A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON

A damn sight better than the dreary 'The Final Cut', though that's not saying much at all, the first post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd release would see the remaining members - guitarist-and-vocalist David Gilmour and Drummer Nick Mason - pull out all the stops in an attempt to create a new sound for the new decade. Including an army of session musicians(former Keyboardist Richard Wright and Vanilla Fudge sticksman Carmine Appice just two of the many listed on the album's lengthy list of credits) an arsenal of brand-spanking-new technology and a lighter, rock-pop veneer, 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' - the first Floyd studio product in almost six years - was very much a David Gilmour record produced under the lucrative Pink Floyd banner. The album would, predictably, shift tens of millions of copies across the globe, yet it's all a far cry from the outfit's 1970s peak. The large, Roger Waters-shaped hole is a factor, the absence of the bassist's acerbic lyrics and expansive song-writing that proved so important to such classic albums as 'Wish You Were Here', 'Animals' and 'The Wall' rendering much of the material rather lightweight by comparison, yet the real problem here is the fact that this is very much a product of it's time, the year 1987. Listened to with 21st century ears it all sounds very dated, with slick synthesizers, cavernous, gated-reverb drums and an earnest, over-polished production clouding the rather restrained individual tracks, though the strident, upbeat melodies of 'Learning To Fly'(a song that is, literally, about learning to fly aeroplanes) and the hazy, instrumental jazz-rock of 'Terminal Frost' do provide brief flickers of the group's old creative power. Of all the Floyd studio albums this is probably the weakest - 1994's 'The Division Bell' would provide a part-return to form - though truth be told expecting a fragmenting group from a different musical era to re-capture past glories is probably asking far too much - even for an outfit as popular as Pink Floyd. One for die-hard fans and completionists, this is an album featuring a streamlined pop-rock sound completely at odds with the group's classic, genre- defining sound of yore.

STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON,