Trawling back over the great period of rock musical history (1966-1976), during which I was unfortunate enough to be too young to appreciate/experience any of it, one of the first stops had to be Pink Floyd. Sure enough, after listening properly to 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Dark Side of the Moon' it soon became apparent that this band were responsible for a myriad of copyists and were a huge influence on many of the bands that I grew up with in the 80s (especially Fields of the Nephilim). Delving further into the history of the band it soon became apparent that after Syd Barrett was ejected in 1967 PF was a construct of Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour -- both evidently geniuses, but with personalities that gradually drifted apart. So after 'The Final Cut' in 1983 Waters left Gilmour to carry on the mantle of PF. With 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason' in 1987 Gilmour proved that he was as much of a miserable old codger as Waters when it came to songwriting (miserable in a good way you understand), but it is with 'The Division Bell' (1994) that Gilmour suggests (gasp) that he's actually a BETTER songwriter than Waters. There is not a weak track on this album -- even the saxaphone (usually an instrument that sounds the death knell for any song on which it appears) on 'Wearing the Inside Out' sounds good. 'Cluster One' and 'Marooned' are instrumentals laced with dark, broody atmospherics, while special highlights are 'What do you want from me', 'Lost for Words' and 'High Hopes'. The sound as a whole is like a Keats poem: sumptuous, luxurious and all invasive. It's different than the Pink Floyd of the seventies, and could not have existed without the band's development during that time, but Gilmour has produced here a (presumably) last blast of greatness from one of the most influential bands to ever walk the planet.