Pink Floyd - "The Endless River" -- New Release October 2014 (Part Three)

I'm quite excited. I'm a fan of most PF with the exception of the first album, and Ummaumma. I don't find the 2nd sample to sound that bad. There are 18 songs or "parts" in the album, which make up 4 "sides" of long instrumentals. This was just 30 seconds of one 2 or 3 minute song. Maybe an intro or outro. I'm a huge fan of the Division Bell. Probably in my top five. It's been said this album contains 60 percent material from the Division Bell sessions, and I think it's great that Gilmour and Mason are releasing these reworked demos to the public. This will be the second PF album released in my lifetime.

 

I've ordered it, but i think we should turn our expectations down. It will not be very good. I just hope and I am pretty sure it will be acceptable.

 

I've enjoyed Richard Wright's solo albums and David Gilmour's solo albums, I think this record won't be that much different from those.

Instead of having lofty expectations of a "classic" PF record I think people should just be happy they have a chance to hear Richard Wright, David Gilmour and Nick Mason together one last time.

 

Not the entire band, just Roger.

 

A bit of (perspective?) on the album artwork, now including Endless River. Credit to JoeRockEHF on deviantart.

No matter how good it might sound, but TER's album cover seems a bit out of place (Division Bell coverart still appears to be a better looking cover to "fit" the end of Floyd's career, IMO), and the song track names don't seem very "Floyd" to me (except for maybe Noodle Street & Night Light), like, usually, there is usually a certain flow to even just the names of the tracks, and how they flow with the album art. Not quite sure how to put it into words--but Meddle, for example--the name itself, the artwork, and the track names all seem to just "fit", at least by Floyd standards.

Maybe I'm just crazy.

 

Nah, can't be. Is it? Sounds like a Richard Clayderman-tune!

 

Wet Dream in particular is great.

 

AMLOR cover - that was just insanely good.
In an age before photoshop, they actually had to lay out all those beds on a beach in Devon, England.
Fantastic.

 

AMLOR cover - that was just insanely good.
In an age before photoshop, they actually had to lay out all those beds on a beach in Devon, England.
Fantastic.

 

AMLOR cover - that was just insanely good.
In an age before photoshop, they actually had to lay out all those beds on a beach in Devon, England.
Fantastic.

 

Insanely was 3 post of AmLOR

bsw...the second clip was not as bad that the Song can not be good!

 

I'm really warming up to that cover. It looks good as a bookend for their later period.

Looking at them all together, it's interesting that the sky is a major element in a number of them, particularly the post Waters period. In ones that don't have the sky as a major element, you get patterns or abstractions that cause visual play between surface and depth within the "window pane" of the album cover.

 

I'm looking forward to the 5.1 as well...with a bit of caution. If this mix is done by Andy Jackson, don't expect much more than a quad mix like he admitted he did on The Division Bell's 5.1. TDB had been in the can for 10 years though, so we'll see if he's learned to use the centre and sub since then...here's a quote from Jackson during an interview on the QQ forum following the release recently of the TDB in 5.1....

"As I'm sure many of you know, 5.1 is really a cinema format, with the centre channel used to 'hold' dialogue in particular to the centre of the screen for those sitting off centre in a theatre. How to use it in music mixing for home systems is unclear, and many people have adopted different approaches, some more successful than others. Truth is that by and large all we need is quad. Doing this album I pretty chose to ignore it, as it was a safe choice. Same is true mostly with the sub, which I only used occasionally, and then only with sound that was not also in the mains (it was a sub-harmonic generating processor). I've become a bit less conservative since, although still the basic idea that quad is enough is true."

 

Thanks for posting the array of PF album covers. I'm sure it's just me, but the whole bottom row seems out of place based purely on visual asthetics (with possible exception to AMLoR). Also, I've always liked the cover for 'A Delicate Sound of Thunder' and 'A Collection of Great Dance Songs'.

 

All You Need Is Quad
All You Need Is Quad
All You Need Is Quad, Quad
Quad Is All You Need

 

Well at least you're keeping an open mind about it.

 

As an amateur musician and sometime composer, this sounds to me like a typical 'early stage song idea fragment', in this case consisting of a chord progression demo with keys/drums/bass. It has the signatures of early stage songwriting: too many repeats of the main idea, and place holders for solos, ect. The problems with repetitiveness and lack of variation are (usually) attended to in subsequent development. It would certainly be improved with some nifty Gilmour guitar work. :>)

Edit: As I was reading backwards through the blog (do you guys do that too ?), I just heard the 30 second clip of the developed song, now with bells and whistles, improved sonics and added "frou frou". More interesting certainly. I guess we'll have to buy the album to get the Gilmour solo. :>)

 

Calling the second sample 'elevator music' is plainly ignorant and I think it's partly to do with a lack of vocals distracting people. Take away the vocals of Gilmour's verses in 'Comfortably Numb' and you're left with something remarkably similar. Yet, interestingly, Comfortably Numb is an undisputed classic.

 

I wouldn't mind riding in that elevator.

 

This thread is a perfect example of why there's really no need to read about an album on Internet music forums until it's actually released.

 

I'm looking forward to this album, but I don't have very high expectations of it. I like instrumental/ambient stuff but I'm not sure how I will like it as a Pink Floyd record. To me that makes this seem like a whole bunch of demos (which is what it's supposed to be I suppose) but maybe Gilmour could have added some vocal tracks to it? I don't know. I'll check it out though.

 

I think in a pleasant, "wow, they've evolved again" way. The Trial has fire, emotion, madness, angst (regardless of your take on the music). This 2nd clip sounds like the house band on a senior cruise.

 

The drums on The Wall sound extremely good.

 

If we're drawing the line at that point, I would say Animals would be the last one. To me, "The Wall" sounds nothing like Pink Floyd of '67-'77 outside of Comfortably Numb. Personally, I think "The Final Cut" blows away "The Wall" any day of the week, but neither sound like what I consider classic Floyd to sound like.

I like my Floyd spacey and atmospheric, not angry and whining. For me, the intelligent, laser-focused bile of "Animals" trumps the whining of "The Wall." Don't get me wrong, I enjoy "The Wall,' but I don't see it as the great album so many others obviously do. Does that make it a bad album? No, it just makes it an album that I don't enjoy as much as others in the Floyd's catalog.

I happen to love all phases of the band and am really looking forward to the new release.

 

You seem to want it both ways here. There's not enough of the clip to properly criticize, but there's enough of the clip to equate it with Comfortably Numb?

I don't think there's any similarity at all to Comfortably Numb, which is slow, dark, and moody. This clip is emotionless and fluffy.