THE ENDLESS RIVER

I was actually surprised when I saw the amount of five star (perfect) ratings that "The Endless River" achieved upon its addition to this site. I mean, I thought the album was good when my special edition arrived and I took a listen, but I honestly thought the album would be shrugged off as a complete dud of Pink Floyd.

Turns out no, so I suppose this means they did it right even when the entire prog-fan community had their eyes on them all from the announcement to its final release. I guess this sort of shows how good even 2/5 of this band can be. Not to mention they still had to deal with people whining about the lack of Waters, and had to dodge scathing remarks over him not being included. I honestly don't understand how people couldn't assume that Waters wasn't going to be on the release, after all, I thought the lawsuits, insults, and overall meanness towards each other spoke for itself.

But with that aside, is this album really worth it? And the answer is yes. Although the album has alot of swan-song not to mention pieces that feel like they should have been expounded on, it's still a great release, not to mention a great way to go out in style.

The album stars out well enough; 'Things Left Unsaid' is a little mediocre but nothing I would hate anytime soon. The same goes for 'It's What We Do'. The album really starts to get going in my opinion on 'Skins', an highly interesting track. Another highlight is 'Anisina', which combines the regular progressive Pink Floyd with a lot of ambiance. 'On Noodle Street' and 'The Lost Art of Conversation' are great, and I wish that they could have been expounded on in the slightest to make them a little longer. 'Allons-Y (1)' and 'Allons-Y (2)' both are more familiar Pink Floyd songs. Quicker guitar riffing with some light bursts of synth. Both are pretty nice. 'Talkin' Hawkin'' probably has to be my favorite, with a nice flow along with an amazing ambient score. The constant rhythm is quite catchy and nice, and I suppose you could say this is the only other song that has anything along the lines of lyrics on it (Professor Hawking speaks some words about the universe). 'Eyes To Pearls' is a short, dark acoustic song, and is actually pretty cool to listen to, with echoing drums and an ominous guitar playing. 'Surfacing' contains a much brighter mood not un-similar to content of the 1979 release of The Wall. It's pretty basic when it comes for content on this album, but I guess it isn't bad.

'Louder Than Words' has been said to be an amazing farewell song by the band, and I must agree. Of course, it is more like something from The Division Bell more than anything else, and if you were expecting anything different, then you will be disappointed. It contains many cool rhythms, as well as some surprisingly good vocals from Gilmour. Polly Samson, who co-wrote the song, did a quite bang-up job. It's fantastic melodramatic tune, and is a great closer to the song. Definitely a highlight to the song.

Pink Floyd's 2014 release of The Endless River is completely worth its salt. Although maybe not as good as The Dark Side of The Moon or Wish You Were Here, The Endless River is an awe-inspiring finish to this band, and I would suggest getting it. Essential to any true-hearted Pink Floyd fan.

Go give it a listen.

From promo copy. Two decades. But a returning in 4 decades to the classic Pink Floyd. There was a great expectation for this work. For unconditionals...it is sure a good album. There is a strong reminiscence of classic Pink Floyd. .mostly The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were....and a little of Meddle . What a pity only one song with D Gilmour vocals... It seems that all songs could have had voices... In my opinion this music is not an improvement in comparison to The Division Bell and there is a carefully intention to do a correct work...but .I don't think they only wanted or needed to make cash(I have read some critics in that way) .."and so lets record an album in the line of what our classic fans like".. The songs are good (miss more vocals)but with not enough risks ..to do something new...different. Or better or as good as The Division Bell : a mix of soft ,light and heavier songs.... This album is too flat in my opinion..

Pink Gilmour and David Floyd!

I guess if you own the name, were their best period guitar player, have the art/cover like connections and no fool for finances, you certainly would not call this one a David Gilmour album, market wise it will be unwise, very!

Music wise, this David Gilmour doing the Pink, songs and riffs in different keys included, will really would not have created such a mass expectation as a new and other DG solo release. But it will have been more honest in its different "solo" scope discography, but the Floyd it is not. In fact the PINK without Waters turned out to be a very different shade of pink fluid, a mellow one. In my not so humble opinion.

Expect the super famous "voices in off" but few singing (which is nice), expect all of Mr Gilmour's masterful "trademark" guitar sounds and solos, expect also a lack of creative or different songwriting, which is no big news, I mean this guy kind of knows how to repeat himself in newfangled ways. Expect a self tribute to what he considers PF, but really this is not Pink Floyd, not even the one he himself reconstructed.

***3 "good guitar playing, unimpressive songwriting", PA stars.

The Endless River, but no Waters

One of the many benefits of living Down Under is getting Friday releases of major albums. Ideally I'd wait for a few weeks to offer a review, but many people will be wondering if the purchase is worth it, so here are some thoughts.

It is.

At heart, pre-1977 Pink Floyd was a laced-up-tight British band whose polite Arthur Dent-like anger went largely unexpressed except for whenever Gilmour let loose a guitar solo. (It's no surprise Douglas Adams was a lifelong Floyd fan.) Gentle vocals - until Waters took over - stately rhythms and serene synths, all set against Gilmour's searing, snorting solos. But when the band ceded creative control to Waters the balance was lost. His relentless apoplexy from 'Animals' onwards overwhelmed even Gilmour's solos, rendering them irrelevant.

In hindsight it's surprising the balance lasted as long as it did. The classic post-Barrett Pink Floyd period includes every album in the 1970s, defined as it were by a progressively higher anger quotient. 'Atom Heart Mother' had none at all, and so for many is a bewildering curiosity and nothing more. By the end of the decade their last meaningful twitch, 'The Wall', was so drenched in fury it left many listeners equally bewildered. Fame, it appeared, had not mellowed Roger: it had enraged him. Their end was inevitable. Accusations, shouting, courtrooms.

Despite all this they never compromised their quintessential Britishness: no faux-American accents or lyrics about Detroit. But Waters took it all too far in the late 70s. His dismissal of Richard Wright, he of the sublime keys, was not just about a poor work ethic. Because Waters wanted the anger unleashed he didn't need Wright's subtlety, and in unleashing the anger he ruined the Pink Floyd sound, turning it instead into Wes Craven buffoonery.

Wind forward thirty years after their disintegration, and there is no buffoonery here. Richard Wright has been posthumously reinstated: in fact, this is his album, which is as pointed a poke at Waters as it gets. Some may say this is a David Gilmour solo album, but I'd suggest taking Nick Mason seriously when he says 'The Endless River' is a Rick Wright tribute. This is the classic 1970-75 Pink Floyd sound. Glacial, understated, laced up tight. In fact, with Waters barely a memory, no anger either. And that is at the heart of what is missing in The Endless River: anger. The anger best expressed not by Waters' godawful shouting a la 'The Final Cut', an album filled with nothing more than phlegm and spittle, but the tight, barely-suppressed rage heard in basslines for songs like 'One Of These Days' or 'Sheep'. Pink Floyd were at their best when Roger Waters wanted to scream but let Gilmour do it for him.

It was a precarious balance, yes, but for most of a decade it worked.

Your reaction to 'The Endless River' will depend on the level of anger/Waters you're looking for. Think 'Atom Heart Mother' rather than 'Animals', pastoral rather than visceral, ambient rather than rock and you'll know what to expect. If you've ever wanted more of the first four or the last ten minutes of 'Wish You Were Here', you've got your wish in spades. There's barely any momentum, let alone anger here.

The music is reconstituted from 'The Division Bell' sessions, and occasionally it shows. Gilmour and Mason have done their best to integrate the various material, but at times it sounds fragmentary. It's certainly derivative, but only of their own music. An example of a callback is 'Skins' which references 'A Saucerful of Secrets'. There's little muscle, and Gilmour sings on only one song, but there's oodles of Rick Wright beauty. There are also some genuinely thrilling moments. The three Floydians working together on 'It's What We Do', the skittering electronics and thumping percussion of 'Sum', the muscle of 'Allons-y', the poorly titled but charming 3/4 time 'Talkin' Hawkin' and the honest reflection of 'Louder Than Words' are all worth the price of the recording. It works - mostly. It is a genuine Pink Floyd album, more so, I believe, than anything since 'The Wall'. It's also a genuine three-star album. Despite this, it is required listening for any serious prog rock fan.

What? Pink Floyd, the legendary band that any rock band cites as influence, releases a new album ? Well, actually not quite, as its content, made of leftovers of the sessions for 'The Division Bell' comes as a reminder that twenty years already passed since the publishing of what appeared to be the swansong of the most notorious representatives of space rock! 'The Endless River', which was planned to be named 'The Big Spliff' originally, aimed at being an album of ambient instumental music. The project fell into oblivion before resurfacing five years after the death of keyboardist Rick Wright. David Gilmour decided later on to add some vocal parts, mainly in the shape of choirs. That's it for the album background.

Let's focus now on the material recorded on this work. Next to ambient pieces full of glowing melodies, some pieces carry the typical Pink Floyd features. On the ambient side, "Things Left Unsaid", "Ebb And Flow" and "Night Light" highlight a spectral electro-acoustic guitar reminiscent of David Gilmour's good old friend Roy Harper. Further on, "Unsung" petrifies us with its solos sounding like whale cries. And we even mourn Rick Wright's death when the staggering beauty of "Calling" and "The Lost Art Of Conversation" fills our ears. On the other hand, "Autumn '68", with its breath-taking organ, leaves us speechless! Regarding the songs with a floydian flavour, we dive with "It's What We Do" in ethereal atmospheres, which, as the Harper-like guitar of the beautiful ambient introduction foreshadowed, echo the mythical "Shine On you Crazy Diamond"'. The same goes with "Surfacing", which features a pleading male choir. While the ballad "Anisina", with "torn apart" guitar solos, but also a serene Garbarek-like saxophone and a clarinet as dizzying as in a klezmer band, refers to "The Final Cut" in its orchestrations, "Talkin' Hawkin'" and "Louder Than Words" (the only song to feature lyrics) show a more optimistic side with their enthusiastic choirs. And regarding the two parts of "Allons-Y", they are strongly reminiscent of "Run Like Hell" in their hypnotic arrangements. Some more atypical tracks ("Sum", "Skins" and "Eyes To Pearls") infringe upon (future at the time) territories of Rick Wright's 'Broken China', with their tribal rhythms full of unparalleled elegance. Some listeners might see there a wink to "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" from the psychedelic era of the band. More surprising, a smooth-jazz facette of the trio is unveiled with the serene "On Noodle Street" and its discrete bluesy guitar.

Even if the whole sounds a bit like a collage of tracks recorded during various sessions, the elegance and the ethereal spirit of Pink Floyd are still there, without being spoiled by songs that would be made to fit radio standards. Lovers of ethereal music, be it rock or electronic, will find a lot to like in this work, that sounds like a vibrant tribute to Rick Wright, through the variety of keyboards.

ace-sounding elegant geriatric muzak ,,, but hey RSPKT it is Pink Floyd choice off-cuts on the cutting-room floor but we ARE grateful as still better than most other stuff ;;; the bins of the wealthy have more in them than the cupboards of the poor ;;; as mournful as ever and still that from-the-central-sun vibe there is a sadness to the fact that in 2014 so many OF US ARE STILL looking forward to the latest offerings from a sixties band ;;; I was so excited by the release of Cyclopean in 2013 basically an EP by Can ;;; if they were still around ;;; Why is there nothing of that magnitude coming out of the younger musicians? Zeitgeist has to be the culprit here doubtlessly ;;;

So yes thanks Mr Gilmour and friends "you are still the best"

Yep, the irony of the title "The Endless River" (without Waters) is hard to escape. I am not sure as what to make of it, was it just the "slip of the tongue", or is there something more to it that my intellect can't decipher?

At first listen, I am left somewhat unimpressed. This work is pretty much in line with PF under Gilmour's direction, laid back, a bit tired with not much fire left to speak of. It's hardly a surprise that these pieces were left out of "The Division Bell", an otherwise quiet nice album.

Even more surprising is that released in memory of Richard Wright and featuring Wright along with a number of other keyboard players, there is very little action on the ebonies. Numerous, short soundscapes, yes, pieces that never evolve into proper tunes. The bulk of the work is meandering, instrumental tracks. Pleasant enough, but not very exciting. On the very few actual songs Gilmour plays with his trademark elegance, but these notes have been heard before.

So, why release an album like this? Money is not likely an issue as Gilmour is known as a generous philantrophist who donates massive amounts for worthwhile causes. This still leaves him with an estimated $100 million to play with.

On second listen, I find this album pleasant enough, but still boring, barely scraping into a 3 star rating. I would have much preferred to see the audio part (with narration edited out) of the video "La Carrera Panamericana" released instead. The soundtrack there is classic PF approach of strong tunes, but as is, spoiled by the running commentary.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Because of many people's expectations and emotional attachment to Pink Floyd, I believe that it will be difficult to get many objective opinions on this album. But none the less, we shall try.

For those that don't know, this album is comprised of outtakes from the Division Bell recording sessions from 1993, with additions over dubbed by PF survivors, David Gilmour and Nick Mason. At the time of the DB recordings, David Gilmour said that he was trying to recapture the magic of WYWH. And it shows by this album's opening two tracks, "Things We Left" and "It's What We Do", that sound like a cast off piece lifted from the song "Shine On", complete with the languorous bass and drum rhythm track with the signature synthesizer and organ washes that characterize that song. I keep waiting for the band to breakout into the verse "Remember when you were young...". But it never happens and that is characteristic of this album. A lot of song build up, but no release.

Side two of the vinyl addition contains the song "Skins" and naturally it's a drum track showcase for Nick Mason, who hasn't sounded this enthusiastic since recording The Wall album.

As all of of the songs are devoid of vocals except the album's closer, Gilmour and Mason knew their instruments would have to speak for them. Except for Mason's brief re-animation that includes some stunning sounding Rototoms, it's Gilmour that rises to the occasion. His guitar has only gotten better with age and is more expressive and soulful than anything he's done in the past, as he is still a string pulling marvel. A trait he puts to full effect on TER.

A lot of the songs are basically noodlings that don't overstay their welcome because they are kept to a short length of less than one and a half minutes. The album does drag toward the end as PF resurrect Stephen Hawking's voice track from Division Bell's song "Keep Talking" and placed it on a throwaway piece titled "Talkin' Hawkin'". Good grief. The effect is a cheesy now as it was in 1994!

For audiophiles, I can say that the album is well recorded, mixed and mastered and actually sounds better than the Division Bell remaster.

So, is the album any good? That depends on the listener. If you thought A Momentary Lapse of Reason and the Division Bell were stellar classic PF albums, then you will most probably enjoy TER. If you found those albums to be sub par, then the same will hold true for this new offering.

Ultimately, how good or bad this album is will be determined by what you want it to be. Nothing more, nothing less. While not academically acceptable, I'll give this album 3.5 stars for the former group and 2.5 stars for the latter. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or, in this case, the ear of the listener. As to the journey on the river just beginning or quickly ending, that will be totally up to you.

The irresistible urge to hear Pink Floyd's new album is unprecedented. "The Endless River" has to be one of the most anticipated albums of the year as far as I am concerned, but also an album to be approached with a great degree in trepidation. The reasons are obvious; will it live up to the colossal reputation of the band? And furthermore will it be a fitting tribute to the late great Richard Wright? To state this is a mere cash in is an injustice as the band would not do this merely for the money and their reputation is already engraved in music history as indelible. So it goes back to the notion that the band genuinely are sincere in producing something worth while musically to add to their incredible back catalogue of masterpieces, and in due respect of Richard Wright.

These tracks are studio outtakes and remasters of the classy "Division Bell". The style on the album is predominantly instrumental and melancholy. It becomes obvious on the first track "Things Left Unsaid" that has the same ambience and keyboard driven atmospherics as "Shine On". Every reviewer will pick this up, but its painfully obvious; though there are no vocals outside of a few narrative moments earlier. The absence of vocals does not necessarily mar the enjoyment but part of Pink Floyd's greatness rests in the complex themes and brilliant lyrical poetry. Therefore the absence of this component was jarring. Gilmour is a masterful guitarist as usual and the band create very strong emotions in the music, but I longed for some vocals.

It segues into "It's What We Do" and then the dreamy "Ebb and Flow" that could have all been mixed as one track such were the seamlessness of the music. I love that quiet tranquil solitude generated in the music thus far. Richard Wright's ghostly keyboards are enchanting and haunting at the same time.

"Sum" has a wavering synth that is different and a heavier guitar crashes in with characteristic Gilmour slides, reminding me of "One of these Days". This is a definitive track on the album, fantastic instrumentation sounding at times like the rhythms and riffs of "Keep Talking". It could be misconstrued as an extension of that track such is the tempo and overall style.

The shrilly violins are wonderful; very ethereal and portentous, segueing into the next track. "Skins" moves into drumming territory showcasing the incomparable skill of Nick Mason. He is indispensable as the rhythm machine of Pink Floyd and it is great to hear him waxing eloquent on the skins. The mood is similar to the mid section of "Echoes" like shrieking Humpback whales.

"Unsung" is a shift in mood but still maintains violining guitar slides. The orchestral accompaniment is a great augmentation, but this is certainly a darker sound. This quickly segues into "Anisina", with beautiful Wright piano accompaniment. Gilmour takes off on those trademark licks on his axe.

"The Lost Art of Conversation" is dreamy ambience to fall asleep to. Very nice but it feels like a filler track. "On Noodle Street" has Gilmour kanoodling eloquently with some layered keyboards and mellotron sounds. Pleasant throughout but a bit tuneless. It segues to the acoustics and atmospheric keys of "Night Light". I like the moodiness generated here, lending an eerie esoteric quality.

"Allons-y (1)" reintroduces drums and a more coherent beat is welcome. Its over in a flash and we hear "Autumn '68". This is a Wright keyboard showcase. The beat returns on "Allons-y (2)" and it's the same style as the first part. Really one wonders why the tunes aren't merged together as one because they are too short to stand alone.

"Talkin' Hawkin'" is a throwback to the Stephen Hawking soundbites of "Keep Talking". Its slower and its nice to hear vocal "Aaaagghh"'s. The outtakes of Hawking's revelations about mankind's achievements works for me. The man is a genius so we should listen to what he has to say.

In no time at all we are at the pointy end of the album, side 4 and "Calling" moves into ambient territory again. I like the high pitched synths and dramatic essence, and the way it is unlike other Pink Floyd music. "Eyes to Pearls" has nice Wright keyboard crashes like "One of these Days" accompanied by Gilmour's acoustic prowess. Seamlessly we are lead by the hand into "Surfacing", feeling like a lost memory from "Division Bell". Gilmour's vocals are heard as intonations to augment the music; lots of "oohs" with multi harmonies. This is beauty on a major scale as divine as Pink Floyd can get. Again the slides on the guitar are angelic and the emotionally charged atmosphere rings of a time gone by, never to return to. The sadness of Wright's departure is felt strongly.

"Louder Than Words" is the song on the album that feels out of place after all the instrumental workouts but is still welcome as the vocals enhance the mood. Gilmour harmonises "we bitch and we fight, dissing each other on sight" and "with world weary grace we've taken our place, we could curse it or nurse it and give it a name." Gilmour croons "it's louder than words, this thing that we do, the beat of our hearts is louder than words". Later there is an album reference with "it's there with a pulse". I love how Gilmour mournfully sings and it's wonderful to know that he is doing this again on a genuine Pink Floyd album with his old band mates, sans Waters. Talking of which Waters' bass is replaced by Bob Ezrin and Guy Pratt; unfortunately nowhere near as good as Waters. His absence is a blight on the album which would have been so much better with him putting aside all differences and appearing in respect of Richard Wright's memory; an opportunity missed there.

Final conclusion has to be this is not a great Pink Floyd album but it is good enough to check out. It doesn't stand up to the likes of any of the other Pink Floyd albums from "Meddle" to "The Wall" and is nowhere near the value and quality of "Division Bell" or for that matter "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". It has to be reviewed on its merits of course, as an afterthought after a brilliant career; Pink Floyd will never be forgotten, even if this is how it all ends in the studio for this mesmirising indispensable band.

Before I start, let me first say that Pink Floyd is my favorite band of all time and will always be. I am a true fan of everything from Piper At The Gates of Dawn to The Division Bell. However, it saddens me greatly to say that this album bored me to tears. I tried very hard to get into it with multiple listens, but each time, it was more and more disappointing. One thing that I have always loved about Pink Floyd is the ambiance and space in their music. But with this album, they went too far. This entire album sounded like something you would hear in the background at a department store or in an elevator. I felt like I was listening to an hour long introduction to a song that never got off the ground. You wait and wait and it feels like Gilmour will start singing at any moment, but the moment never arrives, and it lacks those catchy, dynamic, trademark guitar solos that made David Gilmour my favorite guitarist of all time. I understand that this was a tribute to the late, great Rick Wright, and I can respect that. But I think Rick himself would have said, "Hey guys, this album is incomplete. Let's finish it." This album has 2 or 3 thirty second moments that remind you of who Pink Floyd really are and what they've done in the past, but they are few and far between. If you are a collector like me and must have everything Pink Floyd has recorded, then go ahead and get it. However, if you want to hear something like Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, or Animals, just stick with those albums because you will be greatly disappointed with this "effort".

Just as many reviewers out there I begin by saying that Pink Floyd is my favorite band; from start to finish. So imagine my expectations for a new PF album even though they advertised that the album was going to be made from studio outtakes and remasters of "The Division Bell", an album that I consider to be one of PF's best. So all I want to say is that The Endless River is a huge disappointment for me. It saddens me that the last Pink Floyd song is "Louder than Words" a song that wouldn't be on any of the previous PF records because is just so mediocre, and it's not the awesome "High Hopes". The album even lacks those trademark David Gilmour guitar solos that made him one of the best guitarists of all time. So I do not recommend this album unless you really like post Waters PF and take it only as a reprise of the Division Bell, nothing new, and truly an incomplete and disappointing album.

I didn't want to write a review until I have given The Endless River a few listens, allowing myself plenty of time to tune into it and synchronize with it. I have only had TER for 20 waking hours, but it's been on the record- and in the CD player 4 times!

At a later time I may come back and write a perhaps more informative review, but here is what I can say now: TER is certainly the ultimate iteration of the magic Pink Floyd formula. The 40+ years of musical excellence and innovation, distilled to absolute perfection.

One of the pleasant surprises was that the 54 minutes of TER do not feel "too long" at all. It's officially the easiest "long" album to absorb in one sitting.

So far, I haven't noticed anything on this album that wouldn't merit at least 4 stars. I'll admit I have always been uneasy about Polly Samson's poetical exploits in Pink Floyd, but on TER her stuff is on one track only, and actually the poetry is a lot better than what we had on the Division Bell.

I truly did not expect myself to like this album. Material that did not make it into The Division Bell? What good could it be, considering I am not a fan of the 1994 album to begin with? Now, having listened to it three times for the past three days I say with huge relief that it is a proper Pink Floyd album and that I like it. The PF magic is still there. Sometimes it sounds 90s, sometimes 70s. I am deeply amazed how talented these guys are for even the material that was shelved for 20 years sounds better than most of contemporary progressive music. 3 full stars.

Pink Floyd's last album is quite easy to review. I don't see any point to wish Waters to to play bass or sing on this album but it could have been someone else than Mr Gilmour himself. His bass playing is a bit unstable. Anyway, this is continuation from the point where Pink Floyd was developped. The story continues from Division Bell, not from Meddle or Dark Side Of The Moon. Most important is that theres three "original members" (I would count Mr gilmour as an original member) playing music they best as they can. This is defenitely Pink Floyd album and defenitely NOT David Gilmours solo album, except last side D of the double LP. This is really good album. Especially first three side that fininsh to Wrights church organ solo. Side D is only side that sounds like Gilmours solo album. But all the rest of the album is defenitely Pink Floyd album. Highest recommendation to any pink floyd fan or anyone interested in good music. Well, thats all I can say at this point. Don't judge album too quickly. Give some time, listen and enjoy.

When I first heard that the great Pink Floyd were releasing a new album, I was chuffed to bits! This was something that was never meant to happen, and nobody realistically thought it would, but here I was with a dream come true. I have read through many reviews on here, mainly people voicing their disappointment on the lack of lyrics, lack of songs, lack of Waters, lack of guitar etc etc, and I believe that the album may have been badly marketed as 'the new album'. Alternatively I feel that if people had done their homework, they may not have set the expectations so high.

So, what do we have here? The Endless River is a collection of mostly short passages of instrumental music that blend beautifully into each other, with the instantly recognisable 70s/90's pink Floyd sound. There are parts that will remind you of other PF tracks, but is this a bad thing? The last track being the only one with lyrics, and the only that resembles a 'regular' song. It is not the best song they ever wrote, (but it is the best song they have written in 20 years).

This 'album' is created from previous ideas and recordings, and is likely to be the only chance we ever have of hearing Floyd as a band again.

I have given a three star rating because I am not going to kid anyone that this is essential. It is for Pink Floyd fans, but too good to aim at them solely.

Embrace it, enjoy it. The alternative was nothing!

As a long term fan of Pink Floyd, right from Sid Barrett's days, I am somewhat disappointed by this offering. Without the poetic vocals or constrained angst, this is melancholic ambiance and seems to be a pale copy of the early Floyd. One wonders why they released this as a Pink Floyd album? They clearly didn't do it for the money and knowing Gilmour it's likely that a large chunk of any returns will go to charity anyway. The structure of the compositions seems to be a deliberate attempt to bookend their career so maybe this is just a simple message that this time, it really is the end. In an interview with Gilmour and Mason they said this was a tribute to Richard Wright and it is certain that his influence is all over this. However, if they truly wanted a tribute to Wright, would it not have been better to release this as a Richard Wright album, perhaps with the proceeds going to a cancer charity? That would, I feel, have been a more fitting tribute to a great, and sadly missed, man As a piece of music it is accomplished, polished and professional. But to me, it's not one that makes me want to drop everything I'm doing to sit down and listen. This certainly has more in common with On An Island than Dark Side of The Moon, which is not to say that's a bad thing, I love Gilmour's guitar wherever it is! But if you are looking for something closer to the classic Pink Floyd sound then I think that bands like Airbag or Freedom to Glide are somewhat closer. Overall it's a good album but had it appeared with an unknown band I might have passed it by with just a cursory listen.

It's a very difficult thing to do an honest review of a band whom I have held in such reverential esteem for such a long period of time. The very first time I got stoned, the person I was getting high with pulled out this rather psychedelic L.P and said " you gotta listen to this ". It was 1969 and Ummagumma had just been released and from that moment on in my altered state of consciousness I knew I had found " Sanctuary ". I say that because the music took me to beyond any place I could ever have imagined, and the Sanctuary was that I knew that I could return there simply by buying that L.P and playing it whenever I needed to escape there again. As I got older and Pink Floyd released more albums my love for this band increased and it would seem that they could do no wrong. Then, just as it seemed this was going to go on forever, life caught up with them and Roger left the band. It appeared to be just a minor hiccup at first because the next couple of albums without Roger were on par with the best Pink Floyd had turned out previously. Then the inevitable happened. The drought. Those long lean years with nothing original being released. Just those endless re-releases and best of albums that all dying bands do. Still I kept the faith. Hoping one day there would be one last album. Rick Wright died. I cried for weeks playing his solo albums with the realization that there would definitely never be any new Pink Floyd music. To fill a hole I listened to all the tribute bands and got quite a lot of satisfaction for a few years just listening to how some very talented artists treated my beloved Pink Floyd songs. But as good as some of them were, it was just not Pink Floyd. Then earlier this year 2014 rumors that there was going to be a new Pink Floyd album. A teaser track released " Louder Than Words " And so it came to pass. The Endless River. A secret cache of unreleased bits not used on The Division Bell album, put on a defibrillator and magically bought back to life with all the skill Dave Gilmour, the band and production crew could muster. At first I didn't like it. I actually hated it. I looked at the track list and saw so many short tracks. On an album with 18 tracks 9 of them are less than 2 minutes long. So there is no having this on the Ipod and having it set to shuffle music because the chances are you are going to get a very short song that really means nothing and is over before you get into it. To enjoy this album you MUST play the whole album through, only then will you get the full enjoyment of it. Then all those short tracks blend in together seamlessly forming what seems to be a 40 minute song. All in all it's just another brick in the wall and this album will be remembered by Pink Floyd fans as such. A word of warning for anyone thinking of buying the DVD of this album. 90% of the DVD is a blank screen with the title of the song being played in white letters across the screen. The music is 5.1 SURROUND and perfect. Right at the end there's some video footage and still pics of the band but they are what looks to be from a cctv placed in the corner of the recording studio. I found this to be very annoying and spoils the whole thing. There are however some very precious images and video of Rick Wright playing what was obviously all those years ago. This was the only redemption for this DVD.

The missing album

What a breath-taking Pink Floyd album! In fact, I've been waiting for that album all the time. It's true example of the missing link in Pink Floyd's creativity. The mighty englishmen's electronic and instrumental reputation is highly renowned, but intended or not, they have not produced exactly that kind of album so far. And the time for final goodbye has come... David Gilmour and Nick Mason, with recordings from Richard Wright, have approved their electronic and instrumental reputation once more, but this time focused on the whole record CD. The incredible Pink Floyd sound makes the record much more typical Pinkfloydish, than quite many other albums of their. Typical space rock sound from 1971-1975 returns for good. The Endless River is a balanced album of non-leader shape, in terms of songwriting and musicianship, what we haven't seen since 1975's Wish You Were Here. The music is what some fans dreamed of so long - instrumental electronic space progressive rock! Great epilogue of Pink Floyd's career and mightest release since Wish You Were Here!

I recently reviewed Opeth's Pale Communion, and mentioned that it had achieved the unusual feat, for a prog album, of a top 20 chart position in my country. Well, of course, here we have an exceptional band whose (very) prog album has gone to #1 in 20 countries. Will its consumers feel rewarded? I hope so, overall, though reaction in the band's heartland on Prog Archives seems to be mixed. Pink Floyd have been a multifaceted band, and to enjoy this album you specifically need to be appreciative of the lush and drifting psychedelic textures of 'Echoes' or 'Shine On...'. Personally, I LOVE it!! For years, I have felt that an album of instrumental improvisation by Gilmour and Wright would be an absolute dream, and here it has come true. Gilmour's solo 'On An Island' was quite a disappointment to me, filled with short and rather uninteresting attempts at melody. On the other hand, I thought the rich and powerful 'The Division Bell' was a great album - but if 'The Endless River' is really founded on outtakes from that album then I see a missed opportunity. If only they had created longer tracks with this kind of material, TDB could have been incredible. But that's just me. What an enigmatic title for this album, by the way, because its context is just the opposite - the end for a band after the passing away of a wonderful member.

Verdict: heaven.

A new Pink Floyd album, hmmm go figure! So what can possibly motivate legendary millionaire golden-agers to record and publish a new work which will undoubtedly span the entire spectrum of comments from both prog fans as well as the entire music universe? Millions will love it, million others will hate it and all the Oreo cream commentary in between will be well documented online. Well, it ain't "Money" (sic!) , that is for sure, as the PF gents probably own Fort Knox by now. Do they need to prove some point, like the fine wine aging thingy? Nope. What motivates them is much more typically Floyd, both complex and simple, lubed with ongoing triple decade-old rivalry between Waters and the rest, as well as the passing of the silent genius Rick Wright. Truth is Waters is an insufferable, miserable, bigoted and egotistical megalomaniac, a genuinely inventive artist who prefers to rub people the wrong way, just for the fun of it. Because he can! Not my kind of idol (sorry Roger fans!). The ongoing epic epee duelling between him and the others is farcical and solidly deliberate, the typical Hollywood style barbs just to stay in the press and be spoken of. Gilmour and Mason always seemed to get along with the quiet and modest Wright, and maintained their 40 year-old legacy of remembering with fond affection former band mates. Needless to say, they kept the name Syd Barrett alive not only in direct words but also in songs that we all know and love.

So instead of a useless blow by blow (hi Jeff!) account, surely better exemplified by the more creative Floyd fanatics who actually know how to write (Wright?), I prefer to look at all the below radar snipping that encompasses this innuendo-laden work. I suspect that among the numerous targets of dissension between Dave and Roger, one could not help noticing the 'I sing better than you' equation, so by being a mostly all- instrumental album, with a finale-only vocal, it seems to me to be a pretty very overt FY, proven by one title named "Unsung". Secondly, the song designations also hint at a difference of opinion, with titles like "It's What We Do". "Things Left Unsaid", "Lost Art of Conversation", "Louder than Words", need I continue, no, you get the message, just Breathe! In 2005, Waters pushes out a three part opera record with a French title called "Ca Ira" (It will go okay) , so the 'enemy' records a subtle two-part piece called "Allons-y" (Let's go!). C'mon, ???. It's hilarious, snide, mischievous sniping of the very highest order! There are also winks at the very early years ,in 1968 ("Autumn '68") they recorded a tune called "Let There be More Light" , so why not write (wright) a 2014 piece called "Night Light"? Sorry but as Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau would say "There is euh stinky fiche in my rhume" and there are no "Pros and cons of Hitchhiking" here, the facts are plain to see.

Gilmour's ongoing solid friendship with Roxy Music legend Phil Manzanera has resulted in a relationship polar opposite to Waters, two master guitarists who appreciate their different styles to the point of total respect and have nothing to prove other than make music that they enjoy. Phil's influence remains firmly grounded in the swooning instrumental stylistics, especially on the incredible 2 part "Allons-y" suite, sandwiched between a Wakeman-esque church organ piece (Autumn 68). This is sublime music that needs to be applauded for its courage of convictions, their dedication to both Barrett and Wright. I just wonder what kind of tribute they will create for Waters when he settles below his 6 foot deep WALL. I hope it's like Lou Reed's nasty "Metal Machine Music", an hour's worth of middle finger proudly raised industrial noise. By enlisting Israeli sax player Gilad Atzmon, there is surely no correlation with Waters' recent venom spewing at Israel (urging cancellation of concerts there, how dumb is that?). Nah, all this is coincidence, purely luck, happenstance and roll of the dice. Yeah, Wright!!!!!!

I suspect the boys would have enjoyed calling this "The Endless River of BS" but censors everywhere would have objected, subjected as they are to Godoogle. Gilmour and Mason are sitting in their armchairs, warming their bones beside the fire, while Wright is up in heaven doing the Great Gig in the Sky and playing "Us and Him". You might think I have gone fishing in some desert oasis and speculate on libelous likelihoods but my instincts tell me (being a divorcee, you sense stuff like this) that the bitterness is way deeper than anyone thinks, it's not just artistic, it's a character thing that goes back to the very early days and elevated to breaking point with Waters' 1983 masterpiece 'The Final Cut". Not only is there no love lost but even the hate is gone! It's become an epidermis (that skin deep in Latin) hatred that will never be overcome.

I can do that innuendo thingy allegedly but Pink Floyd can add a soundtrack to it, something I am very envious of.

Expected brilliant artwork, packaging (i got the CD/DVD package) and impossible sound!

4 eternal floods

Pink Floyd. Where to start? Without Pink Floyd I probably would not be here for starters. Having grown up in a household that loved Pink Floyd I have been familiar with them for my entire life. I took them on as a band that I 'liked' at age 14 which coincided with the release of their last studio album 'The Division Bell' (TDB). At that time I liked TDB for what it was however I have a tendency towards liking their earlier experimental output and consigned TDB to the back of the CD rack relatively quickly and considered that PF were probably done and dusted.

Fast forward 20 years and while I was initially very intrigued about the prospect of a new Floyd album two decades after their last studio release I became somewhat more apprehensive when I heard that it would be a mostly instrumental affair. I am an avid listener of instrumental music however PF seemed to me to be a good example of a band that added value to their music through their vocals and (at times) thought provoking lyrics.

Within minutes of The Endless River's (TER) debut listening however my fears were cast aside as I realised that while Floyd had explored a number of instrumental songs throughout their career they had never released an album of primarily instrumental music and that in their own unique way had found an avenue for retaining their trademark of producing albums that often had little in common with their predecessors.

Musically the album is rich with textural diversity and instrumental interplay and features many sections remniscent of songs from their own catalogue (Set the Controls, Shine On, Us and Them, Learning to Fly etc.) which rather than sounding like a rehashed medley or lessening their own legacy adds a mature perspective to the nuanced performances they were capable of at the time of the recording. Rick Wright's performances are as expected beautifully poignant and the album serves as a great testimony to all that he achieved. Special mention goes to Nick Mason who delivers some great dynamics through his playing which help push some of the pieces to greater heights than they otherwise would have reached.

Admittedly TER does in some ways resemble a series of musical 'sketches' although considering the circumstances that this album arose under one can but only appreciate the quality of the recording and the performances within it. As far as posthumous musical releases are concerned TER is almost peerless. As lovely as it would have been for these songs to have been worked into more cohesive and longer compositions I am still exceedingly grateful that they (well David Gilmour) have chosen to let the material see the light of day and secretly hope that there might be another disc or two of similar material.

Rating this album is a reasonably straightforward process. TER doesn't reach the heights of albums such as Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, WYWH, DSOTM or Animals which for me are solid five star albums. I also feel that TER has more to offer than two and three star albums such as The Final Cut, Momentary Lapse and the Division Bell so I feel that it is due four stars; it truly is an excellent addition to any prog rock music collection.

Hm...Pink Floyd released a new album? That sounds like a dream I had. In fact, I did have a dream like that a few months before they announced the new album called "The Endless River". Floyd, needing no introduction, is the epitome of classic rock and even prog, for some of us. They have a sound that never gets old, truly. How does their first album in 20 years fare, however? Can these old geezers pull one more trick out of their bag?

Yes. Yes, they can. With Richard Wright's death a few years ago, one would have expected nothing further from the great Floyd. Yet, Gilmour and Mason gave it a go. Maybe they were paid a bunch of cash by a desperate label. Maybe they truly wanted to make a bookend to their legendary career. Or, just maybe, they wanted to pay tribute to their dear friend. After hearing "The Endless River", I have to go with the latter. This swan song for Pink Floyd is also a beautiful, ethereal tribute to Wright, possibly the most important part of the band, really.

And it's instrumental, save the final track. To me, that takes balls. If Floyd really wanted to cash in, they would have written songs close to "Money" or, perhaps, "Another Brick in the Wall". But they didn't. They pieced together keyboards written and played by Wright, and wrote some great pieces to make a giant puzzle that fits together very well. It flows so well, and emotes so well, too. The feelings of hope and unity for humanity are no mistake here.

Indeed, "The Endless River" is a beautiful, ambient album that I am so glad was released. It isn't "Wish You Were Here". It isn't even "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". It is, however, a fitting end to a great legend. Do I miss the vocals? Sure. Do I think it will be a legendary album? Not really. Is it worth hearing, sharing, and even owning? Absolutely.

Another review from one of the faithfull. Gilmour and Mason decide to put bow on the career of Pink Floyd. And what a wonderful job they did. They took tracks from the not completed ambient album that was going to be the second disc of the Division Bell as a base and added to it to create a mostly instrumental album. It's no surprise that this is the format PF chose as it is what Gilmour, Mason and the departed Wright brought to the table. What also changed on The Endless River is the balance of the music. Where The Division Bell and especially Monentary Lapse of Reason had was an over reliance on Gilmour's guitar, TER has plenty of Wright's keyboard goodness and also plenty of writing credits. To further the balance, Nick Mason has two credits and on those songs, he plays the drums like he hasn't since the late 60's. There are sonic references to many of the albums past but not so many that this is considered a rehash. There are several others that added coloring that just adds to the overall sound. As a loving swan song to Richard Wright and a last look at one of the most popular bands of the 20th century, David Gilmour and Nick Mason have done themselves and legacy of Pink Floyd proud.

I've given The Endless River around 10 spins so far and it gets better with each listen. A strong 4 stars.

Oh, Come on! So many 5 star ratings! Essential masterpiece? Hardly. As much as I love this band and respect their discography in full it´s very clear that those bits and pieces of songs, and a few left overs from The Division Bell, are a valid statement, but for the hardcore fans only. Can you imagine a non PF fan buying this record and enjoying it as much as it would do from any other of their catalog?

I`ve listen to this album repeatedly for the last few weeks and I can say I liked it. Not as much as I thought I would, but liked anyway. It´s a great tribute to Richard Wright, for this is the kind of material he shines (atmospheric/ambient music). There is only one song with vocals (Louder Than Words). Of course there is the fine Gilmour guitar solo here and there too. Of course the production and editing is simply marvelous too. You can´t expect any less from anything bearing the name of Pink Floyd after all this time. But mostly it´s really understandable why this staff was kept in the vaults for so long. Had they released it earlier especially before Wright´s death probably the reviews would be very less generous, to say the least!

Ok, I don´t want to sound too harsh. To nostalgic fans this CD is really something after so long. There are several nice moments and I guess it also stopped bootleggers from getting a lot of money out of the band if they somehow could get a hold of the same tracks and put it out with a much lower production quality. But let me say The Endless River is NOT in the same league as any of their previous records, composition wise at least. And if you think PF is not PF without Roger Waters, then don´t even bother.

Conclusion: good, but this is for fans, collectors and completionists only.

I have to admit that the announcement by David Gilmour and Nick Mason (the last two remaining Pink Floyd members) that a new Pink Floyd album would be released and that it would consist of leftover material recorded with keyboardist Richard Wright (who passed away in 2008) had me somewhat worried.

The last Pink Floyd studio album was The Division Bell, released over 20 years ago in 1994. Now they were trying to make a new release by adding newly recorded bits with outtakes from 20 years ago, trying to include Wright posthumously and there would be no involvement from founding member Roger Water, who was the band's chief creative force during its 1970s heyday.

Personally, I liked The Division Bell (which I realize is not a view shared by all fans of the Floyd) and felt it was an excellent album to cap off the band. For me, many signs coming from this new album pointed to "no good could come of this."

So how did the album turn out? About as well as one could reasonably expect, I suppose.

The Endless River consists of all instrumental tracks, save "Louder Than Words", which features vocals by Gilmour. The result is an album that sounds like post-Waters Floyd or a Gilmour solo album trying to harken back to the days before The Wall - all with a 21st century sheen given to the production.

Whether this appeals to you or not depends whether you like fifty minutes of ethereal-sounding guitar and keyboard exploration. There is no irony in one of the tracks being called "On Noodle Street, they are explicitly telling you what to expect.

I will say that I found the first couple tracks meander a bit too much to hold my interest. I had a similar problem with the two previous post-Waters Floyd albums. However, the energy does seem to pick up a bit in the middle section.

I do like a few of the nostalgic touches, such as the Stephen Hawking vocals on "Talkin' Hawkin'" and the bells from "High Hopes" ringing just before this album's final track, "Louder Than Words". Gilmour's vocals still sound pristine, by the way. The man has a golden throat.

"Louder Than Words", being the only track with vocals is almost a standout by default, but I truly do think that it is one of the best and most memorable tracks on the album. A lot of than it probably down to Gilmour's vocals and the ladies on backing vocals, but it is a catchy number with a great guitar lead.

Overall, The Endless River is not so much a final Pink Floyd album as it is a nostalgic collection of previously recorded material spruced up for release in 2014. However, it is by no means bad. Given that we're more than likely never going to have another Pink Floyd studio album ever again and this is likely the closest we'll ever get, I'll happily take it.

Highlights: "Sum", "Allons-y (1)", "Talkin' Hawkin'", "Surfacing", "Louder Than Words"

When word about this album was leaked by David Gilmour's wife, the music buying public went wild. The band, however, was quick to explain what was intended for the album, that is would be mostly instrumental, that it would be outtakes and music that was being worked on during the recording of "The Division Bell", and that it was to pay homage to Richard Wright and his amazing contributions to the music of the band. It wasn't intended to be anything else. With that announcement, I knew exactly what to expect from this album. That it would be a collection of beautiful music that was not necessarily going to by developed into full fledged Pink Floyd "sounding" music.

Well, I was still excited to get the album, because I love Pink Floyd's music and I recognize Richard Wright's musicianship and that he is an amazing composer. After getting the album for Christmas, I am not at all disappointed with the album. Both David Gilmour and Nick Mason have stated that it is the ambient side of Pink Floyd and that is what it is. There are a few times when the music opens up to a faster rhythm and those times are welcome and fit right in with the entire album, but it is mostly ambient. It is beautiful music, they type of sound that will take you away if you allow it to. And that is one reason that I love Pink Floyd so much. I happen to love the sound of instrumental Pink Floyd and this album reminds me a lot of the long instrumental passages of the "Wish You Were Here" album which is a masterpiece by the way. If you find those passages too long and boring, then this is not the Pink Floyd album for you and you will not like it. That doesn't mean it's a bad album because it is not. You just have to know and understand what this album is about, and I think it is a success in what it was intended to be. There is no doubt that when you are listening to this album, that you are listening to Pink Floyd, the sound is unmistakable. So rest assured that you will be listening to excellent music.

I have to note that I loved side 3 and how it reflects back to "Atom Heart Mother" especially in the "Allons-y" and "Autumn '68" sections. It's almost heartbreaking to hear Richard Wright's beautiful organ solo when it comes in between the "Allons-y" sections. That is the kind of arrangement of music that you expect from the genius minds of these musicians.

Okay, so it's not the best Pink Floyd album because of some underdevelopment, but remember that these are unfinished works. The organization of the album however is excellent. It is intended to be 4 long pieces with multiple movements within each piece. Each side of the vinyl album is a separate suite of movements, and with this in mind, it helps give the album a better cohesiveness.

I will stand behind this album as an excellent addition to any prog rock music collection. The album was created with a specific purpose and that purpose was achieved. It may not be to your liking, but it is still an excellent piece of art and I am thrilled to add it to my music collection. 4 stars.

You would have to be living in a cave to not have heard that David Gilmour and Nick Mason had teamed up to create this "new" Pink Floyd album as a tribute to their late keyboardist, Richard Wright. To me, this set works as both a tribute to Wright, as well as a coda to the career of the still massively popular group. If only Roger Waters could have participated, it would have been historic.

The album is nearly all instrumental, with vocals on only the final track (I suppose that was to have a single that the bean counters at modern radio stations something to play). Many have called this album ambient, but I feel that term just does not apply. The majority of the album is serene, but not so light that it would only be background filler.

The basic tracks were taken from the sessions from 1994's "The Division Bell" album, with newly recorded parts to make them presentable. While some pieces are identifiable a tracks meant for that album, others are not. There are glimpses of phrases from "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Us And Them" most obviously, as well as sounds that seem familiar to the Floyd fan, but not quite as easy to place.

Gilmour's guitar is as smooth as ever, and Wright's keyboards are like going home. Mason even pleases by occasionally coming out of the uninteresting drum beats he seemed to get stuck in from "The Wall" onward.

I chose the CD/Blue Ray set, and was not unimpressed. The 5.1 surround mix of the album is superb, and the extra tracks are nice, one even great. The videos are fine addition as well, showing the band actually playing these pieces in the studio.

Personally, I give this five stars, as just as it was released I was going through a major health crisis, and the tone of the album made for the perfect peaceful mood while in the hospital. But I must be realistic, and for the general public rate this 4 stars.

Yo dawg I herd you like "Marooned" so I marooned you in an album full of "Marooned"

I get the temptation to rate this album higher than I would, and perhaps even significantly so. During the sessions for The Division Bell, the Gilmour/Wright/Mason trio recorded a large chunk of instrumental material together, and Wright recorded some snippets on his own that weren't worked into full-band material at the time. Some consideration had been made in the aftermath of The Division Bell of collecting this material and releasing an hour-long instrumental album (tentatively titled The Big Spliff), but the band ultimately decided against it, and this material was shelved. Many years later, after Wright passed away, Gilmour and Mason found themselves feeling nostalgic about their final recording sessions with Wright, and they decided to revisit some of that material. Wright's parts were left mostly undisturbed (though there was some supplemental keyboard work added after the fact), but Gilmour and Mason reworked and added many of their own parts, and they also brought in a good number of session musicians to flesh it out. A curious and potentially intriguing aspect of the material is that, aside from a single new song at the end ("Louder Than Words," which is basically a slower version of "Lost for Words"), the album is entirely instrumental (aside from a couple of sampled vocals here and there), and the instrumental approach often hearkens back as much to the band's pre-DSOTM days as it does to the band's classic period. With the album's strong emphasis on the musical (as opposed to lyrical, which so often has been the main point of emphasis for people in their treatment of the band) legacy of the band, and especially with its emphasis on Rick Wright, it seems like this could work as a nice elegy for the band, and could justify reviving the band's catalogue after it lay dormant for 20 years.

Well, I tried, but I just can't buy into the need for this album to exist. It would be one thing for the various instrumental passages to have some echoes of the band's past, but these passages often mimic the band's history so closely that they sound less like actual music and more like elaborate warmup exercises to help get the band into the right mindset for the material that it would actually record. Among others, this album contains passages that sound like alternate early versions of the following: "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," "Welcome to the Machine," "One of These Days," "A Saucerful of Secrets," "Us and Them," "Comfortably Numb," "Keep Talking" (Stephen Hawking makes another guest appearance) , "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2," and "High Hopes." The thing is, the band did something very similar on The Division Bell, and I didn't mind it as much there: whether the band wants to admit it now, it's become pretty clear through the years that the purpose of much of The Division Bell was analogous to the purpose of much of Wish You Were Here, and all of the various stylistic cribs on that album made sense. Here, without any clear conceptual framing, the album ends up sounding like a series of unfinished fragments superglued together and justified as "atmospheric," and while I'm somebody who tries to give atmosphere the benefit of the doubt, I can't do it in this case. That said, there is an interpretation for this album that I found can give it a little more weight and cohesion: the album could be heard as Pink Floyd on its death bed and seeing/hearing its life flash before its eyes, with all of its various musical memories flickering by before giving way to oblivion. Hearing the album this way doesn't exactly save it for me, but it can make it a little more palatable. That said, even with this interpretation in mind, I still can't get all the way beyond the slight creepiness factor of Gilmour and Co. playing karaoke over a bunch of keyboard parts that Wright wouldn't be able to tweak in response to their suggestions; it's the closest thing in the world of art rock that I can think of to using Fred Astaire to sell vacuum cleaners.

Still, while I find the album unnecessary and a bit of a put-on, there's still something mildly intoxicating about hearing Gilmour and Wright (I'm ignoring Mason because he doesn't distinguish himself; I'd be shocked if that's actually him playing on "Skins," for instance) interacting (in a manner of speaking) one more time, even if it's in the context of second-rate imitations of the band's glory days. I should also note that the album works better as a series of extended suites (split up in the way the LP version splits the material across four sides) than as a series of tracks (often very short) that only stick around long enough to noodle a bit but not long enough to make a great impression. I'd rather listen to this than A Momentary Lapse of Reason (which has some genuinely good material but also a good chunk of material that's much worse than anything here), but if I want to listen to something that reminds me of the glory years of Pink Floyd, then I'll listen to something from the glory years of Pink Floyd.

Pink Floyd is a band I like more than I appreciate and "The Endless River" is an album I appreciate more than I like. I have not really wanted to get into this band's music of some reasons. Perhaps it's because they are so popular by average people. However, Pink Floyd is a perfect reserve I know I should love if I wanted. I am also quite sure it will be a day like that! Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, Dark side of the moon and Wish you were here are magical masterpieces and they are also the only records of them I have heard. Now have the band though quit with "The Endless River" which becomes their fifteenth studio album. Even the cover shouts out farewell.

The music is almost entirely instrumental and was recorded some years ago and features David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright together with a bunch of talented guests. Eighteen tracks amongst which the majority are short and atmospheric. On a harmonic and lovely keyboard sound wall are put the confident drums and the typical lyrical guitar which this band is so famous for. The music is slow and it doesn't happen a lot but I must confess it's really pleasant to listen to. Many tracks are a bit too ambient for me but it's still very nice to hear the typical Pink Floyd sound on a 2014 release. My favourite parts are "Louder than words"(10/10) the only song with vocals, and how I wish all songs would have been as good as this. The last song from this band could be one of the classic songs as well. The song has similarities with "Wish you were here" for example. "Sum", "Anisina" and "Allons-y2"(8/10) are amazing tracks with wonderful melodies and fine guitars. "Surfacing"(7/19) is a great opening act for the final track and "Allons-y1"(7/10) makes me feel very satisfied too. All of the other tracks would I rate 5-6/10 and I could easily say that this album is decent from the beginning to the end.

This farewell from this great band thought contains too few masterworks and too many fillers, even if the fillers are quite good. I appreciate that the band made this conclusion and think that the future will give it a more fair judgement. My rating ends at 3.19 which meens three stars. Best song: "Louder than words"

I have never been so conflicted about getting an album as I was with this one. The positives were the fact that this is a tribute of sorts to Richard Wright and that it's mostly instrumental but the negatives for me were that the tunes are mostly out-takes from The Division Bell sessions as i'm just not into PINK FLOYD without Roger Waters being involved. Well obviously I picked the cd up with three bonus tracks that for some strange reason are better than the proper album songs(in my opinion). This comes just as advertised as it's very ambient and pleasant overall with mostly shorter tracks that blend into each other. There are lots of guests helping out including plenty of strings and backing vocals. Two guest bass players help Gilmour out in that department with Waters not being asked to be involved.

"Things Left Unsaid" feature spoken words and a spacey atmosphere with the guitar crying out and plenty of organ runs. "It's What We Do" is similar to track one as it's quite spacey but we get some sax here reminding me of "Wish You Were Here". "Ebb And Flow" is mostly keys and guitar while "Sum" has this cool sounding organ before the song kicks into gear 1 1/2 minutes in. "Skins" is just that, a song where Mason is the focus. "Unsung" is almost "Echoes"-like while "Anisina" is just too normal sounding and one I just can't get into. "The Lost Art Of Conversation" is spacey with laid back piano melodies. "On Noodle Street" is mellow with a beat and a spacey atmosphere.

"Night Light" is spacey with no beat while "Allions-Y (1)" is another ambient and spacey piece with a beat. "Autumn '68" is one of my favourites with the organ floating beautifully in the background. "Allions-Y (2)" reminds me of nineties CAMEL, especially the guitar. "Talkin' Hawkin'" has these spacey guitar expressions as spoken words arrive 1 1/2 minutes in. it turns calm late. "Calling" is dark and somewhat experimental but the sun comes out later on as it brightens. "Eyes To Pearls" is another favourite of mine. Picked guitar and atmosphere early on and the drums remind me of "A Saucerful Of Secrets". "Surfacing" has this uplifting sound to it that I enjoy. "Louder Than Words" is pleasant and a vocal track.

This is all very familiar and safe and in my opinion 3.5 stars is the perfect rating. A nice companion to "The Division Bell" and certainly if your a big fan of that album you need to pick this up, the rest of you might be disappointed.

It was a given, this album. After all, the Water-less Floyd has never returned to prominence since his departure. but perhaps the emotional passing of Richard Wright, and his immobilization in one final album will bring it all together, to finally rediscover that lost "Floydian" sound.

I'll admit, there are quite a few "Marooned" references here, but I don't consider that to be a bad thing. Hell, "Marooned" was one of the few tracks that were even listenable off "The Division Bell".

(Before I truly go knee-deep, I felt it interesting to point out the desire by Gilmore to NOT make this album "for the iTunes, downloading-individual-tracks generation', hence the continuation from one song to the other, which I've always maintained is the way to get people to buy full albums and not just single songs. If you cut up a pizza in so many tiny slices, you might as well just buy the whole damn thing rather than each tiny individual piece, you'll still be hungry afterwards!)

Side 1 gives me hope. The classic ambiance is there on "Things Left Unsaid" and Gilmore's classic, gut-wrenching guitar solos return on "It's What We Do". Fitting title name, really, because that IS what Pink Floyd do. Or, did, anyway. It sounds familiar, and yet still fresh, and touch, since this album is a tribute to Wright, whose gentle touch is still noticeable here and there throughout the album. Gilmore even said it himself that "this is for the generation that wants to put its headphones on". Which is what Floyd always has been. The jams, the soundscapes, the distinct guitar solos. At the close of "Ebb And Flow", I've come to that conclusion already.

This is that classic Pink Floyd sound we (or at least I) have been waiting for. Redemption, finally, in the form of "The Endless River".

Ok, so maybe Side 1 might have been called "Marooned, Pt. 2", but Side 2 sounds like a "Animals" B-side. Mason goes to down pushing the groove forward on "Sum" and channels his inner Ringo on "Skins", a fitting title since the track is pretty much a drum solo, before it fades out into another electronic filled soundscape, while "Unsung" sounds like an orchestral sample ripped straight from the Halo soundtrack and "Anisina" kinda sounds like an homage to Lennon (with a Billy Joel sax solo). A bit more unusual, this side, but the good news is that the sound is unquestionably Floyd, and frankly, that's all that matters.

If that wasn't enough, Side 3 starts off dramatically, with another soundscape in the form of "The Lost Art Of Conversation (another dig at Waters? Maybe?), before a quite Mason groove creeps in "On Noodle Street". So if I'm going to play the reference game, if Side 1 echoed Maroon off "The Division Bell" and Side 2 echos "Animals, Side 3 is almost certainly going to echo "Another Brick In The Wall" off "The Wall, and while the acoustic solo on "Night Light" might prove me wrong, "Allons-y" proves the point. That subtle but intoxicating pluck from Gilmore's guitar is enough to sell me right away. It's a nostalgic power trip, basically, but after all Floyd, Gilmore and Mason have put up with, a nostalgic power trip is EXACTLY what they needed to get out of this funk.

Of course Side 3 isn't over. "Autumn '68" (perhaps in a reference to "Summer '68" off Atom Heart Mother?) is a haunting organ spot by Wright (recorded in '69, incidentally), especially all the more haunting knowing that he's gone, but soon "Allons-y" returns to brighten the mood again and push on towards "Talkin' Hawkin', filled with oohs, aahs, and more Gilmore tasty solos, along with a Hawkins sample of a commercial that was also used on "Keep Talking" off "The Division Bell".

So now we hit the home stretch with Side 4, and I've already come to the conclusion that this is as fitting a send off as any to the career of a fantastic band. Another typical ambiance to kick off in "Calling", before a Gilmore guitar spot in "Eyes To Pearls" leads into another ambient jam in "Surfacing" before Gilmore makes his first and last vocal appearance on the album in "Louder Than Words", a perfect way to describe the album, really, since it's mainly been an instrumental up until this closer.

So, now we (meaning I) almost certainly come to the end of Pink Floyd for good. An album too together to be a Gilmore solo album. An album too hollow to be a Pink Floyd album. It's tricky, but overall, it's a fantastic swan song to a fantastic band. All I could hope for was just a nostalgic look to the past and perhaps a return to the traditional "signature sound", and of course, it's not perfect, but it's better than I could've imagined, so I guess this will do.

By far not the best Floyd album ever, but still for Floyd fans who pined for that sound, you won't be turned away here. Perhaps it leans on too heavily of an ambient side, but then again, ambiance is part of the Floyd sound.

A fantastic tribute to a fantastic keyboardist, and as good of a swan song as there ever is or was. It still seems so short. Farewell, Floyd.

(Still wish you were here)

Let's forget how this album came about, who recorded it, and what its reception was after the release. For what is ultimately important is this: how does it fare after repeated listens?

The answer is, it fares better than you would expect. First of all, there is an undeniable flow to the compositions, which manages to keep the listener's attention and the album in fact seems much shorter than it really is. Taken together, the first three tracks serve as an excellent opener, appropriately mournful and melancholy. The next two 'sides' offer greater variety, then comes the fourth side, which is one of the best build-up pieces I have ever heard, no mean feat considering there is not even a hint of a crescendo: 'Calling' ends in a short but sweet chord progression, 'Eyes to Pearls' holds the mood with its steady wistful motif, while 'Surfacing' is a fitting prelude to 'Louder Than Words', an excellent album (and career) closer. Out of context, the song may not strike as an outstanding piece of music, but it is a hugely climatic release after the masterful approach of the previous three tracks.

What place does the album hold within Pink Floyd's discography, then? Well, most importantly, it manages to bring something new to a classic oeuvre. This is the first truly mood/ambient album of theirs and it has more in common with 'More' than with 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason', ending up as a sort of crossbreed between the former and 'The Division Bell'. It has even more in common with Wright's 'Broken China' (similar division into four parts and an emphasis on mood pieces), which only proves how important Rick's playing was for the band.

Now for the negatives. I am not overtly fond of the more 'funky' (for lack of a better word) tracks, especially 'Anisina' (the 80's sax is just not my cup of tea). Also, 'Talkin' Hawkin'' could do without the sampled voice, which (with my full respect to the Professor) sounds as trite here as it did on 'Keep Talking'. At first I was also quite negative towards both parts of 'Allons' and the lyrics, but these grew on me. Still, these tracks sound good in context and serve as an admittedly welcome change of pace, so no love lost here.

All in all, you don't have to be a Floyd fanatic to like "The Endless River". Quite the opposite, a fanatic may have wildly unrealistic expectations, whereas what we have here is an excellent (almost) instrumental album filled with beautiful playing, heartfelt progressions, and a coherent and convincing mood form start to finish. If you don't dismiss the album from the start, give it a chance.

I listened to the record on a long bus ride on a streaming platform ( btw a nice record for Long bus rides.) I didn't expect much of the record and must say I was rather nicely surprised in terms of bus ride music. Still while listening to the record I had a couple of thoughts coming to my mind. Pink Floyd is maybe the prog band which sold the most records in prog history so far. Dark Side and Wish you were here have become the standard for stereo equipment and Pink Floyd has become a household name for people that don't care for or even know what Prog is. Endless River consists of outtakes from the Division Bell (1994) and is at the same time a homage to the late Pink Floyd Keyboarder Rick Wright. Most bands, if they have the occasion, add their outtakes as bonus tracks or release eventually a bonus CD. Pink Floyd releases them as a regular cd because'. remember the dog, yes because they can and obviously because it's a NEW Pink Floyd record. So product wise: great cover, great production and over the top it sounds like 'classic' Pink Floyd, you have the classic David Gilmour signature guitar sound plus some classic Wright keyboard sounds. And that's about it. It's actually quite close to the instrumental parts of Wish You Were Here plus one song sung by Gilmour, which isn't especially well written. Outtakes' Under the line it's really difficult to judge this record; it's on one side exactly what you would expect from a classic Pink Floyd record and at the same time more like a bygone flagrant from past days like the smell of a perfume that lingers for some time in an empty room.

the last...

Above all,talk about the sales of this album, the success he has had. Its clear that Pink Floyd, a band created in 1965, succeeded 50 years after its creation to be at the forefront of the ranking of the number of sales all over Europe,in the UK of course, but also in France, Germany and many other country. I'm not sure thats can be true for Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga in 50 years. To the wise...

First, all of the songs on this album is that all that have not been chosen for the album "the division bell"! Therefore, in theory, if these pieces were not chosen for the previous album is that they were considered less good!This album is out in a the little brother of "the division bell".

"One noodle street" has a jazzy side very nice, it's my favorite song, "Taking Hawking" is quite surprising, with the voice of Hawking found in "Keep talking" from the previous album, finally note the bells of "high hopes" for the album "the Division Bell" that can be heard at the end of "Surfacing", there have not much to say unfortunately... The other titles are very flat and uninteresting, the problem is that it does not take off ... For an hour we expect a piece shalt we leave the planet Earth, but nothing at all ,its very frustrating. I think this is partly due to the length of the songs, in fact the 17 that make up this album, 11 have a length of about 2 minutes! Pink Floyd is still known to be one of the few groups have produced a title that takes a vinyl face (Echoes-Meddle). Those like me who like Pink Floyd among others for the solos of David Gilmour will be disappointed because there have not. Except perhaps on "It's what we do", the second song on the album which is also one of the only good songs on it . It reminds me somehow to a medley of several songs of the two previous albums .

I take the risk of repeating myself but 17 instrumental tracks, it's too much too ... Only "Louder than words" is the only song sung, in this case by Gilmour.

The Endless River is 3 stars no more, no less. The album is not bad, its listenable, but for a band like Pink Floyd we still expect better.

I think that the first time (I could be wrong) that there were albums done with the aim to "re-join" deceased members of bands with the surviving members of their former bands using recordings was THE DOORS's album titled "American Prayer" (1978), which in fact was an album credited to "JIM MORRISON - Music by THE DOORS". That album was done with pre-recorded tapes with Morrison reciting his poetry and with the rest of the surviving members of the band composing and adding new music to the poetry some years later. It was a job which took them a lot of months and it was done with a lot of care thanks to very good editing and production. At that time there were not computer softwares or digital recordings that could be used to do it. Many years later, in 1994-95 the surviving members of THE BEATLES used demo recordings recorded in the late seventies by JOHN LENNON and with the use of digital recording and computer softwares added their instruments and vocals to the demos, creating two very good songs ("Free as a Bird" and "Real Love") to be released as "new Beatles's songs" for their "Anthology" Vols. 1 and 2 albums, respectively. Later, in 1995, QUEEN released their "Made in Heaven" album with the surviving members of the band adding their instruments and vocals to FREDDIE MERCURY's pre-recorded vocals and piano. I can't remember now other examples of this kind of albums or songs. But in 2014 PINK FLOYD announced that they were completing an album of outakes recorded during the recording sessions of their "The Division Bell" album from 1994. These outakes were previously recorded with the late RICK WRIGHT in 1993. They even talked on interviews about these unreleased otutakes at the time their "The Division Bell" album was released. There were plans to release them on an album one day, but it never happened until some years later after Wright died in 2008.

Finally, this previously unreleased material was released in November 2014. The idea (as David Gilmour and Nick Mason said) was to release it in this "The Endless River" album as a tribute to the late Rick Wright, as a way to finally acknowledge his musical contributions to the band, and as a way to finally end the band's history.

There were several hours of unreleased material, but the band selected the best material and finally edited it and completed it to be released on an album. The job was hard but it maybe was easier to be done thanks to the use of more modern technology (computer softwares).

This album is mainly an instrumental music album, with only one song having lyrics ("Louder than Words", with music by Gilmour and lyrics by Polly Samson, Gilmour's wife). The instrumental music is mostly taken from which sounds like instrumental jams, editing them and adding other instruments as overdubs. As other reviews say, it is an album with ambient music which sometimes sounds more like New Age music in some parts, with a lot of keyboards atmospheres by Wright and atmospheric guitars by Gilmour. Some of this music sounds very similar to previously released material of the band in other albums. But in other parts the band sounds really "inspired". The album sounds like a continuous piece of music from the beginning to the end. "Louder than Words" brings the album to a very good end, with lyrics, and being sung by Gilmour. But one really wishes that they could have recorded more songs with lyrics and vocals and not mostly instrumental music. I also think that sometimes this instrumental music sounds like soundtrack music for films. As Gilmour said, this album was done more with the idea to be listened to using headphones and let the imagination of the listener fly.

As a final musical tribute to the late RICK WRIGHT and as a last musical statement from PINK FLOYD as a band, this album was a good idea. But I prefer other albums like "The Divison Bell" or even "A Momentary Lapse of Reason". Some parts of "The Endless River" obviously sound more related to "The Divison Bell" or even to some of their albums from the early to mid seventies, and even related to Rick Wright's "Broken China" solo album from 1996. Wright in interviews done in 1996 to promote his "Broken China" solo album said that he was not totally satisfied with the way "The Division Bell" album was done, and that was one of the reasons he recorded his solo album in 1996. So, maybe "The Endless River" was done by Gilmour and Mason as a way to show more of Wright's influences to the band's sound.

"The Endless River" is not an easy listening experience for me. But it is a good album, anyway, very well recorded, mixed and produced.

After hearing recent albums by the surviving original giants of Progressive Rock (Yes, King Crimson, post-Tull Ian Anderson), it's not hard to become discouraged by the geriatric lack of passion in their twilight efforts. Thankfully the same can't be said for this posthumous elegy from the late Pink Floyd. If you have to revisit the past, this is how to do it: with valedictory grace, and hardly any nostalgia despite the obvious deference to a long musical legacy.

The album was assembled around hours of leftover scraps and fragments from the 1994 "Division Bell" sessions, all held together with synthetic glue supplied by the late Richard Wright. But it doesn't sound at all artificial or anachronistic, thanks to the sensitive, affectionate editing of the scattered parts into a more cohesive sum. There's even a casual, half-realized concept behind it: the all-too human need for real communication, something not always apparent in the band's own troubled history.

It's actually more subtext than theme, expressed through the individual track titles ("Things Left Unsaid", "The Lost Art of Communication"), and of course in the bittersweet beauty of the music itself, mostly organized into atmospheric, ambient soundscapes, with occasional mid-tempo rock interludes in classic Floyd vernacular. Except for the curtain-closer "Louder Than Words", the album is entirely instrumental: a rare thing for this group, and entirely appropriate to the unspoken focus.

Roger Waters of course wasn't involved in the project, beyond a predictably testy comment on his Facebook page. I wouldn't be surprised if he considered it a purely mercenary exploitation of a dead comrade's memory, and maybe he has a point. But Pink Floyd has always drawn inspiration from its ghosts, beginning with Syd and now including Richard.

It will never be remembered as the long-lost Floyd album that never was. But as a belated postscript it adds a welcome coda on the otherwise unresolved non-ending to a turbulent musical career. Three-plus stars, rounded up for closing the door gently on the way out.

Sailing down the Endless River: Riding the gravy train, a momentary lapse of reason or Crazy diamonds still shining on?

Posthumous albums are always a little hard to take. Usually released by a label after the death of the artiste, they have a certain creepy quality, as you realise you're listening to the words and/or music of a man, woman or band who are no longer alive. Although still with us, the corpse of Pink Floyd has been floating down the (endless) river for some time now, just waiting for someone to fish it out and give it the decent burial it deserves. There are those (and they are many and vociferous) who will tell you that Floyd died when founder and creative light Roger Waters left them in an acrimonious split in 1985, and indeed even before that, The Wall was 99% his vision and his project and the final album to feature him, The Final Cut, featured so little input from the other two members (and none at all from Richard Wright) that it may as well have been his solo album in all but name. Shortly after that he left the band to pursue that solo career, and Pink Floyd were considered all but dead.

But I'm one of the few (hah!) that enjoyed the two non-Waters Floyd albums that followed his departure, and while 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason and 1991's The Division Bell can't in fairness hold a candle to albums like Wish You Were Here, Animals or Dark Side of the Moon, I thought they were pretty cool. I've always been one of those who refuse to cry "Band X is no use without singer Y!" I went through the trauma of Fish parting ways with Marillion, got used to Genesis without Gabriel and enjoyed an Ozzy-less Sabbath. To me, a band is more than just a singer or a frontman, and those who whine that the band will never be the same without the main vocalist and/or creator/founder are I think doing that band a great disservice. And so it was that I was prepared to accept Floyd after Waters, and though it was odd to hear the songs without his distinctive, tortured voice, I thought Gilmour did a decent job. But when the final notes faded away on "High hopes" as The Division Bell came to an end, I, like probably everybody else, believed we were hearing the very last music ever to be released by this band which was now a shadow of its former self. With the death of Richard Wright in 2008, I mourned and thought well that is definitely it: they can't come back now. It's over.

But it isn't over.

Or is it? When news broke of a "new" Pink Floyd album there was of course a flurry of expectations and my own emotions went from disbelief to joy to finally settle on suspicion as the details began to filter through. Not so much a new album then as a collection of studio outtakes and cutting-room floor debris from the sessions for the last "proper" Floyd album. But the obvious question came up: if this material was not deemed good enough to find its way onto The Division Bell, why was it now thought suitable for release? What had changed? All right, the story goes that much of the music that appears on The Endless River was composed by Wright, and Gilmour and Mason wanted to create a sort of tribute to him, and that's all right as far as it goes. But to announce it as a new album? Was that not pushing it ever so slightly?

My comments above echo (though I had and have not read it) a comment Gilmour made in the book Comfortably numb: the inside story of Pink Floyd when speaking of the making of The Final Cut. He asked, "if these songs (the ones being considered for The Final Cut which had been part of the sessions for The Wall but had not made it) were not good enough for The Wall, why are they good enough now?" Indeed, David. Indeed. A question we must all have been asking.

So are they? Good I mean. It's a perfectly valid question: if, when making what should have been their final album, Gilmour, Wright and Mason discarded these pieces of music (can't really call them songs) then why should they be considered acceptable not only to be released now, twenty years later, but to form the basis of a so-called "new" Pink Floyd album? Have the guys suddenly realised they were after all better than they believed they were in 1994, or is it really just that they want to honour their fallen bandmate by presenting to the world music he wrote but which never saw the light of day, until now?

Or, indeed, as many have hinted and I have to also ask, is this new album, the last ever from Pink Floyd -and we have that officially: no Eagles Hell Freezes Over ambiguity here! - nothing more than an exercise in cynicism and money-grabbing, a last chance to make some cash off the hard-pressed fans in this troubled economy? And if so, shouldn't the remaining members of Pink Floyd hang their heads in shame, having already broken records by releasing arguably the biggest attempt to rip fans off with their Immersion boxsets, each of which contained approximately SIX discs PER ALBUM and cost in the region of 100 EURO EACH! Sure, nobody put a gun to anyone's head and forced them to buy the sets, but if, as a diehard Floyd fan, you had to have these, then even for the main albums you're looking at shelling out over a THOUSAND Euro! That's bigtime rip-off in anyone's book, I don't care what you say.

So if, as one of these diehard fans, you outlaid the money on these sets in 2011, what would you expect from a new Pink Floyd album? I'd venture to say it would not be rehashed, re-recorded half songs that were not deemed good enough for the recording of The Division Bell. But that's what you get, and as this is your final ever chance to hear new (!) Pink Floyd music, do you buy the album and take a chance, or refuse to be the instrument by which Dave Gilmour buys a new house or Nick Mason adds to his classic car collection? This is Pink Floyd's final ever album, their swan song, but is it one worth hearing? Or to put it another way, in the words of a guy I used to know, is this The Endless River or The Endless Pension? After all this waffle, and after two decades, it's time to find out.

The first thing I'm struck by, despite the album's filching of the last few words of "High hopes", is the echoes (hah, again!) of 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason. That album began with the sound of a man rowing, and here on the cover of this album we see ... a man rowing. Well, punting, but it's very close. So the themes of rivers has been something flowing (sorry, sorry) through the post-Waters Floyd, has it? Well, no not really. Other than those two songs, which reference waters (ah, I know: sorry, I couldn't resist!) there's no real connection, but when you look incidentally at the track listing for both albums there are song titles there, many of which could refer to this album and its release: "What do you want from me?" might be an idea of Gilmour's frustration at some of the reviews of the album, though if he's surprised at its reception then he should not be. "Poles apart"? Sure. "High hopes", certainly, though probably in vain. Not to mention "Coming back to life" and, er, "Lost for words". As for A Momentary Lapse of Reason? Well "A new machine" is a possible link, as is "Yet another movie", but in reality I think the closing track from that album sums up a lot of feelings about the direction this has gone. Yeah, "Sorrow" more or less covers it.

But in all this analysis and all these clever, self-congratulatory comments, has the music itself become lost, relegated to the sidelines, a bit player destined to be overlooked as critics argue back and forth about the merits of releasing an album of basically extra tracks from a twenty-year-old recording session? Well not here anyway. Grab a set of oars, make sure your lifejacket is inflated, and take your seasick pills if you need them, cos we're climbing on board and we're going in.

Well, ambient they said it would be and ambient is definitely the feeling as "Things left unsaid" opens with a spacey keyboard and spoken words, sort of putting me in mind of the start of Dark Side, then one big bouncy echoey drumbeat before the keys go into a melody that this time reminds me of "Signs of life" from Momentary Lapse. Gilmour's guitar comes in then, moaning and crying like a violin as the spacey atmospheric soundscape continues to pulse behind him, but it's now clear that, as ever, Gilmour is in charge and standing in the spotlight. In much the same way as, in the beginning, "Shine on you crazy diamond" rode on Wright's keyboard, but once Gilmour broke in he took the tune over, so too here he stands astride the piece like an undeniable colossus. Some really nice organ from the ghostly fingers of Wright before we're pulled into "It's what we do". Gilmour has said that this album is not for "the itunes, download-a-song generation" and needs to be listened to in one sitting, and you can see the intention there as the music all drifts together, one piece flowing seamlessly into the next, so that it's almost like one long symphony. However, it's hard to forgive the second track being basically the closing section of "Shine on" polished (sorry) up and extended. I do love the song - who doesn't? - but this is something of a cop-out. If these are unused tunes from the Division Bell sessions, why is such old material here? There are echoes of "Welcome to the machine" too, particularly in Gilmour's chords. It drifts right back to the "Shine on" theme though, and as the piece comes to an end you're really waiting for Gilmour to sing "Remember when you were young"...

It's great music, there's no doubt about that. It's just that it is, generally, music we've heard before, and many years ago in most cases. "Ebb and flow" sounds very close to the last few moments of "Shine on, part VI" stretched out to an unnecessary and in some cases unsustainable two minutes almost, and while there are lovely organ and synth touches from Wright, as well as of course superb piano, it's a bit of a non-event. More looking back to "Signs of life" then for "Sums", throwing in some effects used in "Welcome to the machine" with some shimmery keyboard before finally we get a proper attack from Gilmour as his guitar screams in fury at having been held back so long, but again it's "Welcome" all over again. It's a great guitar piece, sure, and it reminds us what a god Gilmour is, but have the idol's feet turned to clay? There's nothing very new or innovative here. In fact, I'm surprised to say that we're now four tracks in and I don't hear anything resembling any track from The Divsion Bell, nothing that could have been considered for that album, as this is supposed to be.

Quickly then we pass into "Skins", where Mason gets to unleash his expertise on the sticks, almost a drum solo with Gilmour adding little flourishes here and there. Only just over two and a half minutes but my least favourite on the album so far. As Vim said in Bad News, can't stand drum solos. Then with more "Shine on" descending keys we're into "Unsung", a mere minute of almost trancey keyboard with guitar screeching over it, reminiscent of The Wall I feel, until "Anisina" closes out the first disc, sounding to me unaccountably like Alan Parsons Project's "Time". Weird. Very piano driven, nice tune, and at least it doesn't sound like any previous Floyd recording. The first one I've actually enjoyed on the album. Sounds like it has sax on it too: yeah, definitely sax, courtesy of Israeli jazz hornman Gilad Atzmon. Very stirring and dramatic.

Of the seven tracks that follow (side three), six are less than two minutes and three, weirdly, are exactly 1:43. Not only that, but they're the first three. "The lost art of conversation" has a deep, luscious synth and Gilmour's high- pitched guitar, but then settles down to allow Wright's sumptuous piano to drive it. It is however only getting going when it's over, and "On Noodle Street" carries the tune into a sort of Knopfleresque slow boogie, with Gilmour coming much more to the fore and Guy Pratt filling in really well for Waters on bass, as he has done for some time now. Electric piano from Wright comes in before "Night light" returns the spotlight to the man on the frets, and again we're back shining on, you crazy diamond, with a slight, almost Genesisesque twist in the melody. "Allons-y (1) gives us "Run like Hell" revisited, with Gilmour cranking up the guitar and the tempo, Mason's drumming much more animated and the organ from Wright pretty much pushed into the background. It's derivative, incredibly and annoyingly so, but at least it kicks the album up the arse and gives you something to tap your fingers to, if not shake your head. In other words, it lifts the album out of the quiet, soporific torpor it has been sliding into and delivers something of a punch from an entity that seemed almost asleep. An almost Bach-like organ takes "Autumn '68", slowing things back down with a feeling of Pink Floyd meets Vangelis before we move into "Allons-y (2)", which builds a lush soundscape on the synth, then kicks up into another memorable Floyd piece, kind of more "Run like Hell" really. Then we have the pretty godawful (and terribly titled) "Talkin' Hawking", which is essentially the spoken parts from "Keep talking" extended, backed with a slow organ melody, the first appearance of those iconic Pink Floyd female backing vocals so associated with Waters and used quite sparingly after he departed. Nice guitar work certainly, but I could do without the Professor droning on. I didn't like it on "Keep talking" and I certainly don't like the extended version. It's also very badly mixed, as Glimour's guitar and indeed Mason's drumming often overpower the spoken parts, making it hard to make out what is being said, which is pretty ironic for a song so titled.

And so we move into the final part of the album, or "side four", with a strange little ambient beginning to "Calling", then some moaning guitar and thick bass before the keys rise into the mix and an almost Arabic passage takes the tune. More nice understated piano, then guitar rises like some beast out of the depths. As the piece nears its end it drops back to soft piano, choral vocals and slow, echoey drumming and takes us into "Eyes to pearls", a definite vehicle for the strumming guitar work of Gilmour, but very ? and I mean very - close in melody to Marillion's "Berlin". Spooky. Rushing, crashing percussion washes over the tune and carries us away, and we find ourselves "Surfacing", with acoustic guitar and more "Shine on" closing parts, with echoes of "Your possible pasts" there if you listen for them closely enough, or are as anal as I am.

There is some lovely interplay between Gilmour and Wright here though, and I'd probably class this as my second favourite, one of the longer tracks at just shy of three minutes. Personally, I think both in title, mood and music this would have been the perfect track to end the album on, but this is seen as a new Pink Floyd album after all, the last one ever, and the record companies will have their pound of flesh ("We're just knocked out/ We heard about the sellout") meaning that the instrumental nature of the album has to be destroyed by a vocal song. Now while I really like "Louder than words", it comes as something of a jarring experience after nearly forty minutes of pure music. Gilmour still has it as a vocalist though, and it's a good song, it's just a pity it's so transparently written as an attempt to hit the singles charts. One final sellout before you go, lads?

So what's the verdict? Well I'll get to that in just a moment. But first I'd like to reiterate what I said above in the actual review, and that is that I don't hear anything here that could have ended up on The Division Bell, other than maybe the closer. For me, this sounds more like unused material from everything from Dark Side of the Moon to The Wall. I find it hard to believe that in 1994, working on what was to be their final proper album, Gilmour, Wright and Mason were thinking about and writing in the style of music they had produced two decades earlier. Far from making me want to revisit The Divison Bell, it's more Wish You Were Here that's playing in my mind, and that the album I want to listen to now. Famed as the band who put the experiment in musical experimentation, it seems unlikely they would still be stuck in that old 1973 groove. But the music here mostly reflects that, to me anyway. If someone had given me this on disc, told me it was unused material from a session for an album and asked me to guess which album, I'd be going for Wish You Were Here with maybe Dark Side as a possibility. I would never in a million years have guessed it was from the recording sessions for The Division Bell.

The music is really great, but with Pink Floyd really great is not good enough, and given that this is to be their final album, I think they really shortchanged the fans here. If they really wanted to put out one more record before disappearing "far away, across the field", then they should, in my opinion, have written something totally new, something that would stand to them and that would have made a fitting tribute and end to their forty years in the music business. Pink Floyd almost single-handedly invented the idea of crossing from psychedelic to progressive rock, and for them to bring the curtain down in such a, well, uninspiring way is a real disappointment.

Of course, I had to some degree made up my mind about this album before listening to it: the idea of "a load of stuff that wasn't used now being put out" did not sit well with me, and it felt like the remaining members of Floyd were scraping the bottom of the barrel and slapping it on a disc, hoping to sell it rather than throw it out. To be fair, had they done this and then offered the album for download totally free, that might not have been so bad - we have these tracks, we didn't think they were that good but you might like them so here you go - but they expect people to pay for these, and in fact there are two versions of the album, a deluxe one with two extra tracks plus bonus videos, which no doubt costs more, is really a little over the top I feel. So to again return to Dark Side, they're giving none away.

But I must say I do like the music. It does wander and meander, somewhat like the river in the title, and ideas seem to be half-formed, in some cases just getting going when they're over, in others more or less staggering along, kind of lost and unable to find their way back. Some of it certainly deserves the title of the ninth track, "On Noodle Street", as it is pointless jamming and experimenting. It's almost, in some ways, like the tuneup before the show, except that this is the show! But some of the music is really good, just a pity it doesn't go anywhere. I see why Gilmour says it needs to be listened to in one sitting, though for me one was definitely enough.

He says this is the last Floyd album, that there'll be no more. Well that's no surprise. With the passing of Richard Wright and the Satan-skating-to-work possibility of Waters ever rejoining, another Pink Floyd album is about as likely as a new Beatles one. Which is why the news that there was a new one was initially greeted with much skepticism, then excitement, then disappointment when we learned what the "new" album consisted of. It is I feel a little harsh of Gilmour (and let's be honest: Floyd has been Gilmour for quite a while now) to end his career on this somewhat sour and commercial note. For a band who struggled to make it, then became bigger than most other bands and passed into music history, it's a sad end I feel and something of a middle finger to the fans. I thought Roger Waters was the one who had contempt for his followers?

In the end though, what I write here will not change your opinion. If you like The Endless River then you'll like it and if you hate it you'll hate it. Me? I think it's okay; certainly has its moments but they're a little too far spaced out among the wide variety of tracks here to make any real impact on me. As an album, and purely taking it on track numbers, it's good value at 18 tracks, though the whole thing only clocks in at a total of just over fifty-five minutes. For a double album that's pretty short, and for an album that rings down the curtain on forty-five years of music it's hardly inspiring.

It's even hard to see this as a Pink Floyd album, as much of the time it really does not sound like them. Floyd had instrumental tracks sure, but they were never what anyone would call ambient: their instrumentals had a hard, bitter edge. Think "Any colour you like", "Marooned" or even the instrumental majority of "Shine on." There's an anger there, a sense of frustration, of loss and of exasperation. I don't hear that here. It sounds more like Floyd have settled nicely into their retirement and are happy to sit back and watch the grass grow, happy that there are no lunatics on it anymore.

This could have been so much more. But for what it is, I have to give them credit. It is very good. Mostly. But they're kind of standing on the shoulders of giants, even if those giants are their own previous albums, and you wonder what would have happened had they not had that elevation? Perhaps they might have faded away, slowly losing relevance in a world that contains too many kids now who ask "Pink who?" Still, they would have had retained some of their integrity, I feel. Many people slated The Division Bell, but I enjoyed it, and I think it could have been the proper swan song for Floyd.

But I suppose the important thing for Gilmour and Mason is that The Endless River will supply them with an endless amount of retirement money, and serve to finance their solo careers, or whatever they choose to do in a post-Floyd world. I don't begrudge them their retirement, I just wish they could have bowed out more gracefully, instead of kow-towing to the corporate shills and leaving us with a rather unsettling line from Dark Side to perhaps encompass their feelings towards their fans as they wave goodbye from the tinted windows of their private jet: "I'm all right Jack, keep your hands off my stack!"

Bon voyage, boys. May the endless river help you to forget when you used to swim against the tide, and not go with the flow.

What would Syd think of it all, I wonder? Or, to paraphrase progressive rock icons Van der Graaf Generator, whatever would Roger have said?

A Pink Floyd album in 2014? After the historic one night reunion at Live 8 and the demise of Richard Wright it seemed to be highly unlikely. Shall we mention, however, that quite a few albums by Pink Floyd, including those of great fame, came to existence or had been critically re-shaped under unforeseen circumstances. Their first multi-part epic, the murky 'A Saucerful Of Secrets' was born in the creative struggle to fill the gap after the sudden collapse of Syd Barrett; Ron Geesin's involvement brought about symphonic arrangements on ATOM HEART MOTHER; an experiment with various household objects provoked them to split THE DARK SIDE's... follower into two (WYWH and ANIMALS); a spat on a fan triggered the construction of THE WALL, while Margaret Thatcher could have rightfully claimed her royalties for THE FINAL CUT. MORE and OBSCURED BY CLOUDS, two generous commissions from Barbet Schroeder, can also be added to this list.

The source of THE ENDLESS RIVER was unearthed by Phil Manzanera. Some years ago David Gilmour handed him over all those recordings of 1993 jams. Gilmour's initial intention was, perhaps, selecting several of these tracks as potential bonus material for coming re-issue of THE DIVISION BELL or future compilations. He, instead, received back a medley consistent enough to form an album. We do not know how much of that original construction made its way into the final product but it is obvious that the team of producers had really cared of its integrity. Neither of the remaining band members needed a sellout to do well and we can be sure they put this album out only because they sincerely believed they had achieved their goal.

It happened, nonetheless, that as soon as critics set about explaining all RIVER's oddities, they deployed their usual cliches and, as a result, produced several stereotypes that should be addressed. First is the claim that the album was composed of outtakes from THE DIVISION BELL. This wording goes down smoothly and, unfortunately, induces the idea that THE ENDLESS RIVER was based on the second-rate material, set aside by the band once upon a time - if only we can ignore the fact that almost all themes for both albums (66:32-long TDB and 53:02-long TER) were selected from the same 20-hour collection of jams recorded by Pink Floyd during their sessions in 1993. In order to designate THE ENDLESS RIVER tunes as "outtakes" we need to make sure they were firstly "taken in", unless one could seriously think that THE DIVISION BELL was supposed to be a 20-hour long opus but somehow 19 hours were excluded and the album shrank to its conventional size against all expectations. "Leftovers" is a better term but essentially in 1993 the band created a 'fund' of tunes and ideas to compose a double album: one disc was conceived as a collection of songs, the other should have become a set of purely instrumental numbers. For the first disc the trio selected tunes most suitable to develop them into songs and proceeded with work. At some point they realised they cannot have the second disk completed in time for the set date of release. Therefore they decided to postpone working on the second disk until after the tour but had never returned to the studio together before the demise of Richard Wright. One can argue rightfully that TER cannot be taken for the missing Disk 2 of TDB, for the band would have had a different attitude to work had Rick Wright been present in the studio. What one cannot deny is that TER was based on the collection of sketches written to make their way on a new disk, not on a mound of rejected nonsense. Otherwise we would also have to agree that 2/3 of ANIMALS are WISH YOU WERE HERE outtakes.

The second stereotype about THE ENDLESS RIVER is a view that the album is nothing else but a selection of seventeen instrumental patches and one song, connected by special effects. Such a claim cannot be prohibited or disapproved; it doesn't mean there is nothing more to say about the content and the structure of the album. In the end, one is free to affirm that THE WALL is just a pile of disconnected songs, half of them poorly developed.

Gilmour in his interview to the Rolling Stone (9 October 2014) states: "THE ENDLESS RIVER is a continuous flow of music that builds gradually over four separate pieces over the 55-odd minutes". These four pieces, strangely, have no other names than 'Side One', 'Two', 'Three' and 'Four', while the bits that constitute them all possess proper titles. I can clearly see the reason behind this arrangement and am going to discuss it later. This situation, nonetheless, provokes critics to engage in describing and valuing tracks with names rather than speculating about concepts and overall ideas. When I try to imagine, for instance, an ATOM HEART MOTHER review that has to deal with nameless

Side One

1. Father's Shout

2. Breast Milky

3. Mother Fore

Side Two

4. Funky Dung

5. Mind Your Throats Please

6. Remergence

Side Three

7. If

8. Summer '68

9. Fat Old Sun

Side Four

10. Rise And Shine

11. Sunny Side Up

12. Morning Glory

I can perceive the famous epic could be easily "overlooked" or "fragmented" beyond repair in reviewer's mind should we designate the compositions on the album this way.

It doesn't help us much when in the same interview Gilmour explains: "The only concept is the concept of me, Rick and Nick and I, playing together in a way that we had done way way in the past but had forgotten that we did, and was instantly familiar..." Most of the readers and critics, it seems, have understood this as "no concept as such". At the same time one can hardly deny that the album and each of its four 'Sides' are well structured. This means the band and the producers had come up with certain ideas and arranged all these bits and pieces into medleys accordingly. I believe that one should indeed pay attention to what David Gilmour says about the concept - he is known for choosing his words with caution.

Let us give it a try. If the album shows the Trio at work, then its bits and pieces reveal HOW they used to work ("it's what we do"). To achieve this, THE ENDLESS RIVER has to delve into the past of Pink Floyd. This collection of themes is, first of all, a recollection of the mood in the studio, creative efforts and the feel of togetherness that the Trio enjoyed in 1993. But this idea, in turn, sends us back to the entire history of Pink Floyd, those relations, emotions and exchanges that brought all their songs and albums to existence. THE ENDLESS RIVER is essentially a retrospective album unveiling to its listeners how Pink Floyd music was born.

In accordance with this idea each of the 'Sides' presents the band in a different "creative mode" (and mood). One can even see this album as Pink Floyd's 'Four Seasons'. Transparent Spring, flaming Summer, contemplative Autumn, harsh and abrasive Winter with its days once again growing longer: "this time together, rain or shine or stormy weather" is, perhaps, the line that has encapsulated the essence of the album. Four elements, Water, Fire, Air and Earth can also reflect the mood of each 'Side'.

'Side One' ('Spring' or 'Water' Side) bears strong resemblance to 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond'. Nonetheless, "Syd's theme" (the famous four notes) is not here. The intro ('Things Left Unsaid') is more similar to 'Speak To Me', and also to 'Cluster One' than to Part 1 of 'Shine On...', while the outro ('Ebb and Flow') sounds close to the last 30 seconds of the '... Crazy Diamond' suite, developed into an almost two-minutes long meditation. The slowly unfurling main theme ('It's What We Do') makes one instantly recall the flow of those poignant bluesy instrumental sections in the beginning of 'Sine On You Crazy Diamond' and especially its final Part 9. This link is meaningful: Gilmour allegedly called Part 9, composed solely by Richard Wright, a "parting musical eulogy for Syd" (http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/47616/Pink-Floyd-Wish-You-Were-Here/)

It seems, 'Side One' (where Gilmour and Wright share writing credits) without words proclaims THE ENDLESS RIVER a tribute to the late keyboard player. In a similar way the Requiem mass, conceived by Mozart and finished by Franz Xaver Sussmayr became, in the end, a requiem for Mozart himself. On its own 'Side One' also laments the "telepathic connection" between the bandmates that shines most vividly in the 1975 epic and, according to Gilmour, is gone forever with the demise of Richard Wright. Might this kind of inspiration be the most important thing "left unsaid"?

As a eulogy for the departed friend (and for the moments of magic that would not come back but will stay forever in memory) 'Side One', in fact, creates a vision of 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' suite without quoting it directly. In terms of structure it looks similar to the aforementioned epic, had it been streamlined - with sung parts and some instrumental variations omitted.

The mood of 'Side Two' ('Summer' or 'Fire' Side) is very different. As soon as 'Sum' takes off in earnest one can feel that 'Side One' was an extended prelude to the album, and here the action begins. With the first vibrations it takes us beyond the "classical" legacy to "pre-Dark Side..." days; powerful and complex drumming would make you instantly recall Nick Mason's flashing sticks at Pompeii amphitheatre. The drums push the assault, fiery keys fill the air with anger, and guitars' escalation goes on and on; finally, the attack crumbles into thousands of pieces. Inside a thundery cloud the battle continues until exhaustion. Synth pulsation resumes anxiously but soon it calms down. In the end, placid and confident piano cords arrive, supported by now subdued rhythm section. Together they set the stage for organised and matured musicianship in which every voice has a say. They make statements and raise disagreements but eventually manage to harmonise and unite. The struggle is over, time for peace has come.

'Side Two' represents the band young, adventurous and determined to shape their experiments into a statement that no-one would ignore. All bandmates seem to be around ("Certainly, Syd! Shall we, Roger?"), all ideas find their way into music, and this is how differences are settled. Here we see the early Pink Floyd at their best (or rather the Floydsters recalling and rekindling the flame of old days). One can notice how prominent Nick Mason's drums are on the first two ("advance" and "fighting") tracks of the medley - his only co-writing credits since forty years ago. Together with Roger Waters, Nick Mason happened to be a chief architect of the first Pink Floyd epic, the 12-minute 'A Saucerful Of Secrets'. The structure of 'Side Two' clearly follows the order of "movements" of the suite written in 1968. Again, it's far from being just a replica: 'Sum', unlike 'Something Else' has a melody. Its escalation resembles 'One Of These Days', 'Sheep' and 'Empty Spaces', while drumming would bring you memories of Eugene's axe and Mother's atom heart. The drum loop of 'Skins' is as tight as in 'The Grand Vizier's Garden Party'. The transitional 'Unsung' sounds more unsettled than mournful, and, in a similar way, 'Anisina', despite its name (meaning "In Memory Of..."), is not a requiem but an anthem. The latter is often seen derivative to 'Us And Them' but it seems to me that it bears a lot of resemblance to the earlier 'Fearless' as well. That song from MEDDLE, clear and cryptic at the same time, is all about overcoming fear and reluctance, rising above doubts and finding courage to speak out loud. With its "quarrel" and "reconciliation", performed by oboe, sax and guitars, 'Anisina', in my opinion, manifests the arrival of the "classical" sound of Pink Floyd after the phase of experimenting. 'Side Two', therefore, reflects main creative trends of Pink Floyd's "sturm und drung" years (up to MEDDLE and THE DARK SIDE...). It also shows how this mood re-emerged in 1993.

The mood changes once again with the beginning of the 'Side Three' ('Autumn' or 'Air' Side). This suite doesn't resemble a particular piece of Pink Floyd music from the past, and at the same time its composition is more peculiar than on any of the other three 'Sides'. It consists of seven themes: three meditations and three more traditional, rhythm-based "instrumental songs" take turns paving the way for the final. A quiet, contemplative intro and a sleepy, rainy jam ('On Noodle Street') are only a mini-prelude to the main five-part entity that starts with a cold and foggy synth meditation; the later explodes with a pulsating rocking theme. Interrupted by stately harmonies of pipe organ, the rocking theme resurrects and delivers us into a power field ruled by a grim simple riff that instantly starts growing, unleashing full force of Pink Floyd sound until a listener is turned into a grain buried in the endless granaries of the Universe...

Admittedly, many critics question the integrity of the medley due to constant change of tempo and mood. Some of them are particularly annoyed by the decision to insert a bit of Wright's pipe organ improvisations into 'Allons-y', turning what they call "a solid instrumental" into a set of allegedly inconsequential fragments. Such alterations, nonetheless, are fairly typical for prog- and art-rock. We can find few examples in classical music as well: the First movement of Vicaldi's 'Summer' is probably the most vivid instance. That piece undergoes four radical shifts in tune, tempo and volume in less than 3.5 minutes (the length of just two parts of 'Alons-y' stitched together). Vivaldi's piece for a band of strings and a keyboard perfectly reflects perpetual change of weather on a stormy summer day. Pink Floyd's 'Side Three' can similarly represent various transformations of atmosphere in the studio, both subtle and sharp. Those shifts set and reset the stage for exchange of ideas, discoveries and revelations. If we take 'The Lost Art Of Conversation' and 'On Noodle Street' for a mini-prelude, where the band looks so comfortable playing together in their studio on a rainy day but yet having no direction, the following five-part piece appears to be a very neatly organised medley, in which 'Night Light' plays the role of an intro, 'Alons-y' functions as a verse in a song, "Autumn '68" is an interlude and "Talkin' Hawkin" emerges as Finale Grande. Its somber growing force and almost frightening depth engulfs an unsuspecting listener in the end of his journey. Based on one primitive proto-riff, the theme serves as a culmination of the whole album.

The 'Side Three' seems to be very diverse in relation to retrospective allusions. 'On Noodle Street' brings about the mood of 'Crying Song' and of the quiet start of 'Sheep', 'Allons-y' with its pulsation and roaring guitars can be distantly related to 'Interstellar Overdrive', 'One Of These Days', some instrumentals from OBSCURED BY CLOUDS and the mentioned 'Sheep' but even more so to 'Run Like Hell', as well as 'One Sleep' and 'Terminal Frost'. Synth/organ meditations (courtesy to Richard Wright) refer to virtually every album he contributed to, starting with the coda for 'A Saucerful...' (and 'Cirrus Minor') and reaching full blossom on 'Shine On...' (with re-emergence on THE DIVISION BELL). Speaking about the final track, critics cannot stop comparing it to 'Keep Talking'. I would argue that musically its true relations are the crescendo of 'Empty Spaces', the acoustic guitar/synth sequence from 'High Hopes' and, through those two tunes, 'Welcome To The Machine' and Part 6 of 'Shine On...'.

Therefore 'Side Three' represents Pink Floyd building their epics (i. e. 'Atom Heart Mother' or 'Echoes') and developing concepts while working together. This attitude brought about THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, helped to finalise their classical albums and to create THE DIVISION BELL.

'Side Four' ('Winter' or 'Earth' Side) is dedicated to Floyd's most radical creative mode - despair. Nick Mason mentioned in his book that rather often Pink Floyd albums were conceived in "quiet desperation", even before THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (which actually happened to be a happy exception from the rule). No surprise, desperation turned into a recurring theme of their songs. It emerged, probably, with 'Jugband Blues' (1968) by Barrett, and matured with 'Cymbaline' (1969) making the latter a bridge to the band's later albums. With the invention of murkier synth sound on 'Welcome To The Machine' (1975), and relations within the band slowly deteriorating, Pink Floyd entered their 'dark' decade (1977-87), culminating in THE WALL, a journey into radical alienation and embittered isolation. Does not the ambience of 'Calling' closely resemble the aura of 'Is There Anybody Out There' (although its sound has a lot in common with 'Signs Of Life')? One can also recognise metallic screech of clockworks from Syd Barrett's "room of musical tunes" in the background. 'Eyes To Pearls' reminds distantly of 'Goodbye Cruel World', linking it to 'Welcome To The Machine'. With 'Surfacing' we arrive to THE DIVISION BELL pastures ('Poles Apart', although one can distinguish the echo of 'Pillow of Winds' in those acoustic guitar cords). 'Louder Than Words' is the focal point in which the band re-captures the vibe of togetherness and one last time binds the three currents (2014, 1993 and the past) in a single flow. The tone of the song is understated: the last goodbye is not a time for a drama. Its quiet intro, nonetheless, is one of the most beautiful moments on the whole album where Gilmour-Wright telepathic bond shines upon a listener one last time. Its fleeting glimpse disappears in the soundscape that bookends the album.

The structure of the whole 'Side Four' follows the pattern of the second part of 'Echoes' (from "Whales' Screams" onwards) - out of the depth of despair - towards the light - to the horizon where the endless river opens into the sky. With three of four 'Sides' having their lookalikes in the previous albums it is difficult to dismiss these suites as mere collections of random tunes. As their vintage prototypes they tell us stories. These stories are not the same, on the other hand: the themes are different. As I am trying to demonstrate (and as per David Gilmour himself) they are all about the way (or ways) Pink Floyd created and played music. 'Side Three' is no exception. Although it does not resemble any singular composition in PF catalogue, it can be treated as a sketch for an album that does not contain 'epics' but is still essential Pink Floyd (such as THE DARK SIDE...). Shall we presume that every 'Side' of the album outlines a particular formula which the band used to find and develop their ideas?

I tend to approach the album as an interactive museum with the band in the studio showing us various attitudes and different patterns they can turn their wizardry into. Thus there is a reason why all these tracks are designed to sound familiar; we can also notice that they bear more substance than just copycat junk: each significant track makes references to SEVERAL previous compositions, tying the legacy of the band with new surprising bonds. Isn't it intriguing to find a link between the epics on the LIVE AT POMPEII and pieces from ANIMALS and THE WALL, or to trace connection between 'Interstellar Overdrive' and 'Terminal Frost' via 'When You're In', 'Sheep', and 'Run Like Hell'? I have already mentioned these allusions previously, speaking about individual tracks. Strikingly, different reviewers tend to find the same TER tracks to be certain "shameless rewrites" of totally different Floyd's compositions. All in all, I do not want to impose my judgement about the merits of this music on anyone. There cannot be a single true opinion whether the band has succeeded or failed. On the other hand, I would not call aimless an album setting on an errand to prove that even building up their monumental concepts Floydsters have never forgotten their own adventurous beginnings.

Treating TER as an interactive museum of Pink Floyd sound helps to explain one peculiarity of its anatomy: while there are no pauses between tracks, they do not segue into each other as normal parts of a suite would do. On the contrary, each ends with a clear "full stop". That is another reason why so many listeners refuse to see the forest through the trees and accuse the album of being somewhat patchy. It is, indeed, patchy, like a designer shirt that consists of many pieces with stitches as vivid as they can be, being still a piece of close, not a pile of cloths. After all, it is well-known that all those "epics" of the past were composed of bits and pieces seamed together, and THE ENDLESS RIVER simply lays this fact bare. In the end, the whole purpose of the interactive museum is to demonstrate some secrets of Pink Floyd's works. This also explains why the tracks bear proper names, as if they have stuck in the process of writing and arranging, while the medleys are lacking them.

There is another reason for "patchiness" of TER. In 2014 the band wanted to stick to the original material from 1993 sessions preserving the work of Richard Wright (in the case of two exceptions, they at least used the recordings from the same "fund"). They had no desire of adding on new tracks or radically re-writing those in existence. This is why, I believe, Poly Samson, the lyricist on TDB and TER, called the album Richard Wright's swan song (although for me that title has firmly stuck to David Gilmour's LIVE IN GDANSK). Once again, I would like to compare TER to infamous Requiem. Although Sussmayr had to write some parts in order to have the Mass completed, he made a decision to bookend the Requiem with Mozart's own music from the opening movement. This is why virtually everyone knows it as an authentic work by Mozart. Careful attitude to original recordings allows us to value TER as a true Pink Floyd album.

Retaining the original size of the tracks and highlighting their borders does not damage the integrity of the four 'Sides' that so obviously vary in character. Igor Kuryan, a Pink Floyd researcher from Kazakhstan, suggested to name each 'Side' after its opening track. Playing the "funky dung" trick the other way around, I wonder what kind of wording critics would have deployed in order to decipher and judge THE ENDLESS RIVER album consisting of just four tracks:

1. Side 1. 'Things Left Unsaid' 12:38

2. Side 2. 'Sum' 11:48

3. Side 3. 'The Lost Art Of Conversation' 13:39

4. Side 4. 'Calling' (including 'Louder Than Words') 14:50?

No chance of picking on 'Noodle Street' or of lamenting "butchered" Allons-y but there is something to consider. 'Things Left Unsaid' hints on the "unspoken understanding"; 'Sum' reflects integrity and determination of the band; 'The Lost Art Of Conversation' speaks about mutual attention and exchange of ideas; 'Calling', in turn, is a cry for help to break isolation.

The names of other tracks of any significant length also guide us along the course of the album. 'That's What We Do' and 'Skins' speak for themselves; 'Anisina' ("In Memory Of...") is Gilmour's tribute to Wright and the band's glorious years. 'On Noodle Street' presents the band jamming together with no point so far, while 'Allons-y' ("Let's Go") sets the target - "... we're here for a ride...". In "Talkin' Hawckin" the voice of a man destined to endure the most exceptional kind of human presence breaks through to tell a listener and the whole world how crucial it is for us to rely on our bond by speech. 'Eyes To Pearls' is a kind of enigma, whether it can be related to a "pearl-eyed" gaze, the "pearly-eye" butterfly or even to a Chinese proverb "passing off fish eyes for pearls" (each can be a matter of an elaborate "floydean" speculation) but 'Surfacing' is a clear transition between the somber opening parts of the 'Side Four' and its calm and spectacular finale. There are four little tracks with more "abstract" titles (and clearly auxiliary functions): 'Ebb And Flow' is an outro; 'Night Light' works as a true intro (or re-intro); 'Unsung' is a bridge, and "Autumn '68" is an interlude. These names can be interpreted within the canon but my review has already grown too long. Let me just make a point that tracks lasting longer than anything on The Beatles' REVOLVER occupy approximately some three fifth of THE ENDLESS RIVER. And in the end, the meaning is to be found not in tracks but in the medleys.

Taking this into account, let us also keep in mind that none of Pink Floyd concepts can be reduced to a single idea. THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, WISH YOU WERE HERE, ANIMALS, THE WALL and later albums all revolve around some point where general observations come in touch with very personal experience, whether they contemplate about recording industry, one's state of mind or power and aggression. THE ENDLESS RIVER, as much as it invokes the feeling of the band playing together, brings about the theme of interaction, communication, conversation. It comes up with some of the track names ('Things Left Unsaid', 'Unsung', 'The Lost Art Of Conversation', 'Calling' and 'Louder Than Words') and binds together the rest of them referring either to the past of the band or to the aura in the studio. All of the sparse vocal bits also speak about communication.

There is no surprise that the album reaches its summit at the end of 'Side Three' - after trying on all those various modes and moods of writing and playing music together. The lines, narrated by Steven Hawking are not just background noise; these words really concern both the human Universe and the microcosm within the band. Everything that our wizards of sound had achieved, was brought about by communication of ideas: take it away, and there is no Pink Floyd. But on the other hand, speech can be utterly divisive; it can estrange a human being from others and even from things we keep close to our heart. Isn't the infamous Wall just an obsessive narrative in the head of Mr. Floyd? 'Side Four' is a reminder: if we want to get out, we should trust unspoken understanding and endorse certain things that go unsaid.

Some critics have called THE ENDLESS RIVER an experimental album, and I would agree. If a circle of four long medleys constructed of 20 years old jams and sketches instead of conventional songs is not an experiment than what is? The settings this time are neither Syd Barrett's "room of musical tunes", nor the alchemist lab of UMMAGUMMA, not the furnace where bits of the 'Amasing Puddung' and 'The Return of the Son of Nothing' were melted into epics, not even the Large Personality Collider of the "classic" years. In 2014 Pink Floyd deploys a detector capable of catching a trace of ghostly particles sent by a remote star now long extinguished. And just as particles are ambassadors of the space-time they have been travelling through, bits of our speech unfurl the horizon of mutuality and understanding where words and phrases make sense. "Wandering and dreaming the words have different meaning". Yes, they did. Early in their journey Pink Floyd became aware of the peculiar space-time of human interaction. In their music the band tried to echolocate its vastness, to re-create its vibes, to be at home with infinity. Music written by Pink Floyd tends to reveal unspoken as a scene where events take place and words come together to be meaningful.

This is how I read the message of the album. Instrumental music, of course, is supposed to have many different ways to understand it. I only would like to highlight that my approach is based on both David Gilmour's own words and on all sung and spoken lines on THE ENDLESS RIVER, as well as on track titles, on structure of the medleys and on mood of the themes. This approach also allows to assign a rightful place for the band's fifteenth studio album in their 50 years long journey. Roger Waters once said that he tended to consider THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, THE WALL and AMUSED TO DEATH to be his most important creative involvements, his "great trilogy". Can we similarly perceive THE ENDLESS RIVER as the final act of Pink Floyd's "lesser trilogy", which also includes WISH YOU WERE HERE and THE DIVISION BELL and showcases the message from Gilmour and Wright in the most definitive and intimate way? "Wish You Were Here is essentially the closest rock music ever came to producing a meticulously structured and engineered, yet also totally heartfelt requiem mass", states George Starostin. John Mcferrin in his review on THE DIVISION BELL, insists that "... just as WYWH was largely an open letter to Syd Barrett, much of the album [TDB] largely functions as an open letter to none other than Roger Waters (the band has denied it, but given that I thought of this early on while listening and later found out this is the consensus among a lot of fans, I suspect there's something to it)." THE ENDLESS RIVER is a tribute which appears to be both a requiem in memory of Richard Wright and a letter to listeners unfinished by him and brought to completion by his band mates.

All this does not mean the album is totally flawless. My main complaint is about 'Anisina'. It was obviously supposed to be a stately anthem crowning 'Side Two' but its mid-tempo pace makes it sound a bit on the ordinary side. I still can enjoy the interplay of the instruments resembling so closely tensions in the band at work ("we bitch and we fight, diss each other on sight") but if only it could have been a little slower... Some other themes are too short for me, for example 'Sum' suffers from an abrupt finish just after the keyboard solo when our ear begs for repeating the main motif. The same can be said about the celestial intro to 'Louder Than Words', hinting on the first and final piano passages of 'Echoes'. However, there is nothing truly offensive in the whole album and I love it for what it is: it helps to establish that the sound of Pink Floyd was not a random anomaly encapsulated in 1970-s; it is pretty much alive, ready to invoke a conversation and refuses to be put on an appropriate shelve in H. M. History's archives. In the end, according to Plato, knowledge is recollection of something we had already experienced.

Therefore, when it comes to the rating, I do not have any reason to value this album less than OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. I actually think, these two experimental cycles have a lot in common. Thus let it be 3.5 out of 5 to begin with, but let us not forget that Pink Floyd's albums tend to grow on a listener who does not mind to go with the flow.

WISH YOU WERE HERE MEETS DIVISION BELL

Imagine the long instrumental passages of 1975's Wish You Were Here married to the sonic textures of 1994's The Division Ball and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this album sounds like. There's 18 tracks, amusingly divided up into four "sides", but only four exceed the 4-minute mark. Most of the classic Pink Floyd trademarks are here, so much so that this can almost be considered a "career retrospective" album. With a few exceptions ("Talkin Hawkin" being an obvious reprise to "Keep Talking"), there are no overt references to previously recorded material, but long-time listeners will continuously find themselves smiling with recognition upon hearing the band's classic sound.

"It's What We Do" is an absolute must-hear for those (such as myself) who consider Wish You Were Here to be the band's finest album. One could easily imagine it fitting in well amongst the various parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", and this track alone justifies The Endless River's release.

All the talk about this being Pink Floyd's "ambient" album is mystifying, when tracks such as "Sum", "Calling", and "Surfacing" are loud and proud of it. "Skins" even has the distinction of giving Nick Mason some soloing space! While there are some quieter moments, this is emphatically not a new-age noodling album. The eerie, ferocious, and menacing textures of the band are fully represented.

Most listeners already know this album is a tribute to the late, great Richard Wright, and his pre-recorded tracks come across very well. Some will consider this "just studio jamming", but it's very good studio jamming and if not previously informed about the recording circumstances, one would not know this is a post-mortem album.

I will admit upon first hearing about The Endless River, I was worried it would be a collection of Division Bell outtakes with a new coat of paint, or simply endless soloing like the aforementioned album's "Marooned". The truth is something entirely different, and the band can now sail off into the sunset without having embarrassed themselves.

So is this an album that will stand the test of time? Will Pink Floyd fans come back to The Endless River year after year with increasing dividends? The references to past glories make it easy for me to recommend the album, but I can't rightfully call it an instant masterpiece. The real mystery of The Endless River is whether the material will make a permanent aural impact and be remembered and savored the way the band's most popular albums are. At the very least, the journey will be enjoyable.

3.75: A really god album from pink floyd, the last one, it is almost entirely an instrumental and experimental disc than other thing, including passages that remember us some parts of shine on your crazy diamonds, the wall and most division bell sessions. I liked it, it was released in fact with some left aside parts of division bell session and with some new material mixed, also it is an tribute for the recent dead of Richard Wright at that time. It was a surprise when this one was announced, and I was expecting to hear it so much, and although it is not a masterpiece a good relaxing record with new stuff and very good moments. I recommended it to any pink floyd fan, and any prog listener will find it enjoyable in the most part, however it is not a essential one.

NO no no... Pink Floyd plays ambient....urgh! Back in 1983 David Gilmour, during his terrible conflict with Roger Waters, said about The Final Cut "if the songs that were rejected from The Wall weren't so good, why should we publish them now as this new album?" Well, David: that's exactly what you've been doing with The Endless River in 2014. Why put out an incredibly bland collection of rejected tracks and instrumental pieces from the Division Bell released in 1994? as a hardcore Pink Floyd fan I couldn't tell you the dissapointment this record has been. This was the first mistep in Gilmour's later years management of PF catalog, from this album on it's been all about incredibly expensive box sets and cash grabbing releases. Needless to say it sold incredibly well. Conceptually this record goes nowhere, it's almost completely instrumental, quite often the band indulges in pandering with little eye winks to the audience (for instance the terrible arpeggiatos during Anisina that recall very strongly the strings arrangement on Comfortably Numb, for f.... sake!) Endless river is quite useless in making new generation approach Floyd's music, most of it is just boring elevator music at best. The only sung track is the closer "Louder than Words", an uninspired poppy mellow song. No adding female choirs, just to remind us of how GREAT Dark side of the moon is, is simply not enough. I found distasteful that the band, as in 2014 when this was record was being put out, claimed that this mess should have been considered a tribute to the late great Richard Wright, sadly gone in 2008. No guys, digging out of the vaults "Autumn 68" doesn't cut it for me as a tribute to this great musician. As far as I'm concerned this stuff should have been released on an extra disc along with the good Division Bell 20th anniversary box set released in 2014, since the material is really weak in order to be considered a coherent album. There's no really need to listen to Marooned left overs ( "It's what we do"), nor to listen to bits 1 minutes long like "Ebb and Flow" that really bring nothing new to the table and it's frightenfully ambient - oriented. In the end this record will leave you almost nothing, no memorable tracks, no great tunes.

I have deep respect for this band and their music has been a HUGE part of my life, but this record is a really weak, uninspired collection of jam sessions, ambient tracks, boring leftovers from a really good record (The Division Bell) and it's something only die hard fans and completists should have in their collection.

Review #22

Did we really need this?

Imagine that you're really hungry and you are so in the mood for pizza, so you go to one of the best pizza places in town and you order your favorite flavor in the biggest size they have, then you go home and just when your saliva is about to fall from your mouth you open the pizza box only to find out that instead of pizza you got a lot of half-eaten and cold pieces of pizza, horrible, isn't it? Well, that's what I experienced with this album.

The endless river was released in 2014 after 20 years of hiatus, with Richard Wright already dead and, obviously, without any participation of Roger Waters. I'm not even sure if it is correct to consider this a studio album more than a compilation one: a compilation of "songs" (because they're more like ideas of songs that didn't make it into "The division bell") just re-recorded to make some extra millions of dollars.

When the album starts we can find an instrumental opening just as the two last Pink Floyd albums, so it's easy to believe the album would be as good as them, but the following songs sound exactly the same, it is like an album full of "Cluster one" repeating itself over and over again. After ten or fifteen minutes it's easy to get really bored.

I've been listening to this album several times since it came out six years ago, hoping to fall in love with it but I just can't appreciate it, I only get really disappointed once more, as if it was that awful pizza I talked about before. There's nothing in this album that I can save.

I just don't get it.

What is wrong with albums made of leftover tracks? If I remember correctly, Sir David asked Roger Waters about The Final Cut "If they weren't good enough for The Wall, why should they be good now?" But The Final Cut ended to be one of my favorite PF albums, and surely the best Waters solo work up to now.

The Endless River is not that different: a number of tracks and session recordings which didn't find room on The Division Bell. Is it wrong?

First of all, let's say that should they have made The Division Bell a double CD, adding so many instrumentals it would have been a masterpiece and no PF fan would have had budget issue in spending for a double CD instead of a single one.

Secondly, this is the last possibility to listen to Rick Wright's previously unreleased stuff. It's really a pity that he has written so few music to fill only 2 albums and a collaboration out of PF (plus the appearance on the Chimera's lost album).

So, if you don't think it's pure Pink FLoyd, let's look at this album as a complement to the Division Bell, a sort of Bonus disc.

In my opinion, even if this is clearly second hand material, please consider that when the hands are those of David Gilmour, first or second makes no difference. I don't see it as just a commercial release, done just to fundraise the two survivor's pensions. It looks more like a tribute to Rick, to make him live again through the material left behind.

Musically speaking it's good enough. There are obvious reminders to some famous goodies, but I hear the same on the last Waters solo. The only thing that I would have changed is "Louder Than Words". This was designed to be the very last Pink Floyd song, and even if it's a nice song I would have expected a true masterpiece as swansong. High Hopes was the right one for this role. Personally I don't consider the Ukrainian (good) song as a true Pink Floyd one.

I know that I haven't said more about the music inside. I assume that PF addicted already know everything about it and non PF fans may have a little interest in it. Anyway even if not essential, it still witnesses the last phase of Pink Floyd (and Rick Wright) and is good enough if you have some spare money. I

This is probably the most split album in terms of what Pink Floyd fans think of it. Some people like it, some people dislike it, some people think it's amazing (they're probably fans of ambient music already or just love Wright), and then some people absolutely [%*!#]ing hate it (they either don't like ambient music as a whole or just hate whatever Pink Floyd does without Waters).

I'm in group A, this is a good album. Every song from the first three sides is great. They're nicely fleshed out, flow into each other perfectly, Gilmie's guitar solos are great; even though they're not this epic monolith surrounding an already beautiful song.

What gets me is how they ended it. This is supposed to be the cap on the entirety of Pink Floyd. The final release to undoubtedly one of the most influential bands ever. A band whose works is so close to so many people's hearts. And they chose to end this fifty year long career with Louder Than Words.

This song is atrocious, an affront to god himself, Richard Wright is rolling in his grave. They could've ended this album with Surfacing, didn't have to be anything special, just extend it a little bit, let it fade out over a couple minutes. That would've been perfect, a nice cap to Pink Floyd. If they wanted something big, something grandiose to close with they should've never released this album, leave it at The Division Bell. Maybe have this as a bonus disc to the fifty year super size ultra mega deluxe limited edition The Division Bell box set.

Louder Than Words already comes in hot with the worst lyrics to any Pink Floyd song, "We bitch and we fight, dis each other on sight." Gilmour was never a great lyricist to begin with, but a sixth grader could've done a better job. This is a joke coming from the same person who wrote Fat Old Sun. The auto-tune doesn't make it better, and than the background signers all together make this a painful experience. At least I can just skip it without causing too much damage to the experience of the rest of the album. But it still leaves an awful, sour, old man flavored taste in my mouth that turns me off from listening to an otherwise great album. Shame on you Gilmie

Review Nº 610

As we all know, Pink Floyd was a British prog band famous for their harmonic classic rock compositions, progressive style and extremely elaborated live performances. It's one of the most influential bands in rock history, as well as one of the most successful, having sold over 200 million copies of their albums. "The Dark Side Of The Moon" has remained in the Top 100 Billboard for over a decade. Led by legendary Syd Barrett, the group had a modest success in the second half of the 60's producing psychedelic rock. With Barrett's departure from the scene, Roger Waters gradually became Pink Floyd's lead songwriter. This phase was marked by the production of concept albums such as "The Dark Side Of The Moon", "Wish You Were Here", "Animals" and "The Wall", all released in 1973, 1975, 1977 and 1979, respectively.

But after the album, "The Final Cut" in 1983, the band broke up. In 1985, Waters declared that Pink Floyd was extinct, but the other members, Gilmour, Wright and Mason, after a legal fight, continued with the band with the official name and pursued recording and performing. But, in 2008, Wright died, ending the dream of a possible Pink Floyd comeback. So, it was in this context that was released what is considered the final act of Pink Floyd, "The Endless River" in 2014.

Thus, meant as a tribute to their late keyboard player Richard Wright, "The Endless River" is the first new Pink Floyd's album in over twenty years, and likely to be the last album, according to David Gilmour and Nick Mason. Pieced together from recordings accumulated from "The Division Bell" sessions, back in 1993, the majority of "The Endless River" is instrumental. However, it's all instantly recognizable as Pink Floyd, as each and every track is permeated by Wright's haunting keyboard work and Gilmore's signature, melodic guitar lines. If you've always liked the more laid back, ambient, and mysterious parts of Pink Floyd, chances are you'll really enjoy what is essentially a reworking and recreation of some of the music from "The Division Bell", by the last two members of the band, Gilmour and Mason.

"The Endless River" sounds like it was made by a band in transition. And in a way, that's pretty much what Pink Floyd was in those days, with only Gilmour and Mason left. Wright plays on these tracks, but he's almost an ethereal spirit here, drifting above, below and alongside the songs with ghostly detachment. He gives to "The Endless River" its familiar qualities, but he also gives to it some purpose and some of its aimlessness. As such, don't go into the album expecting to listen to "The Dark Side Of The Moon", "Wish You Were Here", "Animals" or even "The Division Bell". "The Endless Rive" is subtler, and less inviting. This isn't properly an album of songs so much as it's a true collection of ambient music pieces, sculpted together from leftover fragments of a twenty year old album that, let's face it, it's not really a true classic. Many of the eighteen cuts on "The Endless River" are stitched together so that it all flows together as a fifty-three minute instrumental suite with some separate sections. Unfortunately, it doesn't always come together seamlessly. It's more like a remix recording album of previously unreleased songs that just happened to be assembled by the artists who made the music. It may not be the final that fans wanted from one of classic prog rock's most beloved bands, but as a closing chapter tribute to both their late bandmate and lasting legacy, it's kind of fitting, really.

One of the nice things about "The Endless River" is that you can load the CD into your system, sit back with the drink of your choice, in my case, a great scotch, close your eyes, and let the music takes you on a journey. Granted, that's kind of always been the case with the music of Pink Floyd, but seeing as this one is mostly all instrumental, the guitar and the keyboard lines gently grab you and pull you along for the lengthy ride. Wright's majestic keyboard textures are all over the album. So, as a tribute to Wright, Gilmour and Mason have done a fantastic job here. Many of the tones you can ear hear, will bring you back memories of "The Dark Side Of The Moon", "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals".

Now, a last thought about the front cover of the album. As regrettable as the album's cover may be for some, personally, I like it really. In my opinion, it can provide to us a useful metaphor for the very close relationship between the guitarist and the keyboardist. Gilmour is the punter guiding of the boat and Wright is the cloud upon which he floats. He always was the quiet force behind the band, or the boat, if you want. That leaves Mason as the oar, perhaps.

Conclusion: Beyond "The Endless River" be Wright's swan song, Gilmour and Mason have said that it will be Pink Floyd's last album. "The Endless River" is a nice and honest tribute for a man who was one of the greatest keyboardists of the 70's with an own style. As you would expect from a Pink Floyd's album, it's expertly produced. Any serious fan will no doubt have to have this and should instantly fall in love with what's on display, still it may vary depending on your patience with instrumental music. So, what we have here is a nice, enjoyable, pleasant instrumental album, for the most part, an album that all Pink Floyd's fans can listen too for a while then file away and go back to listening to the real stuff. For me, Pink Floyd, gone out in style and put together a fine tribute to Wright. So, you can't ask for more, really.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

In 2014, Pink Floyd announced The Endless River, composed primarily of instrumental outtakes and experiments recorded during the Division Bell sessions. A small number of additions were made in 2013 to complete the album.

When this was announced, I set my expectations low. Gilmour had proven himself to be an inconsistent songwriter, and the prospect of something stitched together from leftover bits did not leave me optimistic.  

My initial reaction to The Endless River was, "Wow, this is surprisingly not-[&*!#]ty!" I then proceeded to not listen to it again until writing this essay six years later. That should tell you all you really need to know. It's passable instrumental space rock in small doses, but nothing makes this record noteworthy or worth revisiting. The ungainly length of this record is a hindrance, and it truly lives up to the endlessness promised in its name.

"Things Left Unsaid" is emblematic of many of the sins of this era of Pink Floyd. A dull synth drone acts as the backdrop to a slow, languid guitar line for four-and-a-half minutes. It's "Cluster One" trying to be the closing moments of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond". "It's What We Do" is an improvement, insofar as it has a pulse. This again feels like a weak, sterile attempt to recreate moments off "Shine on You Crazy Diamond". With this being an instrumental album, Roger Waters's presence isn't missed. He was never a standout bassist, as I've mentioned previously, and his playing almost always bled into the background as Wright and Gilmour took the lead. This album's flaccid opening movement closes with the brief "Ebb and Flow", which is all ebb and no flow.

"Sum" is the first place where the album does anything interesting. Wright's organ stutters in a way which evokes many of Floyd's best songs, including "Astronomy Domine". It's too long and lacks direction, but I'll take aimless jamming over aimless airiness. "Skins" is a callback to early cuts like "A Saucerful of Secrets" and "Up the Khyber" with Nick Mason's distinct, tom-heavy drumming style taking the lead. When a drum solo is the strongest cut on an album so far, that's usually not a good sign. "Anisina" is too sweet, and it feels like generic background music to be used in a heartwarming scene on a made-for-TV movie. I also hate the tone of the saxophone on this song.

Another brief, ambient piece?"The Lost Art of Conversation"?doesn't do much beyond occupy two minutes of time, but "On Noodle Street" is one of the better tracks on The Endless River. It's not particularly good in absolute terms, mind you, but enough happens on this brief cut to keep me interested. It's mellow and jazzy, but my ultimate assessment is simply "inoffensive."

"Night Light" harbors some darker, minor-key tones, and "Allons-y" finally gets something going with its bouncing rhythm and a guitar line that could have been one of the better songs on The Wall. "Autumn '68" is a pointless mini-fugue which leads back into the second half of "Allons-y". "Talkin' Hawkin'" features more vocal snippets from Stephen Hawking, and it's nice that this song has enough percussion to maintain an identifiable beat.

"Calling", which opens side 4 of this album, is an interesting collection of moody synthesizers. This one could have been workshopped into something better, but there are nuggets of good ideas here. "Eyes to Pearls" stays in the same neighborhood but with a bit more muscle, and "Surfacing" is one of the rare cuts to feel like a real song.

The one song with vocals?"Louder Than Words"?closes out The Endless River. It's a pretty typical Gilmour-era ballad. Soulful background singers in the chorus feel like a crutch, and the instrumentation doesn't do much to grab the listener. Giving credit where credit is due, the closing guitar solo is quite good.

Looking on this record with relatively fresh eyes, I find its immense bloat and frequent aimlessness hobble any other redeeming qualities. It isn't actively bad in most cases, but it's frequently downright anodyne. Oftentimes, boring is worse than bad. Ummagumma's studio disc is an ungodly, unfocused morass, but they at least were trying weird and different things. The Endless River is endlessly safe. It was a disappointing, unnecessary way for Pink Floyd to wrap up their career.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2021/03/01/deep-dive-pink-floyd/

As a lover of instrumental music, The Endless River largely works for me. There's an elegance in music that needs no words to express itself. On the other hand, this collection is patchy. Being the last album, I suppose they decided to throw in the leftovers along with the more focused tracks.

On the plus side, you get many of the things that make Pink Floyd such a treat for the ears, and without being triggered by Roger's lyrics and histrionics, clever as they may be. So TER is a less edgy listen than the later Roger period, and a more sonorous one. However, they all pale next to Floyd's greatest albums.

Still, there's some atypical tracks, like Sum, where the instrumentation reminds me of Saucerful of Secrets, with Nick's tribal toms, Dave's echoey slide guitar and Rick's keyboard washes. Yet this is more melodic and cohesive, more listenable. The track then morphs into Skins, where Nick doubles down on the Afrobeats to a spacey background, sounding like a very simplified version of Crimson's B'Boom.

The album lowlight is the dull and bland Anisina, which is simply not a Floyd song, or shouldn't be. It's good that they tried something different, but if you took Mr Gilmour's contributions out, this track would be a nice backing track for Kenny G or Michael Bolton. Seriously.

Otherwise, there are so many familiar riffs, grooves and textures that I have the impression that the band were making up for lost time. That is, they finally got to play some of their favourite things the way they always wanted to play them ... without Roger's complaints, criticisms and moodiness. Or, alas, his creativity.

There are so many short ideas stitched together that perhaps the album is more like a suite than an album of different songs.

Three stars. If you have Pompeii, Meddle, DSOTM, WYWH and Animals, your collection won't be much enhanced by TER, aside from sentimental reasons.

I don't know much about this band but judging by the music they must be Pink Floyd's biggest fans. Many bands have tried but few succeeded. It's all in the details you know: the lazy pace of the drums, the dreamy synth waves, some guy talking in the background, and those crystal clear blues guitar licks that are as bright as a puppy's eyes. Yes, this band really got all that nailed.

As to the songwriting they missed the clue completely though. The albums is made up of an endless sequence of short tracks strung together in 4 larger movements. Most of it sounds like an ode to 'Shine On', almost as if it's a premature studio outtake right from 1974. The melodies are not quite there, the guitar is searching for that brilliant sequence of notes that would stick in the world's collective memory for decades to come, but no. Finding them it doesn't. Kudos to the keyboard player though whom I'd swear is the real and unmatched mr. Wright in person. It actually made me check out 'Wish You Were Here' for the first time in ages.

THE ENDLESS RIVER. It's kind of a cool name for a band, but naming their debut album 'Pink Floyd' is maybe a bit of a risk, not that they make any attempt to hide their main influence, but actually using that name, I'm not sure this won't end in some kind of lawsuit from mr. Waters.

I was not expecting any new Pink Floyd album, certainly not 6 years after Wright's passing. Looking at former reviews, it looks like a polarizing album. Long-term Pink Floyd are emotional about this release of the three PF giants, whereas occasional PF listeners and hardcore prog-rockers won't get impressed.

I consider circumstances before rating the album. The remaining musicians had no intention to set the boundaries, cash money or release their ego. It is a floating journey, well matching the cover on the album. Close your eyes, think back and get lost in the guitar emotions carried by keyboards. Enjoy the focus on instrumental music, no need for words and imagine how these 3 lads jammed in the studio (unless you have the deluxe edition which features several 90's videos). This album would have been a lackluster had it been released before Wright's departure. But in the context of 2014, it is a fitting good-bye, if a non-essential PF album.