The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

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Binding: Audio CD EAN: 5099950391929 Format: Box set Label: EMI Records Manufacturer: EMI Records Number Of Discs: 3 Publisher: EMI Records Release Date: 2007-09-03 Studio: EMI Records
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: The Best Pink Floyd Album With Knobs On Comment: The uncomfortable truth for Dave Gilmour (sorry "David" Gilmour) is that this remains the best Pink Floyd album by a long way. Others have written about the wonders of this new Mono/Stereo/Bonus package so I won't bother, but if you only buy one of their albums make it this one! Customer Rating: Summary: Well worth buying, but an over-rated album Comment: The post-Barrett to pre-Dark Side (1968-1972) albums are considered to consist of a lot of aimless instrumental noodling with only the occasional song, most of which are second rate filler. Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Pink Floyd's first album, is considered to be a great, consistent album that really does work as a cohesive ALBUM. I have to disagree. Piper is just as much a hodgepodge of filler and aimless noodling as the subsequent albums. It's just that the good stuff is REALLY good and the mediocre filler is coated in over the top praise just because they make up the majority of the myth shrouded Syd Barrett back catalogue. In my opinion Astronomy Domine and Bike are the only brilliant songs on this album. Lucifer Sam is a good groovy '60's psychedelic track (and I'm sure Austin Powers 2 used the riff as incidental music throughout the whole film). Flaming is a strong song but not a work of genius. Matilda Mother is also a solid song. Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk (the only song not written by Barrett), Gnome, Chapter 24 and Scarecrow are competent filler. Good, above average filler but still filler. Barrett didn't even bother writing his own words for Chapter 24, and the music he put to the book's prose is nothing to get excited about. It's a question of taste when it comes to the two instrumentals (Pow R Toc H and Interstellar Overdrive) but I think they're pointless and aimless. I have developed a tolerance for them so I can now sit through them without complaint, but I'm still some way away from liking them. Pow R Toc H at least has the benefit of being fairly short unlike Interstellar Overdrive. The album does hang together better than the 68-72 albums (with the possible exception of Meddle), but it's not as cohesively strong as its reputation suggests. Two brilliant songs; three good, strong songs; four so-so filler tracks and two bad instrumentals do not make a consistent album in my opinion. The remastering adds nothing new of note to the previous 1994 version. I do not recommend updating if you already own this album. Here is a good Best Of 1968-72 playlist: 1. "Let There Be More Light" (from Saucerful of Secrets) - 5:38 2. "The Nile Song" (from More or Relics) - 3:26 3. "Cymbaline" (from More) - 4:50 4. "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" (Live) (from Ummagumma) - 8:50 5. "Grantchester Meadows" (from Ummagumma) - 7:26 (I have edited this track down to 5:23 by removing the sound effects from the start and end using MP3 Direct Cut) 6. "Fat Old Sun" (from Atom Heart Mother) - 5:24 7. "If" (from Atom Heart Mother) - 4:31 8. "Echoes" (full length version from Meddle) - 23:43 9. "Wot's... Uh the Deal" (from Obscured by Clouds) - 5:08 10. "The Gold It's in the..." (from Obscured by Clouds) - 3:07 11. "Free Four" (from Obscured by Clouds) - 4:15 Customer Rating: Summary: Best value edition of Piper Comment: Whilst today stereo is the norm, in 1967 it was a small minority market and much more time was lavished on the monaural version than on the stereo mix, which would be done in a day or two, after the mono master had been completed, and was often not released until after the standard mono version. Consequently, there were often significant differences between the two. I can remember spending far too many teenage hours comparing mono and stereo versions of albums by the Beatles, the Pink Floyd and others on headphones using a customized mono record player with a stereo cartridge wired to a second amplifier. To me, a psychedelic record such as Piper cried out for stereo effects, and thanks to the crisp production of the late Norman Smith and the sound engineering of Peter Bown at Abbey Road, I was not disappointed. It was an exciting time at Abbey Road, too, as the Beatles were ensconced at the same time in another studio working on Sergeant Pepper, and met the Floyd while they were working on Pow R Toc H. The Pretty Things also started work on SF Sorrow there, again with Norman Smith (who also engineered Sergeant Pepper), before the Floyd's sessions were complete. Piper was the only album that Syd Barrett made in full with the Floyd. He wrote eight of the nine songs and contributed his unique space guitar flourishes to Interstellar Overdrive and the noodly Pow R Toc H. Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is really a benchmark album of the genre now known as psyche. Roger Waters may now dismiss it as juvenilia, but I still listen to it more often than is probably healthy. The stereo version has been newly remastered for this edition, and sounds superb. A mono version of the album has been out before, but this is apparently the first time the authentic mono mix as on the original vinyl album has been remastered, and it clocks in some seventeen seconds longer than the new stereo re-master. In particular it seems an edit of Flaming (used as an American single which had The Gnome on the flipside) was used in error on some mono editions, though at 2.43 now it is barely a second longer than the 1997 mono CD version that I already had, but though I wonder now in what way the 1997 edition did differ from the original album and why, I certainly have no complaints with the 2007 re-mastering. The bonus disc is probably the strongest bait to attract the Pink Floyd enthusiast. It is logical that it should contain the five tracks released on singles that year (the sixth, Scarecrow, was taken from the album), and it is good to have them in catalogue again, but many collectors will already have these on the 6-track mini-LP released in 1997 or from the Shine On 1992 box set. They collect in one place all the released material that feature Syd Barrett, apart from the three tracks on A Saucerful Of Secrets. The real treats here are the final four tracks. The French Edit of Interstellar Overdrive is a substantially re-mixed mono version of Take Two (the one used on the album) of Interstellar Overdrive, unheard since it first turned up on the French EP of Arnold Layne in 1967, and the CD also includes Take Six, a previously unreleased take recorded three weeks later, which shows the extent of variation between performances of this largely improvised piece, and is great to have. There's a rare stereo mix of the extraordinary Apples And Oranges single, too, which is said to be previously unissued but might be the same as the one on the French vinyl LP The Best Of The Pink Floyd; and finally an unreleased early version of Matilda Mother, recorded at their first Abbey Road session. The song was inspired by Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales and this version has lyrics that were changed on the released version, possibly to avoid copyright problems. Obviously missing are the unreleased gems Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream, although as these were recorded for a potential single for release in 1968, long after Piper had been released, they could just as justifiably be included on an edition of A Saucerful Of Secrets. The packaging is nice and glossy and has a facsimile of a booklet of Syd's art collage notebook as well as photos and album lyrics. Given that the primary market for a package such as this must be the avid collector, the booklet surprisingly lacks any technical details at all about the mixes, recording dates, sources and so forth. This clearly is the definitive ultimate edition of Pink Floyd's debut album, until the next re-issue of it, and corrects the shortcomings of previous releases that most of us hadn't been aware of. Cynicism aside, this is an important sixties album for a number of reasons and deserves to be heard in both mono and stereo mixes, and the bonus disc and lavish packaging make it a considerable treat, especially for collectors. Customer Rating: Summary: A CLASSIC GETS A RE - ISSUED VERSION WE'VE ALL PRAYED FOR Comment: EMI Records managed to miss marking the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album, but they just about made up for it with this triple-CD set, packaged in a handsome hardcover book format. It offers fans of the early Pink Floyd a chance to do something for the first time in the CD era (and for the first time since the year 1967) -- immerse themselves, up to the neck at least (if not quite to the top of the head) in the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd sound. EMI pulled out all the stops with this triple-disc set commemorating the 40th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, containing the stereo and mono mixes of the album on two separate digital platters, and augmenting them with a bonus CD containing the band's three early singles, plus two previously unreleased alternate takes (an "alternative version" of "Matilda Mother" and "Take 6" of "Interstellar Overdrive"). A more modestly packaged and priced double-CD set, containing just the mono and stereo album mixes, was also released, intended to satisfy the more budget-conscious fans out there, but the fact is that anyone who cares about early Pink Floyd, or who would be interested in hearing the two different mixes of Piper, is precisely the kind of listener who would want the third disc -- apart from presence of the rarities and the single-only sides (five songs that are as good as anything on Piper), the triple-disc includes a replication of Syd Barrett's collage artwork from 1965. This is a wonderful feature that almost makes up for the lack of liner notes outside of photos and lyrics; perhaps the story of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is well known to the collectors who would invest in this triple-disc set, but a deluxe edition such as this cries out for historical notes. Nevertheless, this is a very nice set and it would be worthwhile if it simply reissued the music, for this is an album that truly does warrant close examinations of the mono and stereo mixes, as they are subtly but notably different from each other -- the balances of instruments are very different on some of the songs, and it seems as though some ideas that were tried for the mono mix (which, naturally, came first) on particular songs were abandoned for the stereo mix, while other ideas for the sound were, of course, unique to the stereo version. Additionally, the five songs released on singles by the group that year, "Arnold Layne," "Candy and a Currant Bun," "See Emily Play," "Apples and Oranges," and "Paintbox," were all superb pieces of psychedelic pop, funny and cutting lyrically with lots of layers, in their music as well as their meanings, to be enjoyed and savored (a sixth song, "The Scarecrow," came from the album); and while the French edit of "Interstellar Overdrive" and a stereo mix of "Apples and Oranges," may sound like we're getting into outre minutiae, along with the two alternate takes they're all distinctly different from the established versions. The assembling of all of this material in one place -- which, astonishingly, has never been done before -- allows us the most thorough overview yet achieved of the group's surviving work from 1967, which also represented the peak of Syd Barrett's tenure with the band. He would become a less substantial and sustained, more erratic presence from then on until his departure in 1968. And while even this set isn't complete in that regard -- the makers would have had to license the Peter Whitehead-recorded pre-EMI Pink Floyd recordings done in connection with the director's Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, and searched out more outtakes (of which none apparently survive), as well as including "Remember a Day," which was recorded at the Piper sessions but not released until a year later -- it is the most concentrated and intensive look ever given at this glorious and all-too-brief period in the band's history. For those listeners who recognize that importance, this is a necessary reissue -- and for those who don't, and need to discover the early Floyd and what they were about, it's every bit as essential. Indeed, for that group of listeners, it's a revelation-in-the-making. Customer Rating: Summary: seminal, an overused word but in this case.... Comment: Though it shared the same timeframe as 'Sergeant Pepper', PInk Floyd's debut album was like diving into a tank of vodka on the rocks. It had only one foot in the pop world anyway, with the other jammed in the door of a playroom where the normal rulebook which governed harmonic progression, bar length and emphasis had been cut up by Syd and stuck back together at random, then viewed through a broken mirror. LIke all progressions it was at it's most attractive when there were still reliable features like a stonking beat or a chantable chorusline to steady the pyrotechnics. When the structure of a track broke down altogether into an arhythmic muesli of drifting pop's and squeaks, the average audience (who were still hoping, let's face it, to hear something to dance to) took an opportunity to catch up on gossip or fire-up another communal spliff . But somewhere in the conflict between the directional confidence of NIck MAson's drums and Syd's attempts to jump off the musical roof, we knew that 'pop' had got 2 steps more serious. I saw them at Sheffield City Hall in November 1967 on tour with Jimi Hendrix, along with Amen Corner and the NIce....what a package!....but the Floyd were disappointing live that night with little of the verve of the album. There was a distinct lack of guitar excitement which suggests that Syd was already wilting under the physical and chemical strain of the lifestyle. As usual at that period, they preferred to stay in the shadows of the light-show so I could not identify the individual members. After that experience I cherished 'Piper' as a record of a transitory peak which may never be revisited. Somehow the later albums, although awesome in their own fashion, were by a different band altogether. At an Open UNiversity seminar in the late '70's I set out to prove that 'Interstellar Overdrive' was in classical sonata form...i.e. Theme / development / recapitulation. Try it out! Adrian Holden (drums: 'Kenny Swerve & the Skidmarks') More Reviews