Pink Floyd have recently announced their return to music production with new album, Endless River, scheduled for release later this year, bringing one of the greatest bands of the 20th century back with eagerly awaited new material. According to their official website announcement, the new album will be based on the 1993/4 Division Bell sessions, which focused on the importance of communication in the modern era.
Set for release in October 2014 it will be the first new Pink Floyd material to be released in the modern era of digital downloads, so it’ll be interesting to see how it fairs, as the last album the band released was available on tape cassette. The Endless River, on the other hand, will face the album track pick and choose split-up of the digital age, as well as being available in CD and vinyl format.
The record will apparently consist of mostly instrumental and ambient songs, so lyrics and vocals are looking likely to be thin on the ground. However, the use of the term “mostly” leaves a little room for some lyrics to shine on through, so hopefully we’ll get at least a few nuggets of philosophical genius, in and amongst the ambient waves of sound.
It’s been twenty long years since the band released their last album, The Division Bell, which despite receiving mixed reviews at the time, has gone on to become more appreciated in the music critic press. It went straight in at number 1 in the UK and US charts when it was released in march 1994 and went on to sell triple platinum in the States with more than 3 million album sales.
Like The Division Bell, The Endless River will feature Pink Floyd band members, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. Following the death of Wright in 2008, Gilmour and Mason have trawled the ’93/’94 recording sessions with their former keyboard player to construct the music that will go into the making of the 2014 album.
Work is still underway on finalising the material according to the news update on the Pink Floyd website, but they should be updating us shortly with more information on the record at the end of the summer, which is when we’re expecting to be able to hear the first tracks from the album.
Produced by David Gilmour with Phil Manzanera, Youth and long standing Pink Floyd recording engineer Andy Jackson, it’s looking highly likely that we’ll be getting something similar to The Division Bell, so for anyone holding out their hopes for a return to the likes of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals or The Wall, you should probably redress your expectations now.
