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PINK FLOYD - ECHOES VINYL BOX SET (4LP)

PINK FLOYD/ECHOES VINYL BOX SET (4LP)

This four LP collection contains twenty-six of Pink Floyd's best songs. An interesting record of the band's history from the era of Syd Barrett to the Dark Side of the Moon.

Through their long history, Pink Floyd moved through psychedelia, prog-rock, space-rock, and more, emerging as a pioneer in all of those styles. This 4 LP compilation takes on the formidable task of creating a definitive Floyd collection. Though there's no chronological running order to give a sense of the group's development, there are plenty of key tracks from all the eras of Pink Floyd's career. We're given a healthy dose of material from the band's psychedelic '60s period, when they were spearheaded by the ultimate acid-damaged genius Syd Barrett (the loopy 'Bike,' the otherworldly 'Astronomy Domine'). The most overtly progressive tendencies of '70s Floyd are aired on the glorious epic 'Echoes,' whose suite-like construction shows off both the band's technical facility and orchestration skills.

Naturally, there are some cuts from the band's watershed album Dark Side Of The Moon, one of the best-selling LPs of all time (the gospel-tinged 'The Great Gig in the Sky,' the near-funky capitalist plaint 'Money'). Hardcore Floyd fans might object to the number of songs from the post-Roger Waters era, but even these less-celebrated tunes work in the overall historical context. While it's easy to quibble about the absence of various Floyd favorites (no 'Interstellar Overdrive?'), there's so much crucial music on this collection that it's impossible to come away from it without a strong sense of what Pink Floyd such an important band.

When re-mastering Pink Floyd material, we have always been very careful to try to maintain the highest standards of audio quality.

This means going back to the original analogue master tapes, performing any restoration work that may be necessary, playing them back on high resolution custom tape machines through custom EQ, and preparing them (through high resolution A to D converters) for the digital world. Doug Sax was involved in this process as he has been since 'The Wall' album. (Getting that album into the grooves of a vinyl record was quite a feat!) Doug brings his unique abilities and an objective ear to each project.

Another master of the audio world is Tim de Paravicini. We worked with Tim's custom 1/2 inch analogue tape machine and his beautiful valve EQ for this project.

In addition to returning to the original album masters, there were cases where we needed to locate the 'pre cross-fade' intro and outro sections of the individual song mixes. As we had decided to join the two halves of 'Shine On' together, it would not have been appropriate to hear the intro sound effects of 'Welcome to the Machine' starting in the background.

There were one or two exceptions. For instance, hearing the intro hammond of 'Us & Them' as 'Money' fades gives a nice false sense of location as we soon realize that we are, in fact, in 'Keep Talking' which has started with essentially the same chord.

1. Astronomy Domine
2. See Emily Play
3. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
4. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)
5. Marooned
6. The Great Gig In The Sky
7. Echoes
8. Hey You
9. Set The Controls From The Heart Of The Sun
10. Money
11. Keep Talking
12. Sheep
13. Sorrow
14. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-7)
15. Time
16. The Fletcher Memorial Home
17. Comfortably Numb
18. When The Tigers Broke Free
19. One Of These Days
20. Us And Them
21. Learning To Fly
22. Arnold Layne
23. Wish You Were Here
24. Jugband Blues
25. High Hopes
26. Bike