Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most famous albums of all time,
Dark Side of the Moon sold 25 million copies in its first 25 years of release.
Dark Side of the Moon was the first album that Pink Floyd decided to break in live before attempting to record, with the debut performance of what they then called
Eclipse just over a year before the final release date. When they finally retired to Abbey Road Studios with top sound engineer Alan Parsons, state-of-the-art 16-track recording equipment and the new Dolby technology to hand, it was to produce one of the great pieces of studio art. Covering a range of styles, this was the last album (prior to
Roger Waters' departure in the early 1980s) to whose writing the other members of Pink Floyd contributed significantly.
Nevertheless, it remains a stunningly coherent package, bound together by surreal fragments of speech (mostly gleaned from asking questions of the doorman at the studio) and Waters' bold and bleak lyrics. Often reputed to be about former member Syd Barrett's decline into schizophrenia, in fact Waters has said the lyrics "were a lot about ordinariness" and dealt with people's responses to the increasing insanity of the pressures of everyday life. Some of the extraordinary sound effects used came from the most unlikely sources--the coins at the start of "Money" from Waters tossing handfuls of change into an industrial food-mixer that his wife, a potter, used to mix clay. Whatever the medium, a new standard for attention to detail and production values had been set and the world of studio recording would never be the same again. --James Swift
CD Description
DARK SIDE OF THE MOON was a benchmark record. It turned themusical world on its ear with a hitherto unseen combinationof sounds, and changed things considerably for Pink Floyd. For this project, Pink Floyd resurrected older and unfinished numbers, some of which came from the multitude of soundtracks the band members had previously worked on. The film ZABRISKIE POINT, a study of American materialism from a foreigner's perspective, provided "Us And Them" (originally titled "The Violence Sequence"). Waters rewrote "Breathe" after its appearance on his and avant-garde composer Ron Geesin's score for THE BODY, a surreal medical documentary.
Floyd and their long-time engineer, Alan Parsons, used a multitude of sound effects--from stereophonically projected footsteps andplanes flying overhead ("On The Run") to a roomful of ringing clocks ("Time"). Further adding to the record's mystique,barely audible spoken passages were sprinkled throughout--aresult of hours interviewing random Abbey Road occupants about their views on insanity, violence, and death. Floyd musthave struck a nerve: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON remained on Billboard's albums chart for an astounding 14 years. It made Pink Floyd a household name, elevating them to the level of theRolling Stones and The Who in the rock pantheon.
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