Aug 2007

2007 marks the 40th Anniversary of Pink Floyd as EMI Recording artists, with their debut album 'The Piper At The Gates of Dawn' having been released on August 5th 1967. To mark the occasion the album will be reissued as a 3 disc collectors special edition that brings together the original mono album, the current stereo mix, and a 3rd disc of special extras that includes the 1967 singles collection with B sides, plus completely unreleased versions of 3 album tracks; 'Apples and Oranges' - Unreleased Stereo Version, 'Interstellar Overdrive' – Unreleased alternate take, 'Matilda Mother' – Unreleased alternate take.

The album will be packaged in a cloth-bound book format, that will include an expanded 12 page redesigned booklet, plus a reproduction of a previously unseen Syd Barrett notebook from 1967 that contains personal artwork and lyric ideas.

• Rolling Stone (12/9/99, p.82) - 4.5 stars out of 5 - "...a masterpiece of the ^psychedelia] genre....the golden achievement of Syd Barrett....a milestone in what soon would be called 'head music'..."
  Q (8/99) - Included in Q Magazine's Best Psychedelic Albums of All Time
  Q (6/00, p.69) - Ranked #55 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums"
  Q (1/95, p.275) - 5 Stars - Indispensable - "...PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN is, even counting SGT. PEPPER, possibly the defining moment of English psychedelia and Syd Barrett's magnum opus; strange, sad, and a record that all should own..."
  Mojo (p.48) - Ranked #40 in Mojo's "The 50 Most Out There Albums Of All Time" - "Thirty eight years on, there's nothing like it..."

'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn', the debut album from Pink Floyd, epitomises the genre of psychedelic rock. Guitar and organ experimentation is taken to extremes on tracks like 'Interstellar Overdrive', while Syd Barrett's whimsical and often humorous lyrics have an undertone of darkness, aided by the use of eerie vocal and instrumental effects. Originally recorded in 1967, it was Barrett's only full album with Pink Floyd, and this 40th anniversary edition contains stereo and mono mixes of the release alongside a third disc that includes B-sides and unreleased rarities.

Pink Floyd: Syd Barrett (vocals, guitar); Roger Waters (vocals, bass); Rick Wright (piano, organ); Nick Mason (drums).
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England.
Pink Floyd's debut was its only recording based on the vision of founding singer/guitarist Syd Barrett, an art student whose world revolved around music, mysticism, and liberal doses of hallucinogens. The band's moniker was taken from the first names of Georgia bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council (an album of theirs was a favorite of Barrett's), and the album's title came from a chapter of Kenneth Grahame's children's classic, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS (also a staple of Barrett's library).
Recorded at Abbey Road at the same time The Beatles were cutting SGT. PEPPER, PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN is an avant-garde pastiche of trippy improvisation and snappy pop snippets--a blurring of musical borders that went far beyond what the Fab Four were doing a couple of rooms away. (Producer Norman Smith had been The Beatles' chief engineer for much of the early '60s.) Instrumental space-jams like "Pow R. Toc H." and "Interstellar Overdrive" smashed the conventionality of the pop mainstream by opening up traditional song structures, as bits of Rick Wright's reverb-soaked Farfisa organ and Barrett's scratchy guitar float in and out of the mix. The other side of Barrett's musical expression was an ability to write shorter "pop" songs that were similar to traditional fare only in length--acid-fueled observations of a Siamese cat on "Lucifer Sam," and child-like tales on "The Gnome" and "Bike."

From their first Syd Barrett-led psych-pop record to their concept albums and elaborately presented live shows of the 1970s, these space-rock pioneers reached unprecedented heights of commercial and aesthetic success. Their '73 opus, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, remained on the album charts for an astounding 14 years, making it one of the best-selling records ever. Even after the departure of main conceptualist Roger Waters following 1983's THE FINAL CUT, Floyd continued to release albums well into the '90s, with David Gilmour leading the band. In July 2005 Roger Waters' rejoined the band for an ecstatically received four song set at the LIVE 8 gig in London's Hyde Park. Instantly fuelling rumours of a full-scale reunion, the band were at pains to stress the performance was a one-off but they may consider reforming for a similar global event.