MEDDLE

Blasting off for Alpha Centauri and all points in between, this sonic tour de force was one of Pink Floyd's most important albums in their creative development. It separated them even further from the acid induced immaginarium of Syd Barrett whose memory would not recurr in their music until their commercial leviathan Dark Side Of The Moon was released two years later.

Ostensibly melodious and quitessentially English embelished with quirky humour and abstractness, Meddle immediately descends into unmitigated sonic mayhem from the get go. The proto-techno instrumental album opener "One Of These Days" was light years away from any thing that they had previously recorded, and commenced with a menacing tape-effected spoken vocal that snarled the warning, " one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces", a tongue-in-cheek joke directed towards a BBC engineer they didn't particularily care for. Cacophonous echo bass harmonics and angry steel guitar runs enter and virtually burn themselves out after 5 minutes of absolute chaos. An interesting lull is provided by three rather frivolous tracks, one of which features a barking dog ( love that dog ) that offer some respite from the preceding tumult. Their playfulness seems almost farcical when contrasted with the ensuing side long progressive rock space suite, Echoes that occurs on side 2. A sonic frankenstein that was constructed from 36 bits of studio ideas, Echoes main themes attempted to consolidate the concepts of unity and solitude. A forlorn melody centered around a theme stated by a single acoustic piano B note played through an echo chamber, progressively expanded into a expressive middle section that used communicative sounds of bats and whales metaphorically to support ideas in the main lyrical theme. Vast, dense and even distraught at times, Pink Floyd never sounded this far out.

Released in August 1971, Meddle was essentally a juxtaposition of Pink Floyd's past and future and at the time went largely unnoticed until later commercial successes revealed it's signifigance. While thier commercial success precluded Pink Floyd themselves from producing anything this "out there" ever again, other bands such as Eloy, Hawkwind, Jane as well as electronic artists like Tangerine Dream were quick to court the spacious musical ideas heard on this pivotal progressive rock milestone.

Personally, I can take or leave Pink Floyd's recognized masterworks, Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here and the Wall and consider Meddle more prevelant in the whole context of the progressive rock movement of the early 70s. Along with Animals, Meddle represents Pink Floyd at the zenith of their creative powers.

Trivia : If you bought one of the first CD editions of Meddle on the Harvest label in 1987 you could have been in for a suprise. Some mispressings made it out into the market that contained the music for the Beatles' second studio album With The Beatles!

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