Dark Side of the Moon - 30th Anniversary Edition

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Editorial reviews

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

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Customer reviews

review by: metalmaz date: 2008-01-27 rating:
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

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review by: date: 2008-01-01 rating:
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.

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review by: windhoek date: 2007-12-10 rating:
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.

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review by: date: 2007-09-19 rating:
time ticks away ... but DSOTM is timeless
So good I can imagine SACD machines being bought just to play this disc! But real fans will always have the vinyl record handy for those special moment.


review by: date: 2007-08-24 rating:
It's not how Alan Parsons did it... but it is jaw droppingly good.
Well, I don't need to say anything about the album, apart from confirm that it is one of my all time favourites, and i've accumulated at least 3 other versions of it on CD. I've not given the stereo versions an airing at all; this release was what prompted me to add 5.1 SACD playback to my system. The 5.1 mix is where the money is here, and it is brilliant, and absolutely shows off SACD 5.1 at its best. This is not an album that has been tarted up to fill all of the channels; it was written and recorded with a quadraphonic mix in mind by a band with long experience of what we now call surround sound as part of their live shows (the famous "Azimuth Coordinator").

My only concern, and only reason why I have knocked a star off, is that this mix is not really how nature intended. I've nothing against Floyd sound engineer James Guthrie who has mixed this; he is a major figure in Floyd history having engineered The Wall album and live shows and all subsequent Floyd output, including the 5.1 soundtracks on the DVD reissues of Floyd's and Gilmour's material. It's just, well, he's not Alan Parsons. Parsons engineered the original stereo mix and, crucially, the quad mix, long lost due to the failure of quad to take off in the 1970s in its various iterations. He has also remained active in his own solo work at recording and mixing multichannel music and is arguably one of the most experienced multichannel engineer / artists around today. Floyd aficionados will be aware of the existence of the original Parsons quad mix and having heard it and compared the two side by side on my own very modest system, I prefer it. Just.

Sure, this mix is well up to modern standards, and the Parsons mix is a lot more direct, possibly even crude at times, in its use of surround effects, but I can't help thinking that I want the original, and not a remix (albeit a beautifully engineered and sympathetic one). I know nothing of Floyd politics, but can't help thinking that a Parsons recreation of the original quad mix on 5.1 SACD would be nice for old time's sake. I'm aware that I could just be being awkward, and must emphasise that this release is utterly, utterly wonderful.

Having said all this, it is said that the Parsons mix was never officially endorsed by the band, and Guthrie himself has reportedly not only said that this is the only surround mix endorsed by the band but that they had listened to the Parsons mix and opted not to use it for this release, instead asking Guthrie to make the (minor) changes that are apparent if you have the opportunity to listen to both side by side. Parsons himself has reportedly said that his quad mix was rushed due to time pressure.

This IS all nit picking though. If you're a fan, and you have the facility to play the 5.1 mix, buy this, and enjoy. It's superb. Of course, Atom Heart Mother and Wish You Were Here were also released in quad in the 1970s too. Animals got as far as acquiring a catalogue number for its quad release but never actually saw the light of day as quad fell out of favour in the late 1970s.

I would love to see more Floyd albums subjected to the same treatment, though i'll say it again; if it had a quad release originally that's the one that should be released IMHO.

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