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Will get heaps of playing time. Great music, never to be outdone. Brought this for my husband as he had lost the vinyl version when we last moved. Has always love Pink Floyd.
Combined Canadian sales for all formats are estimated at 2 million - in a country of 35 million. However I cannot begin to describe how spectacular the reproduction is on this hybrid SACD. Sales for the cd still approach 10,000 a week. The record has just 38 minutes of music, proving once again that we don't need to fill every cd with to its maximum 80 minutes.
This changed in 1973 with the release of The Dark Side of the Moon. An edible cake has the right combination of ingredients, mixed in the appropriate order and for the appropriate length of time so as to create a batter of the proper consistency. Pink Floyd always had the ingredients. The sound affects, rather than being just unrelated noise, become integral parts of the song. Although the album was successful in the UK (#6) it went unnoticed in the US (#131).
On Amazon.com there are 1202 Pepper reviews and nearly 1500 for Dark Side. My recollection is that Dark Side was a collection of accessible prog-space-acid-psychedelic rock songs far more commercial in nature than anything that the band had recorded theretofore. Like Hotel California, A Stairway to Heaven and Thriller, Dark Side is much-played (perhaps over-played) music that never wears out its welcome with me. I was on to these guys early - 1967 - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - still have the rather well-played and scratchy LP.
The band suddenly matured and the result was a brilliantly consistent album with one great song followed by another. However, today, if I really listen closely and analyze the music I realize that the music on Dark Side isn't that far removed from the music that preceded it on the LP's that I don't particular care for. With Dark Side the band learned that focus and superlative production (engineer Alan Parsons) does make a huge difference. There isn't a remotely weak track to be found.
At that time no-one predicted that the group would become as huge as it did. Ironic then that over thirty years after it was released Rolling Stone would have it as 347/500 all time. They simply didn't have the rest of the equation worked out. This record was and remains an exceptional, once in a lifetime achievement that still sounds as fresh as the day it was released. A cake is a combination of eggs, flour, milk and sugar, mixed and baked.
Picking my way through More, Atom Heart Mother or Ummagumma to find the worthwhile tracks was just too much like hard work. Dark Side has always sounded tremendous, from record through to cd. The lyrics are interesting. Subsequent LP's wandered rather aimlessly hither and hither, a decent song or piece of music followed by meandering/experimental sections or songs that to my ear were more a collection of sounds than they were music.
The songs no longer meander, as if searching for a conclusion - five on the album are under 4 minutes in length. As the years passed Floyd remained a mainstay in the UK album charts while in the US none of the group's subsequent six LP's cracked Billboard's top 50. The cake mixture is then placed in the oven at the correct temperature for the appropriate period of time. Dark Side was therefore a revelation.
The years come and go, yet I never tire of this album. For me Pink Floyd rather lost their way after Piper.
Get "Avalon" or "Brothers In Arms" and you'll see what I mean. This is the least impressive of my 5.1 SACD/DVD-Audio discs. Only a minor improvement over the stereo version letting Dolby Pro-Logic II do the surround. Some songs/passages are impressive (Breathe, Us and Them), others starkly lacking (Time, Great Gig, Money) on this SACD. Beatles' "Love" DVD-A is also quite impressive. And yes, all my channel levels are set correctly. Instruments are discretely placed in separate channels about as much or as often as they should/could have been, but various vocal sections and istrumental ones are very hushed or subdued to the point of barely being present. Not like the original, for sure.
hasta ude percatarme de pequeños detalles que nunca habia escuchado en las ediciones anteriores como minusculas voces mas debiles que las conocidas por todos o detalles de los instrumentos que se escuchan tan nitidos que no lo podia creerdeben tenerlo sean fans o no. Desde que puse este cd por primera vez quede impresionado por la calidad del sonido. es de otro mundo.
It was a gift from the gods. It is beyond "a timeless classic. I couldn't possibly improve on any of the positive comments made previously, but DSOTM brought us into a new time and space that had never before been explored sonically. I don't care if this masterwork, on some levels, might sound a bit "dated", even on SACD.
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