Nick Hoad

Here we go then. My brother has always insisted that this is an amazing album, and if it’s good enough for the cover alone to become a pop culture icon in its own right then it must have done something right. For the first five minutes or so, I attempted to write as I listened, but I it soon became apparent that this was an album worth paying full attention to.

The first thing that surprised me about The Dark Side of the Moon was the textures and production techniques at work, which are fantastic. The opening track, Speak To Me is more like sonic art than anything else, and the synthesisers heard in On The Run and Any Colour You Like are decades ahead of their time. On The Run in particular sounds like it could become a great drum and bass track without adding much to it. The second thing that surprised me was the vocals, or lack thereof. Many tracks are instrumental, and those that do include singing feature it very sparsely. This is a good thing as far as I’m concerned, and I’ll get to why later on.

Each track bleeds into the next, and the structure is loose-to-nonexistent, which leads to the album as a whole feeling at times like an electronically-augmented jam session. For me, these sections are some of the album’s strongest, if nothing else for showing me just how influential Pink Floyd have been on future generations of musicians. They feel both timeless and of an era.

The call-backs, foreshadowing and bookends are interesting as well, they feel slick and effortless, such that whenever one arrived I felt as though I’d been expecting it, despite having never heard most of the album before, and certainly not all in one go.

It’s not seamless though. Certain choices of instrumentation seem slightly at odds with the rest; Clare Torry’s vocals in The Great Gig In The Sky, for example, are a bit strange compared to the rest of the band singing in other tracks. The saxophone solos, too, aren’t quite congruous with the rest of the intricately crafted sonic landscape. I mentioned earlier that I thought it was a good thing that sections with vocals are few and far between; this is because I feel like they can undercut the unearthly, ethereal haze of the other instruments. Perhaps this is because of my preconceived notions about the connotations of different sounds, but I don’t feel like lyrics in one’s native language lend themselves terribly well to the vibe that I feel like the album is going for.

Additionally, some tracks overstay their welcome. Money was just at risk of doing so when it faded into Us And Them, which went on to be at least two minutes longer than it needed to be. These songs also lacked much of the experimental aspects of the first half, so despite the production values and skill of the musicians remaining as high as ever, it was a great relief when the synths returned in Any Colour You Like.

The Dark Side Of The Moon was a good one to start this little adventure with. Plenty to write about, plenty to sink my ear-teeth into (there’s a mental image for you), and plenty of reason why it’s still popular nearly 50 years on.

Favourite Track: On The Run

Next Time: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours