‘he left it in a cab.’ 

After the massed backing vocals of Wilson and Randy McStine, there are some whimsical, almost scatting vocals from Wilson at around 4:05, in the same style as on ‘Harridan’, the opening track of Closure/Continuation. At around 5:00, McStine closes the track with a richly analogue Moog solo.

Infinity Measured In Moments  

This section is the climax of side two. Rotem Wilson returns, reciting another list of space statistics to create a further sense of awe about the vastness of the universe. Blundell’s drumming here is impressive. He adds subtle shifts to the rhythmic patterns here, building the epic feel of the track and bringing a human feel to the electronic parts. The track is built around arpeggiating analogue synth patterns, just as Wilson built up the title track on The Harmony Codex. Wilson’s vocals are warm and rich, multitracked in unison rather than complex harmonies, as often in his Porcupine Tree songs. McStine provides backing vocals and a guitar solo at 2:15, which combines an angular, modern feel with the classic uplifting rock solo.

The Inner Sleeve of In Absentia by Lasse Hoile

It’s followed by handclaps (Wilson) and ukulele (McStine). Porcupine Tree fans may recall a similar effect on ‘Trains’ (In Absentia, 2002), a fan favourite with over 38 million plays on Spotify at the time of writing. There is some very Peter Hook-style bass in this section. Wilson is a massive fan of Hook’s former band Joy Division, listing the band’s debut single Transmission (1979), in his book Limited Edition of One as one of his top 100 tracks. At around 3:20, the track reaches a climax with Adam Holzman’s Moog solo, the first real opportunity Holzman has on the album to show the warmth and virtuosity of his jazz-tinged playing, which was a real highlight of The Overview Tour that came to London in May 2025.

Permanence  

The final section of the album is a contemplative instrumental, beautiful, ambient and ethereal. We are now floating in space, billions of light-years away from Earth. The encounter with the alien on the moor at the beginning of the album now seems an infinite time ago.     

Theo Travis. Photo by Mariia Korneeva

Theo Travis plays the soprano sax solo. Travis worked on some of Wilson’s solo albums, and the two worked together on Travis’ 2024 solo album Aeolus. That album is a one-hour Theo Travis piece for duduk; the instrument Travis played on ‘Beautiful Scarecrow’ on The Harmony Codex. Wilson produced the recordings and created soundscapes from Travis’s alto flute playing. That album is gentle, meditative, introspective and quietly mesmerising. Travis’s playing has the same effect on ‘Permanence.’  

The section begins with the evocative sound of the electric piano, processed through a reverse echo. Two new instruments are added. The first is the celeste or celesta, a keyboard instrument that looks like a small upright piano. Like a piano, a hammer is operated by pressing a key, but instead of striking strings, the hammer hits a metal plate like that of a glockenspiel. Appropriately, in the context of this track, the name means ‘celestial’ or ‘heavenly.’ The second instrument is the Moog synthesiser on which Wilson created a sound like the theremin.

In the film by Miles Skarin, we move gradually closer to a green shoot of life. An out-of-focus creature gradually comes into focus. Our old friend, the alien from Objects Outlive Us, intently investigates the green shoot. We hadn’t forgotten that the alien exists. There is hope after all.  

This post was updated at 18.02 on 29 December 2025 to correct the explanation of the terms megametre and gigametre, which had incorrectly referred to kilometres (km) rather than metres (m)

Links

Steven Wilson – The Overview – Album Review Part Two: ‘Objects Outlive us’
Steven Wilson – The Overview – Album Review – Part One – Introduction

Sources

Beato, Rick, Steven Wilson Discusses His Favorite [Sic] Albums (Rick Beato 2, YouTube 24/03/34) 
Kemp, Gary and Pratt, Guy, Gary Kemp album special with Steven Wilson (The Rockonteurs, YouTube 26/01/25) 
Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Omnibus Edition, Boekerij 2018)
Earls, John, Steven Wilson: “I’ve tried to reinvent the classic rock guitar solo”  (NME 18/02/25) 
Everley, Dave, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Prog, April 2025)
Images from The Overview film by Miles Skarin of Crystal Spotlight
Beato, Rick, Steven Wilson Discusses His Favorite [Sic] Albums (Rick Beato 2, YouTube 24/03/34) 
Kemp, Gary and Pratt, Guy, Gary Kemp album special with Steven Wilson (The Rockonteurs, YouTube 26/01/25) 
Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Omnibus Edition, Boekerij 2018)
Earls, John, Steven Wilson: “I’ve tried to reinvent the classic rock guitar solo”  (NME 18/02/25) 
Everley, Dave, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Prog, April 2025) 
Sharma, Amit, Steven Wilson on Porcupine Tree’s triumphant return and his love of “guitar players that can play one note and break your heart” (Total Guitar, August 2022)
Wilson, Steven, Limited Edition of One (Constable, April 2022)

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Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets – Live Review

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets at Manchester Apollo

Wednesday 19 June 2024

O2 Apollo Manchester

****

Early Pink Floyd imaginatively reinvented

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets at Manchester Apollo

Last Wednesday morning, the first tickets went on sale for performances in Manchester by a music legend/national treasure now in his eighties, Sir Paul McCartney. That evening, another musical institution – also in his eighties – Nick Mason, was in town with his band A Saucerful of Secrets. Mason said the first time they played in Manchester, Pink Floyd were on the bill with another music legend, Jimi Hendrix. That was in 1967, and Mason quipped that only three people in Wednesday night’s audience would remember that.

It would have been easy for Mason to have retired from performing years ago, and spend his time driving his collection of vintage cars. There are plenty of Pink Floyd tribute acts on the touring circuit, not least The Australian Pink Floyd who bring stunning musicianship and antipodean artwork to Manchester Apollo every year on their annual tour.

Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd Poster for their Performance in Manchester in November 1967
Poster for the Jimi Hendrix/Pink Floyd tour in 1967 from JHE 2nd UK Tour Blog

When Mason was curating the Pink Floyd exhibition Their Mortal Remains, which opened at the V&A in London in May 2017 and then toured Europe and North America, he began to worry that he could spend the rest of his life cataloguing his past rather than playing music. At the same time, guitarist Lee Harris (The Blockheads) had approached Guy Pratt who had played bass on several Pink Floyd tours after Roger Waters left. The result was a new band, called Saucerful of Secrets after The Floyd’s second album from 1968. Mason’s band started touring in 2018 and last came to Manchester in May 2022. Mason avoided comparisons with other Pink Floyd tribute acts by only playing less familiar music from the pre-Dark Side of the Moon era, sometimes playing songs that Pink Floyd rarely if ever played live. He also asked his band to improvise during live performances, rather than re-creating the original songs note-for-note. So the show was a mixture of improvisation and nostalgia.

The evening began unfashionably early at precisely 19.30, following a countdown of the kind used to launch a rocket (‘T minus 3 minutes and 3 seconds’… etc.) that introduced the band to the stage. The opening version of Astronomy Domine demonstrated the band’s intent not to replicate the original, with loose-limbed drumming, improvised guitar chords and an additional guitar solo. Pink Floyd’s second single See Emily Play included a new keyboard solo and an instrumental jam. A fascinating early highlight of the show was Remember Me, a demo which Pink Floyd performed at the Melody Maker National Beat Contest in 1965 (an early form of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for those who don’t remember it, but without the dancing dogs).

News of the Melody Maker National Beat Contest from August 1967
A clip from Melody Maker provided by Brian Long to the Radio London website

The band, still called The Pink Floyd, failed to reach the semi-final, losing out to The St Louis Union, Phil Hunter and the Jaguars, the Ravens and the Poachers. Mason quipped that this spectacular failure set back the band’s career by five years, although in reality by late 1970 they had their first UK number one with Atom Heart Mother.

Poignantly, Syd Barrett’s vocals original vocals were used, while the band added instrumental parts and backing vocals. Barrett’s family provided some lovely images of the tragic hero, whose story was told recently in the moving documentary Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd.

Another highlight of the first half also seemed to reference Barrett, the song If which included the line, ‘If I go insane, please don’t put your wires in my brain’. Guitarist and vocalist Gary Kemp (introduced by Mason as ‘New Romantic turned Kray brother turned Prog Rock God’) provided a gorgeous acoustic guitar solo while Guy Pratt added a melodic bass line and Beken brought a warm keyboard wash. Fierce drumming from Mason led to the Atom Heart Mother suite, starting with evocative slide guitar from Lee Harris, who also provided a thunderous solo in the funky section later in the piece. A brief reprise of If ended the song.

There was humour when Mason who took a spoof phone call from Roger Waters who used to play the gong in the live version of Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Mason told ‘Roger’ that he was just watching Coronation Street with some friends and had no idea where Roger’s gong was. The band played a magnificent version of the song; there was a new keyboard improvisation above the opening guitar riff, and the track was played at a slower speed – anthemic but still psychedelic. A new, almost middle eastern-sounding guitar solo was added then another extended jam. Pratt added a gong part before the song unwound itself with sound effects and waves of electronics from Kemp on guitar. A section that was almost musique concrète faded into silence before the opening theme returned. As the track ended, an audience member shouted a satisfied, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Well, exactly!

  • Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets at Manchester Apollo

The second half, like the first, was introduced by ambient music and speech. We heard the infamous quote from a BBC TV interview in 1967 when Hans Keller asked Roger Waters, ‘Why has it all got to be so terribly loud?’ The opening song, which wasn’t so terribly loud, was The Scarecrow from Pink Floyd’s debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, played for the first time by Mason’s band on this tour, with its whimsical vocal line reminding us how strange some of Barrett’s melodies were, in songs that appeared simple on the surface. Fearless, from Meddle was introduced in a much jazzier version, with a languorous keyboard solo from Dom Beken. Childhood’s End from Obscured by Clouds featured a lovely, heavy blues guitar solo from Lee Harris. In Lucifer Sam, also from The Piper, Pratt and Gary Kemp almost locked horns as they faced each other in a heavy rock’n’roll version, whilst Beken added a bluesy Hammond solo.

But the highlight of the second half was the final song, Echoes (Meddle), first introduced to the band’s set on the previous tour. The distinctive piano note at the very start raised an immediate cheer; this was a majestic but vital version of a song that showed Pink Floyd beginning to move towards the rich style of The Dark Side of the Moon, while still embracing some of their early psychedelia. There was a stunning funky section where Beken on Hammond organ again and Kemp on delicate lead guitar Kemp duetted above superbly syncopated drumming from Mason. The song attracted a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.

The encore featured two songs. First, familiar swirling winds introduced a blistering version of the instrumental One of These Days (Meddle) in which Pratt’s bass descended into the stygian depths, and Mason’s stentorian drums seemed to be knocking on the gates of Hell. The concert ended with an enthralling version of A Saucerful of Secrets, moving from an avant -garde, almost King Crimson-like anxiety with skittering guitars and spidery keyboard lines – accompanied by Mason’s military drumming – to a calm, anthemic section, a secular wordless hymn, with a melodic bass solo from Pratt and a timeless guitar solo from Kemp. A stunning ending to an excellent evening.

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Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) – Documentary Review

When art briefly triumphed over commerce in album cover design

****

The writer Ian MacDonald described the Beatles song Revolution 9 as ‘the world’s most widely distributed avant-garde artefact.’ The collage of sound, influenced more by German experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen than by Chuck Berry, sneaked into many homes under the anonymous white cover of The Beatles’ White Album in 1968. Another piece of contemporary abstract art sneaked into countless homes in 1973 and has continued to do so ever since; the cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It was designed by the company Hipgnosis, founded in the late 1960s by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. The image of light refracted through a prism has become one of the most recognisable designs of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, not least because the album has sold tens of millions of copies across the world. As Liam Gallagher points out in this film, this was a way of bringing art to the masses at a time when art in rock music was more important than commerce.

Hipgnosis is a play on the words ‘hip’ (meaning ‘cool’ in 60s hip parlance) and ‘gnosis’ meaning mystic knowledge. There is some disagreement amongst the contributors to this fascinating documentary as to who came up with the name, but it seems to have come from graffiti written by Pink Floyd’s early singer and guitarist, Syd Barrett. Thorgerson and Powell grew up in Cambridge with members of Pink Floyd, before moving to London and dropping some ‘tabs of acid’ which unlocked their creative juices in the new partnership. All three surviving members of Pink Floyd are interviewed in the film, as are Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and Graham Gouldman of 10cc. This satisfyingly complete roster of rock royalty is joined by Powell himself who provides an insightful running commentary (Thorgerson died in 2013).

The film’s director Anton Corbijn, perhaps best known for his 2007 Joy Division biopic Control, films the interviews recorded for this documentary in stark black and white. This means that they match the extensive black and white photographic and movie archive footage of Hipgnosis at work which is one of the highlights of the film. The narrative is simple but effective, mostly consisting of an analysis of many of the covers that Hipgnosis designed. The covers themselves bring a particular joy, shown in glorious detail on the big screen. They were from the days before digital manipulation meant that almost any image could be created on a computer, and artificial intelligence could design limitless new ones. In the glory days of Hipgnosis, if you needed an image of a sheep sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch on a beach in Hawaii, you had to fly to Hawaii. And get the couch specially made. And borrow the only sheep in the area specially for the shoot. And sedate the sheep… All for a tiny image that was much smaller than the lettering on the cover of 10cc’s 1980 album Look Hear? Sometimes, it could be argued that all the effort wasn’t worth it, as in the case of Wings Greatest which does look as if it has been photoshopped rather than created half way up a mountain.

The cover of 10cc’s album Look Hear? Look carefully and you can see the sheep

For the music fan, part of the fun of this film lies in the tiny details; being able to guess which classic cover is coming up next by listening closely to the music which introduces it. And although many of the stories will be well known to fans of the bands, there are small but exciting revelations; we hear that Syd Barrett went to the offices of Hipgnosis before he went to the studio to see Pink Floyd recording Wish You Here when – tragically – the other members of the band didn’t recognise him at first. Another enlightening detail is not just hearing the often-told story of the flying pig escaping its moorings during the photo shoot for Pink Floyd’s Animals, but seeing it happen on archive film.

Some of the work of Hipgnosis was critical of the music business, perhaps most famously illustrated in the photograph on the cover of Wish You Were Here of a man who is being ‘burned’ by the record company executive who is shaking hands with him. But Hipgnosis became part of the music industry and its excesses, charging tens of thousands of dollars for an album cover, travelling across the world on photo shoots, touring with bands and flying to America by Concorde. Ultimately however, whilst spending so much record company money, Powell and Thorgerson created a body of work that transcended commerce and became art. The last word of the film is left to Noel Gallagher. Having celebrated the work of Hipgnosis throughout the documentary, he is asked why he never used them to design one of his own album covers. He wryly admits that he couldn’t afford them.

Reference: Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties by Ian McDonald (Fourth Estate 1994)

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Animals by Pink Floyd (2018 Surround Sound Remix) – Album Review

Cover of Animals 2018 Remix by Pink Floyd

****

New 5.1 mix places the listener in the middle of a dystopian farmyard.

Pink Floyd recorded Animals in 1976 and it was released early the following year. It sits uncomfortably in the band’s catalogue, preceded by the pristine, aching absences of Wish You Were Here and followed by the sprawling psychodrama of The Wall. The production is very different from other classic Pink Floyd albums recorded in the 1970s. The Dark Side of the Moon is warm, rich, multi-layered. Wish You Here is clean, sparse and still sounds contemporary. The Wall sounds luxuriant and epic, matching the album’s vast ambition and narrative sweep. In contrast, Animals is brutal and – by Pink Floyd’s standards – unvarnished.

So why is Animals, sonically so different from its peers? The band’s drummer Nick Mason, in his witty and revealing memoir Inside Out provides some clues. The band had just built its own studios at Britannia Row in North London. The walls were covered in lignacite, a breeze-block like material which efficiently absorbed sound but made the studio look, in Roger Waters’ words, like a ‘prison’. Mason says the studio, with its cramped control room had, ‘the grim and claustrophobic qualities of a nuclear bunker – although obviously much more stressful…’

The band had also abandoned the luxury of using a tape operator/expert engineer, hoping to bring a new immediacy to the recording process. Incidentally, when Mason and Waters engineered the recording of a guitar solo by David Gilmour they managed to erase it. The austere approach and atmosphere created, in Mason’s words, ‘a workman-like mood’ in the studio.

The simplicity of the mix was perhaps also influenced by external factors. Punk rock had launched a vicious but perhaps necessary assault on the excesses of prog rock. Pink Floyd, darlings of counter-culture in the 1960s were now seen as irrelevant dinosaurs. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols famously sported a Pink Floyd tee-shirt with the words ‘I hate ‘ scrawled with apparent venom above the band’s name (although he later admitted that this was more a piece of theatre than a statement of fact.) Pink Floyd’s response – perhaps unconscious – was to create an album that is as dark and cynical as anything that punk produced. Adopting the anthropomorphic satire of George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm, the album divides humankind into dogs, pigs and sheep. While Johnny Rotten claimed to be an anarchist, Waters created a dystopian view of society that was equally bleak. And while Rotten sang that the ‘The fascist regime…made [the Queen] a moron’, Waters addressed moral arbiter Mary Whitehouse as a ‘charade’ and a ‘house proud town mouse.’

It is perhaps strange that Animals hasn’t been released in a surround sound mix until now. Pink Floyd pioneered the use of surround sound in a live setting – according to Far Out magazine the world’s first ever surround sound concert was performed by the band in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in May 1967. (The band had a quadraphonic sound system which used the wonderfully-named Azimuth Co-ordinator, a kind of joystick, to send the sound flying around the audience’s heads). Eventually in 2018 Waters announced a surround sound mix of the album, which was further delayed until 2022 due to a dispute about the liner notes. Ironically, the 16-page booklet that comes with the DVD-audio of the album reviewed here doesn’t include liner notes.

As well as the 5.1 mix, the DVD includes the 2018 stereo remix, both by James Guthrie. It also features the original 1977 stereo mix by Brian Humphries. The remix strips back the original, making it at times even simpler. For instance on the two short Pigs on the Wing tracks that bookend the album, Waters’ vocals are much drier than on the original 1997 mix. This gives a greater sense of emotional intimacy to the only songs that provide an escape from the violent dystopia of the rest of the album.

The surround sound experience on the DVD is enhanced by the gorgeous photograph on the TV screen which updates the classic image from the original album cover, which looks like an Old Master oil painting perhaps from the Dutch School of the seventeenth century. It’s replaced by a luminous contemporary portrait of Battersea Power Station, which has recently re-opened as a shopping and leisure destination with new apartments. Cleverly, the lighting of the photograph gradually changes as the songs progress.

The longest track on the album is Dogs, the only one which is co-written by Gilmour with Waters, all the others being written by Waters alone. The first part of the song features one of Gilmour’s best vocal performance – raw, cynical, bleak. The surround sound mix places the main band either in front or sometimes at the sides. The mix builds on this solid platform and highlights the two double-guitar solos that appear in the rear speakers. But the visceral single guitar solo remains resolutely in front. The revelation here is Rick Wright’s keyboards – they appear in the rear speakers with a new clarity, or fly across the surround sound image. Their most imaginative use is in the extended instrumental section played as the protagonist is dragged down to his death by drowning. While Mason provides a measured rock beat, Wright’s keening keyboards provide anguished and mesmeric Tangerine Dream-like instrumental fireworks which are all the more effective for being isolated behind the listener. The track ends with Waters taking over vocal duties from Gilmour, with a repeated mantra beginning with the words ‘Who was…’ at the beginning of each line, almost a photographic negative of Eclipse the final track of The Dark Side of the Moon. The epic richness of the latter contrasts with the bitterness of the former track with Waters’ vocals so heavily compressed they leave the listener emotionally drained.

Pigs demonstrates the efficacy of the new surround sound mix – instruments are well separated, making them much clearer than in the original stereo mix. The guitar is now so well-defined that you can almost touch it, and the vocals feel much more intimate, particularly in the chorus. The sound world is unremittingly bleak; the synths as they drift downwards seem to provide a glimpse into the abyss. If there is a weakness in the track, it’s the extended instrumental section which is rather repetitive and lacking in musical interest, and now feels dated with its use of a vocoder. The track picks up again however with swirling keyboards which perhaps imitate the flying pig, and an almost funky third verse. Gilmour’s guitar solo is one of the simplest he has ever played, focused, anguished and less bluesy than his usual style.

The last long track on the album, Sheep begins with the listener in a field of those ruminant animals, soon joined by Wright’s gloriously luminous keyboards in the rear speakers. Waters provides a simple bassline and appropriately histrionic vocals which become dehumanised as they morph into synth parts. Gilmour’s guitar parts are brutally funky. The instrumental section marks a return of the drowning section from Dogs, with the ‘stone’ that drags down the dying man haunting the mix. A majestic synth duet leads to the ‘prayer’ section as the song drifts into a reverie of contemplation. The spoken prayer – much clearer now than in the original mix – is a vicious parody of Psalm 23 (‘The Lord is my shepherd…’). And while the sheep at first seem to accept that they will become ‘lamb cutlets’, it soon becomes clear that a time of quiet prayer – ‘quiet reflection, and great dedication’ – gives the humble sheep chance to rise up against the dogs. The sheep attack one of the dogs, ‘Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream’; the final word ‘scream’ is suitably terrifying in surround sound. The track ends with the death of the dogs, Gilmour’s shimmering and triumphant guitar giving the track an epic feeling of rock’n’roll celebration.

There’s a lot to admire in this new surround sound mix, which gives the album a new clarity and foregrounds many of the instrumental parts. The raw power of the album is undeniable. But perhaps it’s still a little difficult to love.

Bibliography

Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason (Weidenfeld & Nicolson September 2011)

John Lydon: I don’t hate Pink Floyd by Sean Michaels The Guardian February 2010

Revisiting the moment Pink Floyd delivered the world’s first surround sound concert by Joe Taysom Far Out Magazine May 2020

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Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets – Live Review

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets at Manchester Apollo

Friday 6 May 2022

O₂ Apollo Manchester

Nick Mason’s band are more than just an echo of the past

*****

Pink Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason announced that the band shared a stage in Manchester with Jimi Hendrix 55 years ago in 1967. It seems unlikely that the original band will ever tour again, not least because the band would no longer be complete – keyboard player Rick Wright went to the great gig in the sky in 2008. After curating the exhibition Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at the V&A in 2017, Mason was worried that he would spend the rest of life as a branch of English Heritage, lovingly tending to a past that had happened decades before. Instead, he started a new band, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, to play some of Pink Floyd’s music. He deliberately avoided playing any music from the band’s classic run of albums that began with Dark Side of the Moon in 1973. Instead, he decided only to play songs from the early Syd Barrett era, and some material from the later albums after David Gilmour joined the band. The most recent album the band now perform is Meddle from 1971, including for the first time on this tour the epic 20-minute track Echoes which provides the title of the tour.

Mason is the only member of Pink Floyd to play in his Saucerful of Secrets band, although bass player Guy Pratt did play with the band in the 1990s after original bass player Roger Waters left. Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet sings and plays guitar – at one point Mason joked that Kemp had expected to play with Roger Waters and that Mason himself had expected to play with Tony Hadley. Lee Harris, previously of Ian Dury’s band The Blockheads plays guitar and composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Dom Beken is on keyboards.

It would have been tempting for the band to be a high quality tribute band, like The Australian Pink Floyd who last played at the Apollo in November 2021. They give audiences the chance to hear classic Pink Floyd songs live, played to a very high standard. But Mason’s band offer something different and fresh, bringing new life to music that is over 50 years old. The songs are delivered with propulsive enthusiasm, sometimes approaching joy. None of the band members attempt to recreate the exact sound of the original band – except Mason himself who is playing his own parts. Whilst they are respectful to the original songs, the other band members add their own touches, often subtle but always inspiring. Guy Pratt provides lovely, melodic basslines and can also drive the band to be deliciously funky at times. He also provides heartfelt vocals. Gary Kemp brings his acting skills to his vocals, colouring the sound to match each song. He’s also a fine guitarist. Lee Harris on guitar is a superb player, bringing his own style rather than merely copying David Gilmour’s soulful string-bending or Syd Barrett’s eccentric playing. Dom Beken contributes excellent keyboard solos that are more blues-tinged than the jazz stylings of Rick Wright.

The highlight of the first set was a tightly-constructed series extracts from the Atom Heart Mother suite from the 1970 album of the same name. It was bookended by If from the same album, a beautifully delicate ballad on which Kemp and Pratt shared vocals, which includes the incredibly moving line ‘If I go insane, please don’t put your wires in my brain.’ The highlight of the second set was Echoes, which forms side two of Meddle. This is a fascinating track in the original Pink Floyd catalogue, the first time they had successfully created a long-form prog track after the departure of Syd Barrett, pointing forward to the new style that would mature of the next album Dark Side of the Moon. Nick Mason’s band at times turned it into a psychedelic track so that fitted perfectly with the other songs in the gig. There was a wonderfully funky swagger to the passage around six minutes in, and near the end a lovely, spacious guitar jam. Another second-set highlight was the instrumental Interstellar Overdrive, which the original band played in Manchester in 1969. Guy Pratt said Manchester is his favourite city – his son is at university here – and for a brief moment he and Lee Harris improvised around another song associated with Manchester, Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.

The Encore began with a lively version of See Emily Play, and a melodic Saucerful of Secrets. The final track was Bike which ends with the words,

I know a room of musical tunes…

Let’s go into the other room and make them work

Rather than sitting at home curating his past, Nick Mason has decided to go into the other room, and make early Pink Floyd songs work again.

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The Australian Pink Floyd Show – Live Review

The Apollo, Manchester

Saturday 27 November 2021

Classic Pink Floyd songs brought to life with an Australian twist

****

The last time Pink Floyd played an indoor concert venue in Manchester was nearly 50 years ago at the Palace Theatre on 10 December 1974. It seems unlikely that the three surviving members will ever play live together again, although Nick Mason has already played the Apollo with his band Saucerful of Secrets and is returning next year to play more of the band’s early material. In the meantime, fans of the band can enjoy the Australian Pink Floyd Show, a chance to hear live versions of songs that are too good never to be heard live again.

The potential problem with a tribute band is that they can earnestly replicate the exact notes that the original band played without really capturing the spirit of that band. This can sometimes happen with the Australian Pink Floyd Show, but at their best they take flight and their passion and energy lift the songs so they become less of a high quality reproduction of an Old Master and more like the original, with all the depth of the brushstrokes and the subtlety of the colour intact. Guitarist David Domminney Fowler in particular is able to lift a song, both with his soulful vocals and the fluid grace of his soloing. And the vocals throughout were excellent – lead vocalist Chris Barnes (a Salford University graduate) was always passionate and polished, and Ricky Howard brought the rougher edge of Dave Gilmour’s vocals to life. And a special mention for Lorelei McBroom, Emily Lynn and Lara Smiles who provided warm and energetic backing vocals throughout and all shone in their solos in The Great Gig in the Sky.

The other dilemma faced by a tribute band is whether they should faithfully play every note of the original songs from the albums, or whether they should allow themselves to improvise when playing the songs live. Pink Floyd themselves, particularly in later years, added extended guitar solos and Money had a breakdown jam section that was absent from the Australian Floyd’s version and would perhaps have lifted it. So it was great to hear Another Brick in the Wall Part II in a longer version, with added guitar parts at the end, while the grotesque inflatable teacher nodded along menacingly. Another highlight was a modified version of One of These Days, which made great use of the guitars appearing at either side of the stereo picture. It also featured an inflatable, a pink kangaroo with a disturbingly rat like smile. There were several other witty references to the band’s Australian origin, including the famous image from Wish You Were Here of the man on fire shaking now shaking hands with a kangaroo, and the radio station browsing at the start of that song being replaced by TV channel-hopping shows including Neighbours. But there was more poignant imagery on the circular screen behind the band too, early pictures of the original band with the haunted face of Syd Barrett providing a moving backdrop to an excellent rendition of Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

Amongst all the ‘hits’, it was good to hear some slightly lesser-known songs. The second half opened with a superb version of Astronomy Domine which featured on ‘Ummagumma’ in a live version recorded over 50 years ago in 1969. And there was a blistering version of Sheep from the 1977 album ‘Animals’, featuring the bizarre mangling of spoken words from Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, He converteth me to lamb cutlets.’

The show ended with two encores, a powerful version of Run Like Hell and a rousing Comfortably Numb for which the audience was on its feet, a thrilling ending to a very good evening.