ARCHITECTS OF SOUND (AN INSTRUMENTAL STORY OF PINK FLOYD) / VOL. 7

VOL. 7 – Obscured by Clouds of the Dark Side

Lieu et date : 1972-1975 (voir détails ci-dessous)
Label : Niebla de Fuego
Support : 1 cd
Durée : 52:15 mn
Source : Audience

Liste des titres :

01. Obscured By Clouds – When You’re In (13:30)
02. Mudmen (4:14)
03. Absolutely Courtains (5:47)
04. Guitar Piece (1:29)
05. Speak To Me (5:52)
06. On The Run (6:56)
07. The Great Gig In The Sky (5:51)
08. Any Colour You Like (8:36)

Source :

01 – Obscured by Clouds + When You’re In
—————————————-
Earls Court Exhibition Hall, London, England – May 19, 1973.
Taken from « Supine in the Sunshine » – Harvested / HRV CDR 011.

02 – Mudmen
———–
February-March 1972, Château d’Hérouville, Hérouville, Île-de-France, France.
Taken from the official album « Obscured By Clouds ».
EMI – LC0542 / 5099951108922
(« Oh By the Way » boxset)

03 – Absolutely Courtains
————————-
February-March 1972, Château d’Hérouville, Hérouville, Île-de-France, France.
Taken from the official album « Obscured By Clouds ».
EMI – LC0542 / 5099951108922
(« Oh By the Way » boxset)

04 – Guitar Piece
—————–
February-March 1972, Château d’Hérouville, Hérouville, Île-de-France, France.
Taken from the files published by Dr. Forrester in Just add Cones:
http://just-add-cones.blogspot.com/2009/05/pf-1973-obscured-by-clouds-outtakes.html

05 – Speak to Me
—————-
Sports Arena, Los Angeles, California, USA, – April 26, 1975.
Taken from « Echoes From The Past (Platinum Edition) » – Digital Reproductions DR 42675-4
Recorded by Mike Millard.

06 – On the Run
—————
Hallenstadion, Zurich, Switzerland – December 9, 1972.
Taken from « In a Neutral Land, revision 1 » – Man of Leisure Music (MoLM)

07 – The Great Gig in the Sky
—————————–
Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts, USA – June 18, 1975
Taken from « Echoes in the Gardens » – Heart Breakers / HB-801-1/2

08 – Any Colour You Like
————————
Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts, USA – June 18, 1975
Taken from « Echoes in the Gardens » – Heart Breakers / HB-801-1/2

Commentaire : Cette compilation a été réalisée par un groupe de fans colombiens et chiliens de Pink Floyd. Voici les notes qui accompagnent l’objet :

First…. Why?
————–
The idea of a compilation of only-instrumental pieces of Pink Floyd may have crossed the minds of several people in different places. But for the time being none has been produced (or released widely). Taking into account that Pink Floyd’s musical virtue has produced some of the greatest instrumental pieces (and certainly not few, but more than “many”), the thought was to create a collection embracing all the instrumental themes they created to gather all this sonic experience in one single place. I believe that this collection, though not necessarily a « necessity » would be a nice addition to any PF fan’s collection, because it is different from other compilations, and it helps to fill a gap that has been empty both officially and unofficially. Until now.

The origins of this collection
——————————
This idea for this particular collection you have here was born in the Chilean Floydian community (http://www.pinkfloyd.cl). The original proposal was made by a member of our community. But it raised heated debate among the moderators and other members, because his original idea was to use *only* officially released material. We couldn’t concede to this procedure, and after some discussion we proposed the use of unofficial recordings. This was a harder job, and because nobody really took the lead coordinating the project, it was soon abandoned. Some months afterwards a couple of members of our community (Dave_Ubidia and Cymely) resurrected the idea in the community and asked Niebla de Fuego to develop it. This time they agreed completely to the use of unofficial recordings to create the compilation. Thanks to their support this project was started.

How was this made?
——————
First, a list of officially released instrumental pieces was made. Then we reviewed as many live recordings and unofficially released material as possible to list the instrumental themes not in the official albums. After that, we ordered the list chronologically trying to respect as much as possible the release/recording order. Once a complete list was made, we started to source which songs could be taken from RoIOs and other sources. For continuity and space reasons, some songs had to be placed differently, thus disrupting the strict chronological presentation. For example: « Pow R. Toc H. » is not presented before « Interstellar Overdrive » but inside the body of « The Man and the Journey ». In the case of « Moonhead » it was decided to use it as the closer for disc 02, because placing it at the beginning would somehow disturb the overall sonic experience of the disc. There may be other instances as well. But we always tried to respect the release/recording order.

Problems
——–
When considering the material to be used, we found that not *all* of the instrumental pieces were available through RoIOs. Many of them only appeared in official albums. This raised a big problem, because for the sake of completeness we could not leave them out. But on the other hand the use of official sources for this unofficial compilation would be against copyright. Seeing that the amount of official material to be used would not be much considering the size of the overall compilation, we decided to go ahead using official recordings only when strictly necessary. In the case where a disc has more official material than that coming from RoIOs, we have decided not to share those discs/tracks in sites like Yeeshkul or any other music trade site. However, for those interested, they can be found at some other evil torrent sites. Or if you prefer you can re-create those discs using your own original CDs.

How this was made (criteria)
—————————-
The criteria used for this compilation was to use instrumental pieces taking into account:

– Length
– Performance
– Sound Quality

We tried not to favour any criteria over the others. But we decided to use recordings where those three aspects would be best achieved end balanced. Length was considered because it is no secret that Pink Floyd used to extend their live performances in a very creative and usually hallucinating fashion. We thought that the longer the song, the more musical creativity would be shown. Unfortunately, « long » does not necessarily means « better ». And it was found that some « long » recordings were *that* long because of technical problems. So we turned to a great performed song (even if it was not the longest ever recorded live) to give a complete, continuous, and powerful stream of music. Sound quality was also considered. Fortunately there are lots of recordings with great quality. So that was not much a problem. If sound quality was not good at all, we discarded the samples even if it was a great or a long performance and favored a shorter, nice played, better sounding recording.

How this was made (selection)
—————————–
For each listed song, we searched for the live recordings where that song was performed, and listened to each of them carefully to select those that matched the criteria. In some cases the selection was easy because there were just a couple of sources available (« Reaction in G »), but in some other cases up to 28 different versions of a song were compared (« Careful With That Axe Eugene » and « Echoes »). After the best possible sources were chosen we proceeded to the edition.

How this was made (edition)
—————————

Since all of the songs were sourced from FLAC and SHN archives, we proceeded to decode them back to WAV. Then, Adobe Audition was used to edit them trying to respect as much as possible the original sound of the song. But sometimes the songs lacked end applauses or had a too-low volume. This was patched and corrected. In some other cases crossfades were applied to create a more continuous flow of music thus enhancing the musical experience. A complete mix was done, and that mix was then listened to, corrected if needed, and then tracked and saved. The individual resulting WAVs were then converted to FLAC using FLAC Frontend (level 8). Even after those retouches, the sound is not excellent. Please do not expect a perfect professional sound, because the sources themselves are not perfect in most of the cases. Some songs sound good, and some others don’t, while there are some other songs that sound really great.

This is not for purists. Several songs used here have been equalized, denoised, cut, blended, crossfaded, and such. Not all of them, but you may find that kind of editions here and there. Hopefully, they are well done and are not so noticeable as to distract you. Since this is not intended as a collection for archival or eternal file preservation purposes, we didn’t adhere to a « purist » approach or even tried an ultra-high-frequencies sampling (I’ll leave that for the bats’ ears). That’s why this edition is intended for pure enjoyment and to be burned in CD using 16b/44,1Khz. All the sources of the songs used in this compilation are listed as thoroughly as possible to give proper credit, and so that you can look for the original sources if you feel like getting the complete (and untouched) recordings.

Brief final notes
—————–
We hope that you enjoy this compilation. This was made to offer a different approach to Pink Floyd’s music, and hopefully we have achieved an interesting collection that would be enjoyable to most of you. Hopefully we covered all of the Pink Floyd instrumental pieces they ever made. But we may have skipped some. If that’s the case please forgive us. We tried to offer the broadest spectrum possible.

A note about those other songs…
———————————-
You can find that we decided to include « Echoes », and Shine on You Crazy Diamond ». These songs, though not instrumental, have themselves great long and very elaborated instrumental passages. For that reason alone we decided to include them. Those passages help to complete the musical experience of Pink Floyd’s sound. And even though their presence in this collection certainly goes against an « only-instrumental » concept (thus making the title of this compilation something like « ARCHITECTS OF SOUND – The Pink Floyd *mostly* Instrumental Pieces »), we felt that leaving out the live renditions of those two great songs would indeed be a sin against an instrumental experience. Which ultimately is what the Pink Floyd sound is about: a complete sonic experience.

With thanks to:
—————
All the recorders and groups that have made available those great live performances to the fans. Their efforts in preserving and distributing Pink Floyd’s recordings are great, and they are indeed much appreciated. If it were not for their previous efforts, this collection that uses their releases could not have seen the light. Also, may thanks to the Chilean Floydian community (http://www.pinkfloyd.cl) and its moderators for their support and for the many ideas proposed. They were also a great force behind the concept of this collection. Special thanks to Dave_Ubidia and Cymely for the support, and to Still_marooned and Samico for the original proposal.

« Niebla de Fuego »

Bogota – Colombia – September 29, 2009

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