Product Description

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON was a benchmark record. It turned themusical world on its ear with a hitherto unseen combinationof sounds, and changed things considerably for Pink Floyd. For this project, Pink Floyd resurrected older and unfinished numbers, some of which came from the multitude of soundtracks the band members had previously worked on. The film ZABRISKIE POINT, a study of American materialism from a foreigner's perspective, provided "Us And Them" (originally titled "The Violence Sequence"). Waters rewrote "Breathe" after its appearance on his and avant-garde composer Ron Geesin's score for THE BODY, a surreal medical documentary.
Floyd and their long-time engineer, Alan Parsons, used a multitude of sound effects--from stereophonically projected footsteps andplanes flying overhead ("On The Run") to a roomful of ringing clocks ("Time"). Further adding to the record's mystique,barely audible spoken passages were sprinkled throughout--aresult of hours interviewing random Abbey Road occupants about their views on insanity, violence, and death. Floyd musthave struck a nerve: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON remained on Billboard's albums chart for an astounding 14 years. It made Pink Floyd a household name, elevating them to the level of theRolling Stones and The Who in the rock pantheon.

Track Listing

1. Speak To Me
2. Breathe
3. On The Run
4. Time
5. Great Gig In The Sky
6. Money
7. Us And Them
8. Any Colour You Like
9. Brain Damage
10. Eclipse

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #246 in Music
• Released on: 2003-03-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: SACD

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most famous albums of all time, Dark Side of the Moon sold 25 million copies in its first 25 years of release. Dark Side of the Moon was the first album that Pink Floyd decided to break in live before attempting to record, with the debut performance of what they then called Eclipse just over a year before the final release date. When they finally retired to Abbey Road Studios with top sound engineer Alan Parsons, state-of-the-art 16-track recording equipment and the new Dolby technology to hand, it was to produce one of the great pieces of studio art. Covering a range of styles, this was the last album (prior to Roger Waters' departure in the early 1980s) to whose writing the other members of Pink Floyd contributed significantly.

Nevertheless, it remains a stunningly coherent package, bound together by surreal fragments of speech (mostly gleaned from asking questions of the doorman at the studio) and Waters' bold and bleak lyrics. Often reputed to be about former member Syd Barrett's decline into schizophrenia, in fact Waters has said the lyrics "were a lot about ordinariness" and dealt with people's responses to the increasing insanity of the pressures of everyday life. Some of the extraordinary sound effects used came from the most unlikely sources--the coins at the start of "Money" from Waters tossing handfuls of change into an industrial food-mixer that his wife, a potter, used to mix clay. Whatever the medium, a new standard for attention to detail and production values had been set and the world of studio recording would never be the same again. --James Swift

Customer Reviews

Feels like the first time I ever heard it!
There's very little that I can add to the heaps of praise that this SACD has attracted. I received my brand new sealed copy today from an Amazon Marketplace vendor in New York for a little over £6 (what a bargain!) and by the time I reached track 4 I was so excited I had to tell someone about it. Unfortunately nobody at home has the same rabid level of interest in music and things technical that I have so I have logged on to direct my enthusiasm to Amazon customers instead.

The SACD audio quality is spectacular for a start. The noise is absolutely zero on this release so the initial heartbeat sound really did creep up on me. Sonically it was so natural and realistic that if I didn't know the album back-to-front I would have thought that my SACD player was not playing anything and that there was some kind of pulsing sound coming from outside or next door.

It doesn't seem to matter that the original recording engineers didn't work on this mix, the people who have done it have done such a truly faithful job of taking this classic recording and giving it the 3-D treatment that it doesn't sound odd or unbalanced or anything. It actually sounds (to me) as though I have taken something hallucinogenic and sat in the middle of my front room while the sounds and instruments from the album all come to life and materialise on cue around me, while the electronic effects and reverberations dance in psychadelic waves across the space!

Listening to this on SACD is more exciting than the first time I heard the remastered 20th Anniversary release from a aural point of view, and from an artistic point of view, with the incredible surround mix, it is every bit as good as hearing the album for the first time. I feel as though I am hearing it anew!

Seriously, folks, I recently picked up my Sony surround system 2nd hand for under £50 (see my other review) and it is giving me this much pleasure. If you don't have an SACD player get online and order one now. If you have an SACD player but don't have the 5.1 surround mix of Dark Side of the Moon then shame on you! Get it now! The Amazon Marketplace vendors will sort you out with a brand new copy nice and cheap.

Good, but they've done better
I really don't think Dark Side Of The Moon is worthy of the bated breath, awed whispers, feet kissing and general brown nosing that's vested on it.

Granted there are 3 excellent tracks:- Breath In The Air, Time and Brain Damage. But the rest rate from average; such as On The Run and Money to downright boring; with Any Colour You Like and The Great Gig In The Sky.

The Wall and Wish You Were Here beats DSOTM hands down

almost perfect
"Dark Side Of The Moon" is the record the band will forever be most well known for : In the charts for something like 1,000 weeks, the ten song suite offers a first in Floyd terms with a distinctive, uninterrupted flow of material over 45 minutes that works as one long song. It touches upon broad themes (evidenced in titles like "Time", "Money", "Us And Them", "Breathe") that encapsulates the whole of human experience from birth to death. It helps that the music is fantastic, the Floyd at an apex of creativity and melodic strengths, with a timeless production and creating a near perfect whole.