Pink Floyd- Atom Heart Monther

It is 1970. The Psychedelic age is closing out, and your band needs direction. Where to go? Pink Floyd took the route into Progressive Rock, and created Atom Heart Mother. Their first really entry into the genre, the album sits in a slightly awkward transition period, but manages to stay strong.

The album's A side is the 23 minute long title track. Though not the first epic in Prog Rock history, it truly shows the potential of the genre. The band, particularly Rick Wright, experiment with synthesizer sounds, use of orchestra, and long movements plastered seamlessly together. Using horns, shifting themes, rhythms, and chord structures, the piece covers many of the moods of Progressive rock. Fanfare? Has it. Guitar heroics? Has it. Solemn interlude? Has it. Though it has a lot of strengths, it does drag a little, the Floyd were not quite ready for the full side long slog. However, it also was the practice run for "Echoes" down the line, and is much better than its reputation. On side B, don't miss the quicker songs. Water's "If" is a sweet love song, Wright's "Summer '68" is a nice piece of prog-pop.

A nice piece in and of itself, and an indicator of a bright future. Grade: B+

Pink Floyd- Obscured by Clouds

Having previously worked with French Film Director Barbet Schroder, The Floyd made another for the film La Vallé. The 1972 soundtrack became their seventh studio album, and their last before really hitting it big with Dark Side. It is some of their least active and most droning work.

There is a continuous mood of air, space, and eternity over the album's tracks. There's not too much merriment, although the work does have some lighter moments. The duo of David Gilmour's guitar and Rick Wright's keyboards sets the main instrumental makeup of the record. In all honesty, this record may have the nicest vocal performances of any Pink Floyd record. Highlights include the wistful "Wot's.... Uh the Deal", and the rainy "Mudmen". The problem with this album is it lacks any sort of wow factor. It does competent prog rock, but it lacks the philosophical bent of later prog works to make a huge staying mark.

A dress rehersal for better days. Grade: B.

Pink Floyd- Meddle

Pink Floyd started out as a psychedelic rock band in the mid 60's, and remained so for a while. After their guiding light, Syd Barret, went insane and was replaced by guitarist David Gilmour, the group noddled around for a few years. While they made some good music, they lacked the focus and drive to make a really good album during that period. Everything changed for this 6th album, 1971's Meddle. Though there were hints of a change on the proir album, Atom Heart Mother, here the Floyd jumps with two feet into progressive rock and they don't look back.

The affair starts off with the six minute instrumental "One of These Days". It's all atmosphere, with distorted bass, fuzzy guitar, and lots of sound effects. This creates an awesome brooding effect, and rocks out more than most prog pieces. Also of note is the one line ultra-distorted vocal. The track is juxtaposed with " A Pillow of Winds", which is a soft acoustic guitar piece. It floats by, and isn't nearly as fun but is admitably quite enjoyable. The rest of the A side has mostly forgettable tracks with different influences: the folksy "Fearless" (well liked by many, but not my favorite), the jazzy "San Tropez" (fun, but not substantial), and the bluesy "Seamus" (terrible). However, the side long "Echoes" makes up for anything that those three songs lack. From the opening electric pulse, everything about this song is right. The music is so completely somber, and the emotion is what makes the track. It also is an early entry in Pink Floyd's existentialist catalogue, and the live version is even better.Very few pieces of Progressive Rock capture so much raw feeling with music. A classic.

The early Pink Floyd albums, especially their debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, weren't at all bad. But most of those albums are just good, the kind of things that would be forgotten today if not for the later fame that the Floyd gained. Meddle is not like that. Led by Roger Waters, Pink Floyd took their roots and mixed them into a Prog Rock format, allowing them to really start reaching the post Barrett musical vision the group had. Though not a Dark Side, Wish, or Animals, the door was now open to high achievement.

The real Pink Floyd starts here. Grade: A-

5 Great Pink Floyd Philisophical Moments

There are just so many Pink Floyd songs with deeply intellectual bent. More than just about any Prog artist, the Floyd are always ones to make you think a bit. Here are 5 of the best examples.

"Echoes" (Meddle)
Seeing as its parent album was a dress rehearsal for the greatness ahead, its fitting that its side long crowning achievement is also. Echoes has many themes about isolation, degradation of society by time, and just going through life without really living it. A perfect piece to all of the existentialism to follow suit.

"Time" (Dark Side of the Moon)
The message is pretty strait forward, and has been done over and over again in all forms of the arts, but it's a true as ever. Make the most of your time so you don't end up looking back and regretting things.

"Brain Damage" (Dark Side of the Moon)
This song is narrated by a lunatic, going through how he's not himself and not everything adds up within his head. If we think hard enough, however, we realize there's a bit of a madman in every one of us, and they really aren't that mad after all. Great little piratical joke by Waters here.

The Animals Album

I've already outlined a lot of the philosophy going on here in my review of the album, but there's just so much depth here. It's defiantly the most cynical and abrasive Floyd album, jamming us all into negative stereotypes and picking them apart.

"The Trial" (The Wall)

The culmination of the middle of the road rock opera this album is defiantly drives home some points. More or less, they're all variations of "Be an individual, but don't shun the rest of society."

Pink Floyd- Animals

Time for yet another wonderful Floyd album. After Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd were on top of their game. Popular the world over, they had great expectations for their 10th album, Animals, released in 1977. At this point, Roger Waters was really starting to take control of the band, their artistic vision becoming his artistic vision. This is the last album where Gilmour, Mason, and Wright had much of anything to do until Waters left. Despite this shift, Animals still packs that massive Pink Floyd punch of Prog splendor. The album is another one of Floyd's good old concept albums, this time a take on George Orwell's Animal Farm with an emphasis on isolation (the overarching theme of all of Pink Floyd's work.) This is also by hard Floyd's hardest album as far as the style goes, especially Gilmour's guitar.

We kick off the album with "Pigs on the Wing, Pt. 1", a 1:25 acoustic little love ballad. It's not bad, but a bit non sequiteur and forgettable compared to what follows. The guitar then leads into "Dogs", who are business-like people willing to sacrifice anyone around them to make personal gain. The lyrics criticise these people for being emotionally devoid and soulless, only to get "dragged down by the stone". This piece is all about Gilmour, who sings most of the vocals, plays the best guitar performance of Floyd's career with hard rock solos to die for, and just seems to command the flow. The others all add in nice little touches to make the song seem straight from distopia. There's lots of distortion of the keyboards to contribute a grittiness to the song. "Dogs" lasts 17 minutes, so the record then flips.

Next up we have "Pigs", who are the moral police. These people try to edit society not by destroying, but by molding it to suit their needs (like politicians, censors, jet setters). This one has more bass guitar which gives it as certain bounce, like a battle. The guitars and drums add to the frey to produce lots of force to back up the attack on the pigs, who are "nearly a treat, but really a cry". Ha ha, charade they are indeed. For the final animal, we've got "Sheep." Rather than attacking them, Waters more mocks them for being the followers who just go along with whatever society tells them, and get slaughtered by dogs as resources. This one is chilling, using a scream-into synthesizer effect, crazy guitar, and thick beat, all in contrast with a lush keyboard opening. In the end the sheep revolt, and if the music is supposed to represent what they had to go through, I can't blame them. "Pigs on the Wing Pt. 2" closes the album the exact same way that Pt. 1 opened.

This is defiantly a change in direction for Pink Floyd. Animals alludes to Orwell's work but does not tie itself to it in such a way as that the interpretation is similar. Rather than being anti-communist, this album is anti-capitalist if anything due to the heavy attacks on The Dogs as ruthless extortionists and the Sheep as hapless consumers. Overall, I think that this one supplements the themes on Dark Side and Wish, and rather than concentrating on the isolation of individuals from other individuals, Animals looks at isolation of different segments of society from each other. Back up all that existential depth with some kick as instrumentation, and we've got ourselves one hell of an album.

While it's farther from the progressive mold than many albums on this blog, Animals manages to trump them in terms of musical might. Grade: A+

Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

I have an excess of Pink Floyd albums waiting to be reviewed, so let's get another of their big ones out of the way. After The Dark Side of the Moon catapulted the Floyd into international stardom, they went through ideas about what they wished to do with the follow up. One idea tossed around was making an album entirely out of sound effects from household objects. That fell through, and instead they opted for a more straightforward album similar to Dark Side. As a result, Wish You were Here came about, released in 1975. This album's central thematic ideas include an attack on the music industry, and a tribute to their old band mate, Syd Barret, a victim of schizophrenia. Both of these tie in to the isolationist ans existentialist themes prevalent on Dark Side.

Waters, Wright, and Gilmore got together and wrote the 25 minute "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" (Pink Floyd's longest song), divided into 9 parts. The first 5 open the album, while the last 4 close it. Part one is a trippy and sparse synthesizer workout. For parts two and three, the guitar and drums come in to add some bombast to the sound, foreshadowing Animals and The Wall while remaining distinctly Dark Side. Part 4 sees the vocal tribute to Syd, and Part 5 has a great Sax workout. The other portion of the A side of the record is the haunting "Welcome to the Machine". The band opts for a totally alien, disjointed, and dehumanizing feel as the lyrics attack the record industry. Both great songs.

Flip the record, and you'll get treated to "Have A Cigar." While not really all that prog in terms of structure or attitude, this anti-corporate track is amongst Floyd's best for it's fun guitar and bass riffs. The title track comes next. Incredibly famous for both funerals and guitar lessons, it's a reflective acoustic guitar solo, and one of the best known Floyd songs. Then, we close out with the last 4 parts of "Shine On". Parts 6, 8, and 9 are a mix of themes from parts 1 and 2, and Part 7 reprises part 4.

There's a story that after not seeing the band for 8 years, Syd showed up to visit during the sessions for his tribute album. Like Barret, Wish You Were Here conveys an empty world wherein everyone is pushed into a corner and can't function. At times clastrophbic, and at times as open as the vaccum of space, Wish's music perfectly matches its lyrical message in a wonderfull marriage of music.

Another Masterpeice from the Floyd. 9.5/10.

Pink Floyd- The Dark Side of the Moon

Ah, what would a prog blog be without a mention of this one? Yes, yes, we have all heard of this album. Dark Side of the Moon was released in 1973, a year many (myself included) consider the absolute peak of the progressive age. The Album sold like hotcakes, and the worldwide sales figure has exceeded over 30,000,000 units, making it in the top selling albums in history across the world. But what in this album has made it the most successful prog album of all time? Proficiency plus accessibility.

Dark Side culminates the growth and development of Pink Floyd since their foundation in 1965. Syd Barrett (Guitar/Vocals), Roger Waters (Bass/Vocals), Rick Wright (Keyboards/Vocals) and Nick Mason (Drums) organized as a psychedelic outfit, popular on London’s Underground scene. In 1967, the group released The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a key album in British psychadelia but a total flop in America. Barrett was the group leader, but experiences with LSD and undiagnosed psychological disorders prompted the others to abandon him in 1968, replacing him with David Gilmour. Through the remainder of the 60’s, the group toyed with psychedelic expansion, and when Progressive Rock appeared, they turned to its freedom for expression. Dark Side was their 8th album, and all the individual songs segway directly into each other. Waters wrote all lyrics, while the entire band got involved with the composition.

The album begins with “Speak to Me”, a tape collage of all the sounds that the rest of the album uses (heartbeats, cash registers, clocks, screams, and more). Waters compiled it, but gave it to Mason as a gift for royalties. The song segways directly into “Breathe”, a sonic song with lush keyboard atmospheres. Lyrics deal with the subject of birth. This song is the most open and free on here. Afterward another electronic collage called “On The Run” comes in, combining speeded up synth waves, meticulous pressing of buttons in the studio, and more sound effects to make a transition a song in itself. One of the three longer, key pieces, “Time” (Seven Minutes) follows. Time is about, well, time, and how we regret all the missed opportunities in our old age. A montage of alarm bells starts of the song, and Gilmour showcases great guitar prowess here. The A side of the record closes with “The Great Gig In the Sky”, a slower piece consisting of Wright playing grand piano, and hired female vocalist Claire Tory wailing. An interesting end.

Side two takes off with the world famous “Money”, the biggest hit from Dark Side. In 7/4 time, this song has thumping bass, an amazing sax solo, killer guitar, and all around, is utterly fantastic. “Money” by far rocks the hardest on Dark Side of the Moon. The lyrics deal satirically with the issue of greed, praising the consumption of caviar and corruption for personal gain. Afterward, we are treated to “Us and Them”, a song about war. This has an open feel, contrasting with the hardness of “Money” that preceded it. The song bounces around as if in open air and also has another sax part. Afterwards, there is a segway into the instrumental “Any Colour You Like”, an instrumental that’s mostly just some prog rock elevator music (in a good way). After that comes “Brain Damage”, a song about insanity. The lyrics include the line “I’ll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon.” leading to misconception that this is the title. This song about lunatics bounces around, but not like prior songs. It seems more closed in. “Brain Damage” has less instrumental prowess than the rest of the album. Dark Side closes with the brief “Eclipse”, which takes a look at the worthiness of a human life. The album returns to the heartbeat that started “Speak to Me” and fades out. (Bonus! If you turn the volume way up about 25 seconds before the album ends, you can hear an orchestral version of The Beatles “Ticket to Ride” played, but only on CD, probably due to a mastering error.)

There are millions of interpretations of this album, and any Google search will produces lots of literature. Personally, I see the Album as social commentary on the choices we make during life and the way we handle them after the fact. Songs like “Money” and “Us and Them” talk about decisions, decisions to use money honestly or corruptly, what to do in war, or under pressure. Meanwhile “Breathe”, “Time”, and “Brain Damage” all handle what the effects of the choices we make has upon us (helplessness, regret, insanity). “Eclipse” speaks about what the true meaning of life is: everything we do in itself gives life meaning. Roger Waters himself, however, had in mind the concept of human nature and the mutual experiences of man.

This is not an essential prog album. It is an essential album. Dark Side of the Moon challenges listeners to really think and draw conclusions, all to a backdrop of sonic guitar, keyboards, and bass. Excellent in every way, Dark Side deserves a Grade of A+.