Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon - 30th Anniversary Edition

Year of Release: 2003
Label: EMI Records
Catalog Number: 7243 582136 2
Format: CD
Total Time: 42:58:00

Originally released on March 24th, 1973, no doubt Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon can be seen as one of the greatest rock albums of all time, notching up sales of a staggering 35 million copies to date. Those are official albums. No doubt a multitude of that amount has found its way onto reel to reel tape, cassette, minidisc and CD-R. One thing is for sure, however, in that The Dark Side Of The Moon has always been the album people put on the turntable or in the CD-player when they want to check out a new stereo or a new set of speakers. No doubt that Alan Parsons has done a terrific job and thirty years on the album still is a psychedelic journey, an acid trip from mother earth to the dark side of the moon.

To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, EMI and Pink Floyd offer you the ultimate sound experience by means of a hybrid SACD formatted disc, giving the listener two disc layers to choose from. The first layer contains the album playable on any CD system. The second layer includes a high resolution stereo version plus a 5.1 surround sound mix that plays on SACD-compatible DVD players and home theatre systems. Both layers employ SACD's Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding process that samples the music 64 times faster than CD for an unprecedented sound quality. In order to create the very first 5.1 surround mix of The Dark Side Of The Moon, long time Pink Floyd producer/engineer James Guthrie used the 16-track tapes from the original recording sessions which he remastered on custom-built electronics before finally transferring it all to the SACD format. No doubt a great deal of extra dynamics were added to the atmosphere of the original analog recordings.

The album is listed as having been in the Billboard Top 200 for a staggering 591 weeks which is 11.4 years! In 2002 the album sold no fewer than 417,000 copies in the US alone, which proves that it stays one of the most important albums of all time, being on the wishlist of the younger generation as well. With surround systems becoming familiar surely this new version of this classic album will give another dimension to the music we have already loved for thirty years. It's as if a digital facelift has been done, resulting in an album which truly shines. Originally to be called Eclipse (a piece for assorted lunatics), the music sounds as fresh today as if it were released 30 years ago. Surely DSOTM freaks will analyze every nanosecond of this album, but as a "normal" listener for sure I can say that this new version beats the shit out of my battered vinyl album. Only the inclusion of two posters and two stickers in the 12" foldout sleeve is something you don't come across here, although a limited vinyl run of this remastered package is also on the cards. "Money"? Anyone who still hasn't replaced his/her vinyl album for a state of the art digital copy on CD now has the ideal opportunity. For the same price as a regular album you in fact get two albums so you can drift away on the sounds you can afford ?

Tracklisting:
Speak To Me (1:09) / Breathe (2:49) / On The Run (3:31) / Time (7:05) / The Great Gig In The Sky (4:47) / Money (6:23) / Us And Them (7:48) / Any Colour You Like (3:25) / Brain Damage (3:50) / Eclipse (2:06)

Musicians:
Richard Wright - keyboards, vocals, VCS3
David Gilmour - guitars, vocals,VCS3
Nick Mason - drums, percussion, tape effects
Roger Waters - bass, vocals, VCS3, tape effects

Guests:

Dick Parry - saxophone
Clare Torry - vocals
Doris Troy, Leslie Duncan, Liza Strike, Barry St. John - backing vocals

Discography:
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)
Tonite Let's All Make Love In London (1968)
A Saucerful Of Secrets (1968)
More (1969)
Ummagumma (1969)
Atom Heart Mother (1970)
Relics (1971)
Meddle (1971)
Obscured By Clouds (1972)
Dark Side Of The Moon (1973/1992)
Wish You Were Here (1975)
Animals (1977)
The Wall (1979)
Collection Of Great Dance Songs (1981)
Works (1983)
The Final Cut (1983)
The Committee (1985)
A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987)
Delicate Sound Of Thunder (1988)
Shine On (Boxed Set) (1992)
The Division Bell (1994)
Pulse (1995)
Wish You Were Here - 25th Anniversary Edition (2000)
Echoes - The Best Of Pink Floyd (2001)
Dark Side Of The Moon - 30th Anniversary Edition (SACD) (2003)
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn - 40th Anniversary Edition (2007) (2 and 3CD editions)
Oh By The Way (16CD Box) (2007)

Dark Side Of The Moon (2003) (VID/DVD)

Genre: Progressive Rock

Origin UK

Added: April 20th 2003
Reviewer: John "Bobo" Bollenberg

Artist website: www.pinkfloyd.co.uk
Hits: 1796
Language: english