Pink Floyd - Vantage Point (upgrade)

 

Pink Floyd - Vantage Point

(soniclovenoize reimagining)

January 2024 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Ibiza Bar

2.  No Man’s Land

3.  Long Gone

4.  Octopus

5.  Crying Song

6.  Rhamadan 

Side B:

7.  The Nile Song

8.  No Good Trying

9.  Love You

10.  Swan Lee

11.  Embryo

10. Late Night

Here is a long-overdue upgrade to one of my favorite series of album “re-imaginings”, which postulates: “What if Syd Barrett hadn’t been fired from Pink Floyd?”  Vantage Point is the second in a trilogy of Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd albums (joined with 1968’s The Shapes Of Questions To Heaven and 1970’s Themes From an Imaginary Western), that would have theoretically been released in early-ish 1969.  Vantage Point is a combination of the band-oriented The Madcap Laughs-era tracks, and various other 1960-era Pink Floyd tracks that seemed to compliment and gel the entire album together.  This upgrade is noteworthy, as I’ve used Ozone Izotope to rebalance the instrumental mix of some of the Madcap Laughs tracks to match the rest of the album.  I have also created my own, unique eight-minute edit of the rare Barrett track “Rhamadan”, to act as the album’s centerpiece “epic” improvisational soundscape track.  Admittedly, I should have probably renamed the album, as “Cymbaline” is no longer featured here; I am keeping the name regardless for the sake of clarity and continuity.  

After Syd Barrett’s unanimous dismissal from Pink Floyd in February 1968, manager Peter Jenner followed the exit, believing Barrett as the creative genius of the band.  Promptly starting sessions for his first solo album in May and June using Soft Machine as his backing band, Syd and Jenner tracked a handful of songs that expounded on his signature pop-psychedelia: “Silas Lang”, “Late Night”, “Clowns and Jugglers”, and a musical accompaniment of a James Joyce poem, “Golden Hair.”  There were also several aimless and monotonal improvisations, such as “Lanky” and “Rhamadan.”  Despite its promise, the tapes seemed more like demos and fragments, and the project was shelved, leaving Barrett in self-imposed seclusion after a brief stint of psychological care, and Jenner’s notion of Barrett as a solo star dashed.  

Meanwhile, Pink Floyd were busy searching for their own muse.  After completing their sophomore album A Saucerful of Secrets in June and a series of scant psyche-pop singles that failed to chart, the quartet shifted gears to their experimental and improvisational prowess, notably with the extended jams of b-side “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”.  While the band began demo sessions for their third album in November with “Embryo”, their trajectory changed; impressed by the cinematic scope of this new incarnation of the band, director Barbet Schroeder drafted The Floyd to compose the soundtrack to his new film, More.  Grouping at Pye Studios for two weeks in January and February 1969, the band wrote and recorded a number of new songs, including “Cirrus Minor”, “The Nile Song”, “The Crying Song”, “Green is The Colour”, “Cymbaline” and “Ibiza Bar”, as well as a number of instrumental pieces in varying genres, meant as incidental music for the film.  

Barrett’s luck improved by March 1969, having received the greenlight for a solo album under EMI’s new progressive rock umbrella Harvest Records.  This time produced by Harvest head Malcolm Jones, the duo reviewed the tapes from the previous year’s Jenner sessions, to see what was salvageable.  Throughout March and April, overdubs were added to the tapes, and a handful of new songs were recorded, ideally to round out an album: “Love You”, “Opel”, “It’s No Good Trying”, “Terrapin”, “No Man’s Land” and “Here I Go.”  Despite the barrage of work, the sessions became grueling as Barrett’s erratic recording nuances and inability to articulate what he actually wanted, led him to seek guidance from his old friend and literal replacement in Pink Floyd: David Gilmour.  

Gilmour & Co. themselves were in the midst of a series of performances of their conceptual piece The Man and The Journey, which included “Cymbaline” and “Green is The Colour” from More, as well as newer pieces “Grantchester Meadows”, “The Narrow Way”, and a number of instrumental interstitial pieces.  The later two songs were also destined for their third studio album proper, Ummagumma, which was being crafted as solo recordings from each individual member of the band.  Inbwteen mixing of Ummagumma, Roger Waters and David Gilmour rejoined their former band-mate to save his solo album and shape something listenable out of the mountainous jumble of recordings from both Jenner and Jones.

In June 1969, The trio recorded brand new versions of “Golden Hair” and “Clowns and Jugglers”--now retitled “Octopus”-- as well as new compositions “Dark Globe”, “Long Gone”, “She Took a Long, Cold Look”, “Feel” and “If It’s In You.”  Final mixing of the album occurred in August, with “Octopus” released as the lead single in November, a week after Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma.  The Madcap Laughs was finally released in January 1970, nearly two years after the sessions had begun!  Both albums became cult favorites, with Barrett continuing with a slightly less schizophrenic second solo album Barrett, and Pink Floyd continuing, well, into eventual superstardom.  

But could this have all played out differently?  This reimaging continues the “Pink Floyd featuring Syd Barrett” timeline began in The Shape of Questions To Heaven, and uses the earlier (and decidedly weirder) Jenner sessions as the base of a theoretical Pink Floyd album led by Syd Barrett; ironically, those sessions sounded more like a plausible Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd than the later sessions that actually featured David Gilmour!  To bookend the album and gel it together, we are going to utilize Pink Floyd’s earlier 1969 session material–notably “Embryo” and some of the More songs–which seems to fit in with the Jenner sessions.  Note we are going to exclude the More and Ummagumma tracks destined for The Man and The Journey, so that it and Vantage Point can coexist in the same timeline; perhaps they could be considered separate discs of a double album, or an intentional compromise of separate “Barret Songs Album” vs “Band Concept Album”?  

Side A begins with Waters’ “Ibiza Bar” from More, an outlier in the Pink Floyd canon because of it’s awesome heaviness, but here sets up the dark psychedelic album that Pink Floyd never made.  This is followed by my own demaster of “No Man’s Land” from The Madcap Laughs, and “Long Gone” from, again, Madcap Laughs.  Next is my demaster of “Clowns and Jugglers” from Opel, using the more weird Soft Machine version, which seems to fit better with the album.  Breaking the tension is “Crying Song” from More, which works well as a deep-album cut.  The side concludes with my own eight-minute edit of “Rhamadan”, sourced from a lossless stream via TIDAL; I included several of my favorite sections in this edit, and becomes a fairly interesting listen when assembled in this fashion.  

Side B unintentionally (I swear!) follows the pattern of opening with Waters’ heavy psyche “The Nile Song” from More, and then a dual of Barrett’s “No Good Trying” and “Love You” from The Madcap Laughs.  Following is my demaster of the wonderfully bizarre “Swan Lee” from Opel, which is followed by the band studio demo of “Embryo”, a long lost gem from The Early Years.  The album closes with my own demaster of “Late Night” from The Madcap Laughs, as if we were waking from this psychedelic nightmare.  

Sources used:

Pink Floyd – Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (2011 remaster)

Pink Floyd – The Early Years (2016 box set)  

Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs (2006 remaster)

Syd Barrett – Rhamadan 2010 Mix (rip of lossless TIDAL stream)

Syd Barrett – Opal (1994 Harvest remaster)

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Pink Floyd - The Shape of Questions to Heaven (Upgrade)

Pink Floyd – The Shape of Questions to Heaven

(a soniclovenoize re-imagining)

March 2017 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Vegetable Man

2.  Apples and Oranges

3.  Remember A Day

4.  a) Golden Hair

     b) Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun

5.  In The Beechwoods

Side B:

6.  John Latham

7.  Paintbox

8.  Scream Thy Last Scream

9.  Jugband Blues

Although I said I wouldn’t, the material spontaneously struck me one day recently and I was motivated to upgrade this original re-imagining from four years ago, which postulates “What if Syd Barrett hadn’t been fired from Pink Floyd?”  The Shape of Questions to Heaven is the theoretical 1968 follow up to 1967’s The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, and culls material from Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets sessions and Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs sessions to create a second album of Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd, an album that most certainly never was.

The updates to this March 2017 edition are:

• Revised tracklist that focuses more on actual Syd-led Pink Floyd sessions and less reliant on Syd’s solo work without the rest of the band—a true 2^nd Pink Floyd album with Syd Barrett
• “Late Night”, “Lanky Part One” and “Clowns and Jugglers” are dropped from the tracklist and replaced by “In The Beechwoods” and “John Latham” sourced from The Early Years boxset. 
• More recent (and in my opinion) superior sources are used, including the 2011 remaster of A Saucerful of Secrets and the 2015 remaster of The Madcap Laughs

After a sequence of high-charting singles and the focused attention of the swinging London scene, Pink Floyd looked to broaden their horizon of success.  Their 1967 debut album The Piper at The Gates of Dawn seemed to accentuate the eccentricities of their front man Syd Barrett; it’s marriage of psychedelic pop and experimental space-rock seemed to encapsulate Barrett’s own spaciness.  But all was not well within the Pink Floyd camp…  Just as the album was released in August, Barrett began to show signs of a breakdown, probably due to his escalated use of LSD.  A few shows were canceled that summer due to Barrett’s erratic behavior and attempts to take him to a doctor had failed. 

Struggling through Syd’s antics, the band attempted to record a follow-up single to the newly-released album.  Two new compositions were recorded on August 7^th and 8^th, 1967 at De Lane Lea Studios: Barrett’s “Scream Thy Last Scream” b/w Roger Waters’ “Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun”; unfortunately they were rejected as a single by EMI.  After starting work on a new album proper at Sound Techniques Studios in September with an instrumental backing track for “In The Beechwoods” and two free-form jams “Reaction In G” and “No Title”, Pink Floyd returned to De Lane Lea in early October to record Barrett’s “Vegetable Man” b/w “Jugband Blues” as a prospected single, as well as adding overdubs to an unfinished outtake from The Piper sessions, Richard Wright’s “Remember A Day”.  With “Vegetable Man” also rejected by the record label, Pink Floyd reconvened in late October at De Lane Lea Studios for a third attempt at a single, Barrett’s “Apples and Oranges” b/w Wright’s “Paintbox”.  Even though this single was finally approved by EMI and released in November, it failed to chart.  Also recorded at this session was a 30-minute improvisational piece for John Latham’s experimental animated film Speak; it too was rejected and it has remained in the vaults for nearly 50 years!

Following a disastrous American taping of “Apples and Oranges” at The Pat Boone Show in which Barrett stood motionless instead of performing (as well as a similar spaced-out interview on American Band Stand) the other members of Pink Floyd decided that they needed a fifth member to backup Barrett’s unpredictability.  Drafting Barrett’s guitarist friend from art school, David Gilmour joined Pink Floyd at the end of 1967 as a second guitarist and the band functioned as an awkward quintet for a month in January.  As a five piece, rehearsals commenced for upcoming gigs and new songs were written, often with Barret not showing interest or not even showing up altogether!  Barrett’s madness climaxed during a rehearsal in which Barrett attempted to teach his bandmates a new song, allegedly entitled “Have You Got It Yet?”; after every run-through of the song, Barrett altered the structure so the band could not possibly follow along and then sung to the band members “Have you got it yet?”  With Gilmour on guitar and without Syd at all, the band entered Abbey Roads Studios on January 24th and 25th to record the newly written songs “See-Saw”, “Corporal Clegg” and “Let There Be More Light”.  The very next day, Waters decided not to pick up Barrett on the way to a gig; Syd was out of Pink Floyd, and the rest was history. 

By February 1968 the band realized that they were now absent a lead songwriter who could write pop hits; Wright contributed “It Would Be So Nice” and Waters offered “Julia Dream”, both an attempt to create a formula Syd Barrett psyche-pop single.  The results were dismal as the single failed and the band has since blacklisted the songs as rubbish.  By spring, Pink Floyd assessed what recorded material could make an album, and found they were quite short; they would have to find a new way to operate, without a Syd Barrett.  The answer was “A Saucerful of Secrets”, a 12-minute instrumental epic concerning the effects of war, composed as if it was an architectural design, which became the title track of the album.  By becoming a more conceptual and jam-based band, Pink Floyd were able to free themselves from the unreachable expectations of the ghost of Syd Barrett.  In the end, of Barrett's songs only “Jugband Blues” was used, as well as “Remember A Day” and “Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun” (the later which also featured overdubs from Gilmour, making it the only Pink Floyd track to feature all five members).  But is there a way to present this album how it could have been, before Pink Floyd lost their crazy diamond? 

Side A of my reconstruction of a second Barrett-led Pink Floyd album begins with “Vegetable Man”.  Here I am using the mix found on the bootleg The Syd Barrett Tapes, as I think the new 2010 remix found on The Early Years sounds anachronistic and too modern, definetly not fitting with the rest of the album!  This is followed by the stereo mix of “Apples and Oranges” from The Piper at The Gates of Dawn remaster and “Remember A Day” from A Saucerful of Secrets.  Next is my original crossfade of take 5 of “Golden Hair” from The Madcap Laughs and “Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun” from A Saucerful; although “Golden Hair” was tracked during the first sessions for Barrett’s first solo album on May 28^th 1968, it still fits into the timeline of this reconstruction, but more importantly it sonically fits as Syd’s intro to “Set The Controls”.  Side A concludes with Syd’s (presumably) unfinished song “In The Beechwoods” from The Early Years. 

Side B begins with an abbreviated, nearly-12-minute edit of “John Latham” from The Early Years, effectively taking the place of “Saucerful” on the actual album.  Following is the stereo “Paintbox” from Relics and “Scream Thy Last Scream”, again taken from the bootleg The Barrett Tapes, avoiding the overly-polished 2010 mix from The Early Years.  The album ends just as Saucerful does, with “Jugband Blues”.  

 How does The Shape of Questions To Heaven compare with A Saucerful?  Quite bluntly, we can hear Syd's mind being undone, but at least in a focused and more cohesive manner than on A Madcap Laughs.  What was only suggested on "Jugband Blues" is fully explored on "Vegetable Man" and "Scream Thy Last Scream", songs Barrett wrote directly about his madness.  As for "In The Beechwoods", we can only imagine what the vocal melody and lyric would have been, but here it’s just an instrumental that closes Side A. With an interesting yet meandering improvisational piece to occupy half of side B, it's interesting to note that the other band members were already contributing supplemental material with "Paintbox", "Remember A Day" and "Set The Controls", as if they knew Syd was falling short.  Regardless, it is an enjoyable listen and an interesting alternative to A Saucerful of Secrets, and succeeds in creating an album that demonstrates just what Pink Floyd could have done with their lunatic on the grass.  

Sources used:
Pink Floyd – A Saucerful of Secrets (2011 remaster)

Pink Floyd – The Early Years (2016 box set)

Pink Floyd – The Piper at The Gates of Dawn (2007 Remaster)

Pink Floyd – Relics (1996 reissue)
Pink Floyd – The Syd Barrett Tapes (bootleg, 2008 Needledrop Records)
Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs (2015 Harvest remaster)

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

Pink Floyd - Themes From An Imaginary Western (1970)

Pink Floyd - Themes From An Imaginary Western

(a soniclovenoize re-imagining)

Side A:
 1.  Father’s Shout
 2.  Baby Lemonade
 3.  Wined and Dined
 4.  Rise and Shine
 5.  Gigolo Aunt
 6.  Mind Your Throats Please
 7.  Fat Old Sun

Side B:
 8.  Love Song
 9.  Wolfpack
10.  Dominoes
11.  Sunny Side Up
12.  Summer ‘68
13.  Effervescing Elephant
14.  Father’s Shout (Remergence)


This is the final installment of a trilogy of “re-imagined” albums that postulates “What if Syd Barrett hadn’t been fired from Pink Floyd?”   Themes From An Imaginary Western, a title derived from an early moniker of the song “Atom Heart Mother”, is the theoretical album that would have been released in 1970 by a Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd, following my other two re-imagined albums, 1969’s Vantage Point and 1968’s The Shape of Questions To Heaven.  The entire album has been crossfaded and edited into two continuous sides of music with the “Atom Heart Mother” theme bookending the album, an aesthetic first explored by Pink Floyd at this time and continued for most of their career; it seemed appropriate for this material.

Themes From An Imaginary Western uses Syd Barrett’s second and final solo album Barrett and Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother as source material, as both albums were recorded around the same time.  As we’ve already established, a Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd would have primarily been a singles-oriented band, as opposed to the largely improvisational, instrumental and experimental quartet Pink Floyd of the late 60s.  This was an easy ethos to mimic on my first two re-imaginings, but the task is much more difficult here, as Pink Floyd’s contributions from Atom Heart Mother began to solidify the artistic visions that saw the creation of the classic Pink Floyd albums throughout the decade. 

My solution was to design Themes From An Imaginary Western as a collection of the decidedly Pink Floydian Barrett solo tracks, all interconnected with instrumental passages from Atom Heart Mother.  This seemed to be an appropriate choice, as the more low-key, less schizophrenic and honestly slick early 70s pop-production of many of the Barrett tracks seemed to pair well with the sound of Atom Heart Mother, a sound Pink Floyd continued to refine.  After much sequencing work was done, we are left with two sides of music that find this Barrett-led Floyd attempting a new musical direction, maybe a response to the lack of obvious hit singles from their last two albums.  Themes From An Imaginary Western, while not immediately abrasive, galactic or even heavy, is at least cohesive in sound and design and introduces the following album, the band’s first foray without Syd Barret, Meddle. 

Beginning Side A, the main theme from “Atom Heart Mother” (subtitled “A Father’s Shout”, and is indicated as such here) was used to introduce the album and somehow fits perfectly crossfaded into “Baby Lemonade”, which in turn is hard edited into “Wined and Dined”.  An instrumental interlude in the form of “Rise and Shine” (from “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”) introduces “Gigolo Aunt”, which is crossfaded into a piece of the experimental section of “Atom Heart Mother” (subtitled “Mind Your Throats Please”) and finally into Gimour’s contribution to the album, the majestic side-closer “Fat Old Sun”.  Side B begins with the closest to a hit single on this album, “Love Song”, followed by the paranoiac “Wolfpack”.  “Dominoes” segues into another instrumental interlude culled from “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” (subtitled “Sunny Side Up”) which leads into the epic “Summer ‘68”.  Barrett’s last word with Pink Floyd becomes one of his most noteworthy songs, the child-like “Effervescing Elephant”, crossfaded into the grand finale of the album, the closing reprise of the “Atom Heart Mother” theme (subtitled “Remergence”). 

This unfortunately must be the final Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd album, as he simply ceased to make music after this point.  What few recordings we have from an attempted third solo album in 1974 are musically miserable and organizationally scant, unsuitable for any release, let alone an Album That Never Was.  It’s just as well, as Themes From An Imaginary Western is symbolic of the end of an era for this proposed Pink Floyd.  Listening, we can clearly hear a Syd Barrett simply running out of steam, the arrangements relying on typical post-psychedelic pop forays and arbitrary lyrical subject matter.  We can also hear the rest of the band beginning to surpass their once-leader, ready to tackle broader concepts paired with refined songwriting.  This is the farewell album that, in real life, Pink Floyd never got to make with Syd.  Instead, his ghost haunted Pink Floyd’s albums for some time.  With this trilogy complete, maybe Syd Barrett’s bones can finally rest. 

Sources used:
Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother (1994 MFSL remaster)
Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother (2011 EMI remaster)
Syd Barrett – Barrett (1994 Harvest remaster)


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