THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Heartbeats, mad laughs, machines and screams. Such are the opening moments of "The Dark Side of the Moon", ushering in a unique musical world where strange sounds, mellow music, bits of biting guitar and ROGER WATERS' cynical observations coexist in a disturbingly natural setting. Unlike "Meddle", which separated the actual songs and instrumental music by "Sides", "Dark Side" mixes them together, songs encased in instrumental sections that glue everything together into a solid, powerful mass. It's a great leap from their last studio album, calculated as commentary rendered in a dream state, from WATERS' laconic lyric delivery to RICK WRIGHT's spacey keyboard passages. The record opens with "Speak To Me", featuring the voices-in-your-head dialogue for which the album may be best remembered. The sleepy, subdued "Breathe" follows, the first of several songs from here that remain classics in the Pink canon. "On The Run" is an instrumental tunnel (similar to TANGERINE DREAM's music) that takes us to "Time", in which the music seems to crystallize around DAVID GILMOUR's guitar work, closing with a vocal workout from guest CLARE TORRY on "The Great Gig In The Sky." Side two opens the wallet for an honest-to-goodness hit single, "Money", with Waters' wit as cutting as ever. "Us And Them" returns to the dreamy world of "Breathe", with only DICK PARRY's saxophone to rouse listeners from its sleepy calm. "Any Colour You Like" is mostly a guitar-led jam built off of the last song (the kind of music that went unnamed on Animals), leading into the chilling resignation of "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse", which in effect brings the album full circle from the momentary madness of "Speak To Me." Dark Side of the Moon is PINK FLOYD's milestone, a musical spacestation that served as a launching point to artistically adjacent works like "Wish You Were Here", "Animals", "The Wall" and "The Final Cut". Though it is one of the great musical achievements of the 20th century, its influence was of an indirect nature (save for ALAN PARSONS PROJECT), a concept album where the concept was the music rather than a particular storyline. That the album remained on the Billboard 200 charts for 741 weeks (yes, almost 15 years) is incredible, but perhaps more a testament to a thriving drug culture (albeit one underground) than any far-reaching musical vision the band might have had.

It is the quintessential PINK FLOYD album, handily one of the ten greatest progressive rock albums ever recorded. Due to its popularity and pristine feats of engineering, the albums has since been issued on myriad occasions, including original master recordings from Mobile Fidelity and, in 1993, a 20th anniversary edition.