Posted By Daniel Zweier in Culture, Lifehacks, Music

BreakingModern — Psychedelia can rejoice. There’s one last Pink Floyd album, and before you scream and weep and pass out from excitement (as if you didn’t already know), be aware that it’s all instrumental. Well, mostly.

Yes, the iconic ’70s band has added one final coda to its impressive line of spacey albums. The Endless River came out on November 10^th, and consists of 18 tracks on four sides. There’s a fancy CD booklet, heaps of digital purchases, streaming services and a Double Vinyl collection for you audiophiles.

Here’s David Gilmore and Nick Mason talking about the project:

Instrumental Bliss

Not to sound like a fascist sheep, but I love these guys. Adore them, would follow them, will forever remember and honor them, because when it comes down to it, Pink Floyd helped define, not only a distinct sound in rock music, but a generation, a country and an attitude.

It is both strange and familiar then that this is an instrumental album. So much of Pink Floyd’s legacy lies in its lyrics. The Wall is built upon the ravings of a mad man, speaking about his conformist brick identity. Dark Side of the Moon says things like, “The sun is the same in a relative way/but you’re older,” and, perhaps more iconically, “Hanging on in quiet desperation/is the English way.”

But Floyd wasn’t always so lyrically verbose. Floyd’s original front-man Syd Barrett, who passed away in 2006, did often sing, but his lyric style was never as pronounced as Roger Waters, who wrote most of the songs on the ’70s Floyd albums. It is fitting in a way that Waters had no part to play on The Endless River, having been, technically, out of the band since 1985.

David Gilmore, Richard Wright and Nick Mason wrote the last three Floyd albums, and The Endless River is in large part a tribute to Wright, who passed away in 2008.

Gilmore says of the album:

“We listened to over 20 hours of the three of us playing together and selected the music we wanted to work on for the new album … Over the last year we’ve added new parts, re-recorded others and generally harnessed studio technology to make a 21st-century Pink Floyd album. With Rick gone, and with him the chance of ever doing it again, it feels right that these revisited and reworked tracks should be made available as part of our repertoire.”

My favorite tracks include “Sun,” “Anisia,” “Allonsy-1,” “Allonsy-2,” “Surfacing,” and, of course, “Louder Than Words.” They’re lulling and melodic and, without a doubt, Pink Floyd.

For BMod, I’m Daniel Zweier.

First image credit: “Pink Floyd” by Gamma Man via Flickr Creative Commons

Second image credit: “Richard Wright 1” by sgtpetsounds via Flickr Creative Commons

Featured image credit: “Autumn River Scene” by Randen Pederson via Flickr Creative Commons