In October 2023, Roger Waters took to the London Palladium’s stage to perform his Redux version of Pink Floyd’s epochal, career-defining album The Dark Side Of The Moon. He’s become an increasingly outspoken and controversial figure, and many Floyd fans have looked on with dismay as they feel he threatens to trash his former band’s reputation by association. Similarly, his re-recording of TDSOTM has been received by some as just a button-pushing exercise in his ongoing battle with David Gilmour.
And yet this Redux version is far from an act of cultural vandalism. It may be self-indulgent in places – a man at odds with the world augmenting a sacred text with additional spoken words – but it’s an interesting and often affecting take.
It’s here reissued alongside a recording from the Palladium, with both versions presented on gold vinyl, CD and Blu-ray, including Dolby Atmos and 96/24 Audio mixes. The set also includes 10” singles of Breathe, Time, Money and Us And Them with etched B-sides, a track-by-track Waters video interview, and a 40-page book of photos.
Fifty years after the original’s release, TDSOTM Redux is like a ghostly but persistent afterimage – yet while the studio version is sometimes subdued to the point of torpor, the Palladium recording sees the piece come to life: amid the passages of sepulchral gloom, there are moments of real beauty as well.
Time is retains a subtle power, with haunting theremin and elegant cellos where Gilmour’s grandstanding solo used to be
One such moment occurs early on, where the chiming but icy guitars of Breathe are tempered by a lonely swirl of theremin, indicative of a sonic presentation that’s lusher and more expansive in its live setting. Waters delivers his vocals in a gravelly baritone, and sometimes struggles to nail the melody, but he gets strong support from his backing singers onstage.
The stripped-down electronics of On The Run act as effective backing for Waters’ “standard bullshit fight with evil” anxiety dream before concluding that “the voice of reason” is the only thing that can save us. Time is another of TDSOTM’s ‘big’ songs; it’s reduced in volume but retains a subtle power, with haunting theremin and elegant cellos where Gilmour’s grandstanding solo used to be.
Mournful Moog and low-key backing vocals turn The Great Gig In The Sky into a soft lamentation befitting Waters’ moving monologue about the death of a friend. And Money has the wryly comical gait of a cowboy’s horse plodding into town – mocking strings swoop and dive; and not for the first time the growling resonance of Waters’ voice recalls Leonard Cohen.
These songs may sound in their dotage, Waters seems to be saying, but better that than being preserved in aspic.
The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux: Super Deluxe Box set is on sale now via Cooking Vinyl.
