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, IDark Side of the Moon/I sold 25 million copies in its first 25 years of release. IDark Side of the Moon/I 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 IEclipse/I 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.p 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. I--James Swift/I

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Customer reviews

review by: Yann date: 2009-06-18 rating:
a better mix
To my opinion, the main improvement of this new mix can be found in the choruses of "Us And Them" and "Brain Damage" (as well as in "Eclipse"): br /It's just a lot less muddy. br / br /As James Guthrie, who created this mix, put it : br /"In the choruses, there's a lot going on. There's stuff playing in the same register, there's intermodulation distortion on the girls' voices on the multitracks, and the sax is now wailing. So I tried to achieve some distinction for the voices, but I needed the slightly messy approach, too--as well as the big dynamic lift. Hopefully, you retain the detail, but you still get the size." br / br /(This is all well and good but let's spare a thought for Alan Parsons without whom the original LP would have sold, say, let's not be shy, 20 millions less ? I really think he created that fabulous sound in the first place.)

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review by: date: 2009-02-13 rating:
Timeless classic now better than ever
If you own a Super Audio CD player, buy this album. If you don't own a Super Audio CD player, buy one, then buy this album.

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review by: date: 2009-01-11 rating:
The most overrated album of all time
This album seems to be highly recommended by almost everyone but I haven't the faintest idea why. It consists mainly of long, drawn out, exceedingly dull instrumental parts with some random and irritating sound effects thrown in. It's often cited as deeply influential but as far as I'm concerned it's a load of rubbish. The only vaguely listenable song is 'Money' but Velvet Revolver's version is infinitely better. If you want a classic and influential album I sincerely recommend you buy Led Zeppelin's fourth album as it is a much better alternative from around the same time.

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review by: date: 2008-12-12 rating:
Re-mastered marvel
DSOM does not need any review as it is quite possibly among the top ten best known albums of all time. br /The re-mastering for this SACD edition is simply fantastic. I recall reading somewhere that aside from being able to reproduce finer detail by comparison to standard CD SACD encodes the digital signal in a way that is comparably more sympathetic to older analogue recordings. br /The modifications to my Sony S9000dvp include by-passing the 5.1 processor so I'm afraid I only hear this in good old fashioned two channel stereo. But those two channels are just about as clear as it's possible to get. br /James Guthrie and all involved have worked wonders with the SACD re-mix. There is so much more to be heard in the finer detail but musically the mix remains very true to the original. Sonically this sounds to me to be just about as good as you could expect to get and I marvel at the ambiance of the period studio techniques and equipment that can be heard clearly in this SACD version. br /


review by: Radiophonics date: 2008-09-05 rating:
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. br / br /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. br / br /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! br / br /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! br / br /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.

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