Pink Floyd - Vantage Point [FLAC]

Pink Floyd – Vantage Point
(a soniclovenoize re-imagining)


Side A:
1. Ibizia Bar
2. No Man’s Land
3. Long Gone
4. Cymbaline
5. Terrapin

Side B:
6. The Nile Song
7. No Good Trying
8. Love You
9. a) Embryo
b) Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up
10. Dark Globe


This “re-imaging” is the second of a trilogy of albums that asks the question “What if Syd Barrett hadn’t been fired from Pink Floyd?” Vantage Point, the title of which is culled from the lyrics of “Cymbaline” and references the famous cover art of Pink Floyd’s Umma Gumma , is the theoretical album released in 1969 by a Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd, following my re-imagined 1968’s The Shape of Questions To Heaven and the very real 1967’s The Piper At The Gates of Dawn. All tracks have been volume-adjusted and most of the songs have been tightly crossfaded for continuity and cohesion. Two entirely new and original edits of songs were created and one unique remaster to an otherwise forgotten track.

The primary source material for Vantage Point is the second and third recording sessions for Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs in 1969, the third session as even produced by former bandmates Gilmour and Waters. This allows us musical and conceptual continuity for this re-imagining, as a core group of quality and eccentric compositions can be chosen: “Terrapin”, “No Good Trying” “Love You”, “No Man’s Land”, “Dark Globe”, and “Long Gone”. These tracks all seem to have a unifying sonic design: Syd Barrett’s signature songwriting, surrounded by atmospheric and post-psychedelic meandering. No alternate Opal versions were used here, as the album versions all sound sonically complete and coherent (as opposed to the previous Barrett selections on The Shape of Questions To Heaven). With over half an album already represented, we turn to what the other Pink Floyd members were pre-occupied with when not helping their former bandleader with his debut solo album.

As it turns out, 1969 was a scatter-brained year for Pink Floyd, recording music for two different soundtracks (More and Zabriskie Point) and collecting some of those ideas for a conceptual performance and intended live album, The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes, known by fans as “The Man and The Journey”, in reference to the two suites of experimental and conceptual music contained within. While a studio version of The Massed Gadgets in itself would be an interesting reconstruction for this blog, Pink Floyd chose to utilize the material in their 1969 album Umma Gumma, a double album with lengthy selections from their current live tour as disc one, and some of the recycled instrumental studio pieces creating disc two, each offered as solo recordings from each member of Pink Floyd. The chaotic nature of this double album and its preceding projects illustrates Pink Floyd’s search to find their own fate and to exorcise the ghost of Syd Barrett, which haunted them on A Saucerful of Secrets. It wasn’t until the following year’s Atom Heart Mother in which Pink Floyd began to discover their own voice.

Knowing that at this point in time a Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd is still a song-based band rather than a largely instrumental and improvisational-based band, “Ibizia Bar”, “The Nile Song” and “Cymbaline” from the Soundtrack From The Film More were chosen to sit alongside the six Barrett songs, fitting perfectly in mood and atmosphere. In this alternate Barrett-led Pink Floyd timeline, we can presume that the rest of the band harnessed more songwriting weight on their albums, compensating for Barrett’s inevitable decline, and we must represent this on our re-imagining. A 1969 live staple “Embryo” was taken from Works (which features a crisper remastering done by myself) and was edited into “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up” from Zabriskie Point. This creates Pink Floyd’s staple epic psychedelic odyssey album-cut on Vantage Point, as seen with the previous albums’ “Interstellar Overdrive” and my own unique edit of “Golden Hair/Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”.

The ‘pink’ frosting on this cake would be the concluding track “Dark Globe”, my own unique creation which begins and concludes with the flutes from “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party”, found on Umma Gumma. Adding a medieval atmosphere to a song already structurally and melodically reminiscent of European folk ballads, we are left with a melancholy and prophetic closing track that also introduces the aesthetic of my third and final re-imagined Barrett-led Pink Floyd albums…


Sources used:
Pink Floyd – Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (1987 remaster)
Pink Floyd – Umma Gumma (1994 remaster)
Pink Floyd – Works (original 1983 master)
Pink Floyd – Zabriskie Point (1997 remaster)
Syd Barret – The Madcap Laughs (1994 Harvest Remaster)


flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR, Audacity & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included