Music Review: Pink Floyd - The Wall

One-of-a-kind...emotional...beautiful...involving...the greatest album of music ever made.

I've been listening to The Wall since I first had a copied tape in 1994 at age 16, shortly after I first discovered the Floyd with CD's of everyone's first two Floyd albums: Dark Side and Wish You Were Here.

Wow...I realise most how powerful The Wall is when I've had a long break from it (say a year or more). It's impossible to do a song-by-song analysis, or a review of disc 1's merits over disc 2...The Wall is an 80-minute whole, a journey so perfectly executed that it transcends music and becomes something we can't even describe in words...only in goosepimpled skin, lumps in throat, nonsense rage, maniacal laughter and intense feelings of concentration.

I sing along to every bit of it with all my might...I feel the story...I am the story...at the end I am drained, the wall is down and after a few moments of calming down, of reflection...I resume the reality of my own existence.

Mad bugger indeed.

Music Review: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Three-fifths of Wish You Were Here has that perfect future music feel to it which every space-rock lover is permanently searching for.

Here a track-by-track:

Shine On (part one) - 9

Has the most amazing beginning of an album I've ever heard: we all know how it goes...if you don't then you should.

Welcome To The Machine - 8

This would be a 10 if it was instrumental! The synth-play is simply amazing and it seeps into the next song perfectly. The singing spoils it in that it reminds you the music is made by humans and not by some artificial life 2000 years from now.

Have A Cigar - 6

After over a decade I still haven't warmed to this song...it just seems so out of place and doesn't have the warmth and likeability of the title track. There's little doubt the guitar work and Roy Harper's singing are spot-on but it feels like a better-produced Obscured By Clouds number.

Wish You Were Here - 9

Tragically, I recently heard The Beatless Sense Mongers cover this and have struggled to take the original as seriously as I used to. Which is why Comfortably Numb will always be a 10-score as resistent as it is to any form of piss-taking and why the title track is only a 9...but it still is one of Pink Floyd's most lovely moments.

Shine On (part two) - 11!

THIS-IS-JUST-UNSPEAKABLY-BRILLIANT!! This with Atom Heart (the suite) and The Trial are my all-time favourite Floyd moments. Okay Money and Great Gig too...and Interstellar Overdrive...and (more).

It's enough to say that Shine On Part Two is dancy, tripped-out spacefunk with Gilmour's greatest solo and inhuman efforts from everyone else.

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Although Have A Cigar is average, and Welcome has some iffy vocals, this is clearly a 5-star album because it features simply some of the best music you'll ever hear.

Music Review: Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon

One of the most famous albums of all time, and my first Floyd. Dark Side earns its 5-stars because of the beautiful and seamless way the songs ajoin one another. But if we rate the songs individually, they are not all masterpieces:

Speak To Me/Breathe - 7

A fascinating beginning: atmospheric heart-beat drives a valley of different sounds, voices and samples before crescending into the beginning of a song. Breathe isn't that amazing as a song on its own but as an opener, it is perfectly judged.

On The Run - 9

I remember very well the first time I heard this, my ears were agog: I knew as I sinked into that hi-hat sound, that speeded-up arpeggiated synth loop, the running man, the announcer, the aaaahs, the filter sweeps....I knew this signified a defining moment for me and my love of music...confirmed by a later obsession with lock techno and darkpsy music.

Time - 7

A brilliant first couple of minutes: the shock of the alarm clocks still make me jump even after 13 years of knowing they are imminent. We also have a well-played conga drum playing over tidy red rhythms before Time starts proper. And when it does start proper, it reveals itself to be quite the chugger: I don't get too excited by it and for me it lacks those moments where music is so powerful it controls you.

The Great Gig In The Sky - 10

Now this one has those moments! In fact, the entire 5 minutes is a moment of complete surrender to the music: iconic piano plays with the most spectacular oral orgasm anyone has ever heard.

Money - 10

And another! Pink Floyd's danciest song, again with an iconic beginning: this time with cash till register sounds looped into a funky rhythm...but Money just gets better & better, culminating into an all-out party...wonderful.

Us & Them - 7

After the absolute cream of what went before, the album tails off a mite. Us & Them is full of aural dramatics but the backing vocals and sax play used appear textbook, rather than magic. The song is simply a little boring.

Any Colour You Like - 9

This is the Pink Floyd Sound I wish there was more of: futuristic and funky space jams with gorgeously fat keyboarding and complementing guitar. This piece is too short but is packed with all the colours of the rainbow.

Brain Damage - 7

The maniacal laugh from the opener returns...Brain Damage is short and infectious but doesn't really ever let you get into it.

Eclipse - 6

Another very short song...and the album ends. This is possibly the weakest song here: like Us & Them, it seems to pull musical feeling out of a textbook.

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Dark Side Of The Moon ends fairly unspectacularly (although it thinks it it ends perfectly). Time with Us & Them can wear a little. But as a whole the expererience of this album is incomparable. It must also be up there as one of the best-produced albums of all time.

Pink Floyd are my favourite band, and Dark Side rates in at number 4 in my top albums from them.

Music Review: Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

Featuring Pink Floyd's, and thus music's, greatest moment. Here a song-by-song with marks out of ten:

Atom Heart Mother suite - (rating is off the scale)

I struggle to describe why I love this. Like On The Run: the first time I heard the Atom Heart Mother suite I knew my development in musical love had significantly changed. There are many reasons that make this piece perfect:

- the low humming build-up - the signature line - the violin line - the vocals, my God the vocals - the introduction of the guitar solo - that first POING! is life affirming - the abstract middle section - the finale! My God the finale!

If - 7

Pink Floyd, wary of causing the very fabric of reality to conflict with itself, lower expectations and pace with this easy number. A soft ballad with nice vocals and guitar work...but it doesn't deliver goose pimples.

Summer of '68 - 9

Sung by Wright (who sounds like Gilmour), this is narrowly the best piece of the trio of songs in the middle of Atom Heart the album. Mid-paced summery rhythms remind of Beach Boys or Beatles. The song also has a big brass section which gives it an edge.

Fat Old Sun - 8

Gilmour sings it like he sings Green Is The Colour: ie - he sings it falsetto and very well. This is a lovely song, but it's not quite magic. The 14-minute BBC sessions version however, is quite magic (info: John Peel 1970 session).

Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast - 8

It took me a few years until I started enjoying this piece. It is a harmless and good-natured jam with themes of what one has for breakfast (like jam). The contents of the music are as funny as the song's title.

So, Atom Heart Mother is clearly a masterpiece of progressive rock music and, for me, has a much weightier epic song than its successor Echoes (from the Meddle album).

Music Review: Pink Floyd - Ummagumma

10 years after discovering my favourite musicians I finally complete my collection 3 years ago with Ummagumma...and the Floyd wowed me once more. It is their most unusual album, and easily the most inaccessible. The whole of it reminds of old horror films, rendering Ummagumma also Pink Floyd's darkest album. Here a suite-by-suite with marks out of ten:

The Wright suite (Sysyphus) - 7

Its best moments are the quiet phases of part 4 and the Floyd take on capoeira (part 3): dark, organic matter squelching through the plains of Mordor. The piano piece (part 2) starts well but gets a little on the self-indulgent side. The slightly cringe-inducing moments are those big pads of impending doom found in part 1 and at the end of part 4. Overall, Sysyphus is a very interesting listen.

The Waters suite - 8

Grantchester Meadows is a likeable folk song, about English meadows and its nature. The suite then shows us the albums' most eccentric moment: Furry Animals cannot be described, it has to be heard. I like it, but it is very strange. What I don't like is the tail-end of it which features an over-the-top Scottish brogue lamenting.

The Gilmour suite (Narrow Way) - 8

This works the best as a suite, the 3 separate pieces melt into each other to form one whole. We have a nice and uplifting acoustic instrumental guitar-led piece followed by a lesson in the black arts: the second instrumental piece is a slow trudging riff surrounded by effects...it is actually pretty good. The suite closes with the anthem of the album: a rocker with a darkly infectious signature, in-keeping with the avant-garde macabreness of Ummagumma.

The Mason suite (Grand Vizier) - 8

My favourite piece of music from the entire album is the first two-thirds of Mason's main piece (part 2): it is so warmingly dreamy. It reminds of doing peyote around a fire searching for your spirit animal. It ends with a Mason drumathon which is pretty good, but no equal of the beautiful moments before it. Mason bookends this main part with two short flute 'n drum pieces, which barely add anything to the album.

The live songs - 7

The performance of Set The Controls is excellent, A Saucerful Of Secrets has a strong end section with Eugene and Astronomy Domine fairly good without adding much to the originals.

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Ummagumma is no essential masterpiece. But it is heartily-recommended for lovers of the strange. I'd also add that it is the least-typical Floyd album (not including the post-Waters dirges).