Pink Floyd has announced a new album, The Endless River, that they say is a tribute to longtime keyboardist Richard Wright (1943-2008) and a return to their early style.
“The Endless River has as its starting point the music that came from the 1993 Division Bell sessions,” explains David Gilmour. “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.”
Here’s the official intro video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ivKOuyCfE
According to the band, The Endless River represents a return to the creative principles that informed the writing process that produced Echoes, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Animals.
Pink Floyd’s The Endless River is set for release Nov 10, 2014. It’s available for pre-order via Amazon.
Most disapointing news of the day. I’m glad Roger Waters has nothing to do with this. Great Yanni album cover btw…
And it’s not a return to their old sound. There is only one track with vocals out of 18 songs, and the lyrics are from Gilmour’s wife. It’s basically instrumentals ‘tracks’ from the Division Bell sessions.
Are you still ‘excited’ about this news? lol
Actually yes. Love to hear their instrumental music!
So much great music gets left in the studio during the process of creating an album.
RIP Richard Wright.
Very excited by this news.
Most of Pink Floyd’s best tracks have been their mind-expanding instrumentals.
Tracks like:
On The Run
Interstellar Overdrive
The Great Gig in the Sky
Most of ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’
Marooned
A Saucerful of Secrets
Sysyphus
Atom Heart Mother
These are the type of tracks that inspired most of the great 70s synth bands, certainly Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream.
If your favorite Pink Floyd album is The Wall, though, this one will probably disappoint you!
Agree. Modern EDM would not exist without those songs you reminded us of
Wow,6 downvotes from people who do not actually research music history? Maybe I should name check some obscure artists like Pierre Schaeffer , luc Ferrari and put a further spanner in the works of your understanding of how electronic music actually evolved????
lol, he said music….
😉
Totally. Gilmour’s last solo album was incredible, his work with the Orb was pretty great, and I am always interested in hearing his guitar playing, which keeps getting better and better.
Well, we’re also all very much disapointed about the downvoting ratio: what, only 14 votes after a couple of hours? C’mon people, show us that you are as gullible as in 1993; we need a ratio of disproval of at least 30. You can write all the “RIP Richard Wright” you want, it won’t make your comment or this “Gilmour’s solo album Instrumentals B-Sides (with his wife now in the band)” any better, true or relevant. Have a nice evening!
You’d have to write something that merited more attention than what you actually wrote.
Talegen: Most of the songs on your list have ‘vocals’ in it.
When this new ‘record’ comes out, try to find 2 minutes that ressembles a fraction of any songs on your list. And no, Gilmour’s playing is not getting better, well not certainly not creativily.
It does the same leads, licks and riffs since Animals. It doesn’t mean i don’t like and respect him. What im saying is most of the comments on this thread are wishfull thinking.
Tomahawk
The album may very well turn out to be terrible, but I certainly wouldn’t dismiss on account of many of the tracks being instrumentals, because instrumentals have been some of their best work.
And not sure what your taking issue with on my examples, but I’d consider a track like Great Gig in the Sky to be an instrumental, rather than a song, because the vocals are wordless and the spoken words aren’t really vocals or lyrics, they are added for atmosphere.
I agree, instrumentals don’t make a band or an album less brilliant. Take mogwai for example, they are obviously influenced by floyd and don’t sing.
I’m not even sure what you’re talking about.
Love the idea of instrumentals – but the Division Bell is one of my least favorite albums.
Love it 🙂 And looking forward to hearing it. Makes me happy to see they dedicate it to Richard Wright.
Leftovers from “The Division Bell”? No thanks. Let’s see an official release of “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream” instead. Just one single, A side/B side, in exchange for all of the “The Endless River”.
Not that I don’t appreciate a tribute to Rick Wright. RIP
And the hipster award goes to you. Still, you could have done better had you said Pink Floyd was better when Barrett was in the band, and that they should have dedicated this album to him.
FÂ¥ck this, just give me echoes and I’ll forget every awful effort since 1975
According to Wikipedia, backing vocalist Durga McBroom said that the music came from a side project called “The Big Spliff”, recorded at the Division Bell sessions!
That´s the only thing that i am exited in LOL
Pink Floyd , good monitoring, Big spliff and listenîng.
With or without a big spliff ill listen too:)
Hatin’ on the best band that ever walked the earth. I really would love to see any of you who criticize any of their efforts do any better yourselves. Don’t worry I will buy the CD, the vinyl and anything else they come out with, because it’s a whole f#@kin album and not one little dance track that you think might make a underground B list. There will NEVER be another band like this again.
They say never say never, WELL I”M SAYIN’ NEVER!
I remember riding the bus in jr high when The Wall came out and they played the disco rock ‘Brick in the Wall’ song over and over, all the time, children’s chorus and all. I thought Pink Floyd was utter pretentious crap.
It wasn’t til later on, probably college, when i discovered Dark Side Of The Moon and their earlier albums and found out that they’d done all this cool stuff.
Their last great album ‘as a band’ was Animals! After that, everybody’s egos took over and their pretentiousness out of hand.
I’m cautiously interested in their new album because it sounds like they realize their best work was in the early seventies and they’re going back to that style. That or it’s another way to shaft Roger Waters.
Echoes, Shine On you Crazy Diamond are just classics and pretty much mostly instrumentals. More modern songs like On the Turning Away and Sorrow as well as A Great day for Freedom are some of my newer faves. Really excited by this…
I never got the adoration of the Wall. So i guess I wont be disappointed.
I have always preferred Gilmour’s vocals to Roger’s anyway.
I think this could be great!
Floyd are amazing musicians and wether younger people know it or not, if tracks like echoes would never have been made, well, I doubt what we call EDM would have manifested.
The progression would have ended with disco lol:)
Anyways, ill get the album, from what I’ve heard from the teasers it sounds very atmospheric.
Gilmore is a genius, what he did with the orb was pretty cool
I can definitely tell you that there will be plenty of orchestra in it! And recorded at abbey road as well.
People can think what they like, of course, but if you sit and listen to “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” on headphones, you get the full monty of why the Floyd are legendary. Their base talent has always been a given, but in the end, a lot of it is also the superior craft they put into things. They hired the right engineers as well, because everything they’ve done since “Arnold Layne” has been a study in HTF Did They Do That? Their production quality is the same grail we all chase with our little DAWs, which will never replace 3 well-paid mastering engineers at full throttle on mixdown. What we “don’t like” is irrelevant. Its Pink Floyd and the standard persists. Pass de blunt, mon, y’hollering is harshin’ m’buzz.
Why are so many people on this page referring to ‘Echoes’ and other instrumental tracks as a reference point? That type of psychedelic jamming had run it’s course through Floyd’s system by 1978 for chrissakes…and that lineup -included- Roger Waters.
To make some type of leap that the band…robbed of their leading genius…and decades older…matched the magic of 1971 or 1975 in 1993 outtakes?? Zero chance.
I’m sure I’ll be flamed for this opinion. But when you really love a band (ahem, U2) there comes a time when you know it’s best for them to just be quiet.
Because a lot of us liked their psychedelic jamming!
They went downhill when Waters turned it into a glorified solo project, with The Wall. Sorry if that’s your fave jam, but it really blows next to DSOTM, Shine On and their classics.
Also, since they’ve said it will be mostly instrumentals, doesn’t it make sense that the news would appeal to those of us that appreciate their musicianship?
One cannot follow an album like DSOTM –
Roger Waters was there in DSOTM, and Animals, and all the prior classics – as were David Gilmore and Richard.
IMO, The Wall was a great album, but an entirely different “animal” to Animals or the prior stuff – and IMO, the solo albums from all the bands members were all different and “inferior” to the stuff they did when they were young and together.
I like the solo stuff they all have done – perhaps its because I am nearly 60 that I understand – If you shine brightly when young, your light will seem dimmer as you get older… You get stuck in your tried and proven riffs, you dont explore things that you “know” “wont work” and this self limitation thwarts creativity – When young, you dont have a book of things you have tried, you try anything – and one in a trillion creates something close to TSOTM once – to have a run like PF did was a synergy between remarkable people, a synergy that wont easily be repeated, and we should just be grateful that it ever happened.
“… psychedelic jamming had run its course.” Um, isn’t that what TECHNO really is, minus the variety and killer solos of distinct bands? There’s a place for looping jams and one for searing solo playing. Floyd just happens to offer both. A few things like Ozric Tentacles’ “Spyroid” or Paul Haslinger’s great “World Without Rules” jam like mad, but the variety they add to the mix sets them far above a thudding 20-minute trance loop. PF is one hell of a blues band at their base, but that simple a label would be laughable. Give some credit where its due, that’s all.
Pink Floyd is most definitely NOT one hell of a blues band. It’s the fact that they couldn’t just cop the blues like every other English band of the 60’s that led them to develop their own sound.
Unexpected, and really good news. I love Pink Floyds instrumental tracks and their 90s albums, who woyld have thought wed get to hear more? Time to go listen to the Division Bell to prepare for the extended guitar solos.
YAY…Division Bell pt.2!!!
Two points:
1. Dark Side of the Moon: greatest album of the rock era.
2. There is no Pink Floyd without Roger Waters.
End of story
I agree.
Pink Floyd, IMO, is only when both Roger and David were together.
The solo and “performed by Pink Floyd” albums are IMO also great, but they are not Pink Floyd – or are, at best “Its Pink Floyd Jim, but not as we know it” – I like the Wall, I love “Final cut” – But I wouldn’t play either if I wanted to listen to Pink Floyd – I would go back to UmmaGumma if I really want to get raw PF, or Shine-on / DSOTM / Animals for slightly more ‘melodic’ PF.
When the sleigh is heavy and the timber wolves are getting bold
You look at you companions and test the water of their friendship with your toe
They significantly edge closer to the gold
Each man has his price Bob and yours was pretty low…..
Guess they were getting short on money…
“According to the band, The Endless River represents a return to the creative principles that informed the writing process that produced Echoes, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Animals.”
Are they seriously trying to convince me that the same writing process they used for Animals can exist WITHOUT Roger Waters? No way, no how, in my opinion.
I’d love to hear tracks that truly sound like the early days of Pink Floyd or anything prior to Momentary Lapse of Reason but I’m highly skeptical that unreleased side session work will capture that magic. I’ll be buying it simply because I’m a big Pink Floyd fan and I’m always willing to listen to something “new” from them.
Wow, I’m suprised people are hating this album before it even comes out.Your judging a book by it’s cover without reading it , in this case listening.
I’ll wait till November and give it a listen and make my decision then and not before, like a rational person.
Pink Floyd make music, and they have made some stunning stuff along with some of the producers they worked with.
This should be a great record and it is not going to be a life or death experience we will encounter when we buy the record, but music by some people who are good musicians.
So chill out weirdos (it’s just music)
Rick Wright a stunning keyboard player. I look forward to hearing this.
It kinda looks like they’re running out of ideas…not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Anything from Anyone @Pink Floyd is probably worth buying IMO – All were great musicians, at their creative best when they were ALL together and their differences acted to give the tension that created the tracks we most love.
Perhaps there is too much tension and ego now – and with Richard gone and youth gone, the best is certainly in the past.
Do we really need to take sides? Do we really need to split into pro and anti Waters or Gilmore groups? This isnt a goddamn religion, its music!
Oh, I nearly forgot –
And with the “madcap” gone –
We wont here the likes of “ive got a bike” or Granchester meadows, or shine on.. The stuff he created or inspired.
Syd. It was all downhill after “See Emily Play”.
I have been following the Floyd since October 1966 and was dedicated up to Meddle .I did n ‘t like Dark Side at the time regarding it as formulaic, commercialistic,and relatively conventional. I came back to the Floyd with the Division Bell and retrospectively appreciated all the albums after Meddle ; sort of cosmic easy listening but not musically challenging. Waters had an edge and I respect his lyrical concepts and political courage
The Endless River ,will, no doubt, be a warm bath of comfort and at this time there is nothing wrong with that. I always thought Richard Wright an essential pillar of Pink Floyd and when I met him he seemed sympathetic and kind .
No matter what plnk floyd will always be #1.No one will ever take their place.