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: #456 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

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.

Great album, great music, 5.1 mix not so great
If you are thinking of buying this, I suspect you have already heard the album lots of times already. So, my focus is on the 5.1 mix.

The mix is good, but that's all I can honestly say about it. It's just good, nothing more, nothing less.

I should say in defence of the mix though, I had just listened to another SACD - Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. I bought these two SACDs a few days ago and maybe if I had listened to DSOTM first, I might have given it four or five stars. But, the 5.1 mix of War of the Worlds is so much better; I really felt disapointed when I listened to DSOTM.

In conclusion, I'd still recommend buying DSOTM as it gives the listener a new aural picture of the album. But most definately, buy War of the Worlds, but don't listen to it until you listen to DSOTM in case you become disapointed like me.