THE ENDLESS RIVER

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.