Pink Floyd

When the news broke about a final Pink Floyd record, many fans were skeptical. As a life-long fan, I had a different perspective. I think of the band's history in five separate eras: the Barrett era (The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, early singles), post-Barrett era (A Saucerful of Secrets, More, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, Obscured by Clouds), mid 70s era (The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals), the Waters era (The Wall, The Final Cut), and the Gilmour era (A Momentary Lapse of Reason, The Division Bell, and now The Endless River). When hearing the base tracks for The Endless River were recorded during The Division Bell sessions, I knew what to expect...more Gilmore era music. Regardless, this swan song offers a few pleasant surprises and highlights the one constant throughout all eras of The Floyd...Richard Wright's evocative keyboards.    

One of the things that I love about music is that no matter how much time I spend listening to (and obsessing over) it, I likely won’t ever do more than just scratch the surface of what’s out there. The happy result of this is that pretty much every year there’s at least one band that isn’t even remotely on my radar that releases an album that completely knocks me on my ass. This year, that band is Portland-based psychedelic drone/doomsters Megaton Leviathan, whose recently released Past 21 Beyond the Arctic Shell has quickly become one of my favorite albums of the year.

As most of you already know, Alan Parsons is known as one of the greatest sound engineers of the 70s progressive rock era. His most known engineering credits include Abbey Road, Atom Heart Mother, and The Dark Side of The Moon. More recently, he engineered Steven Wilson's The Raven That Refused to Sing.