THE EARLY YEARS 1971 REVERBER/ATION

We're now on Volume 5 of "The Early Years" boxsets, the year under the microscope is 1971. This was the year "Meddle" was released, and the band's studio output just keeps getting better. Of course, "Meddle" was the album that is famous for containing the very long track "Echoes", but also had 5 other tracks besides that one. This volume, however, is somewhat lacking on quantity for this box set and only has one CD and one DVD/Blu-ray disc.

CD

When the band recorded "Echoes", it all began with a very large series of improvisational sessions, which the band named "Nothing, Parts 1 ? 24". These rather lengthy parts were finally whittled down to the 23 minute track we are all familiar with. However, the sessions were floating around in bootleg paradise for many years. The first track on the CD is part of those sessions, titled "Nothing, Part 14". It begins with the all too familiar "pinging" sound, but soon gets enveloped in Wright's synth layers and the repeating bass helps it all pick up steam as Mason comes in with tinkling cymbals. A long, building crescendo pretty much makes up the track.

The rest of the CD comes from a BBC radio session recorded on September 30. The 4 tracks from this session are all quite long, even the next track, "Fat Old Sun" from "Atom Heart Mother" album in a long 15 minute version! John Peel's announcements are intact with the crowd noises. Many will be interested in how this track can be stretched out for 15 minutes. Well, the beginning is a lovely rendition of it as we know it with Gilmour singing the lyrics and some nice organ leads the instrumental backing, all like you would expect, more or less, but with a bit more confidence in its delivery. Just before the 5 minute mark, Gilmour delivers a great guitar solo with the band coming along solidly behind him. This all eventually calms until there is nothing left but organ and soft guitar, but then Waters and Mason join back in and move through a nice improvisational section that stays coherent, with everyone contributing, one of the best recorded jam sessions for the band without going too far into the stratosphere of experimentalist noise, but staying quite musical all through it, and creating different atmospheres all the while. The instrumental section continues until just before 13 minutes, signaled by a sudden modal change, and Gilmour sings the last verse carrying it to the end. Very nice.

Next is the performance of "One of These Days", again extended, but only to 7 minutes this time. This, of course, also comes from the "Meddle" album. The sound is a lot more brash than the original studio version, but pretty much follows the same formula with Waters' hypnotizing and sawing bass line and Gilmour's wild guitar antics. After the long extended heavier section, we get a 10 minute version of "Embryo". It's always interesting how this song ended up being a staple for their early shows even though it never ended up on a non-collection album. When this song was in it's embryotic state, it was only available as a demo track, but with the live performances that we have been able to hear it transformed into a full-fledged and mature track. This version has longer instrumental sections that spread out the different verses over a longer period of time. The last half of this performance goes into a nice fusion style sound where they add in some jazz styling. The band also liked to mess around with this song, and it always seemed to end up sounding different every time, at least during the instrumental breaks. I guess where less people were familiar with it, they must have felt they could take more liberties in its various performances. Anyway, each time, it is great to hear how it has developed.

The last track is a 26 minute performance of "Echoes". The vocals are done by both Gilmour and Wright. The structured sections of this song are pretty much faithful to the original, but with a bit more of a heavy edge to the live performance. It's in the more improvisational sections that you will hear a big difference in the way it sounds, especially in the experimental, ambient areas, with more guitar effects surrounding Wright's pings. It is also interesting how they make the last part of Part 1 turn a bit funkier, and then the atmospheric part at the beginning of the second part is even eeirier than the original.

Even though there are only the 5 tracks on this CD, it still manages to clock in at around 66 minutes. The quantity might be small, but the quality is excellent. 5 stars.

DVD/Blu-ray

It is interesting that the material on the video disc is made up of interviews and material (mostly) from previous years. It begins with a German TV "Aspekte" interview and with excerpts from "Atom Heart Mother" (track 1, performed in Hamburg, Germany on Feb 25) and "A Saucerful of Secrets" (track 2, performed in Offenbach, Germany on Feb 26). The excerpt from AHM is just a short part from the climactic ending with the choir, orchestra and band playing. Roger is interviewed while flying in a commercial jet and talks about the song and why they did it. The announcer then talks about their abstract music. There are some snippets of them performing ASoS and then more interviews with Rick, Nick and Roger plus comments from Geoffrey Mitchell, orchestra conductor.

Next are two live performances from the French TV show "Cinq Grands Sur la Deux" in France recorded on June 15th. The performances are in a cathedral, which is cool. The first is 12 minutes of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". It's a pretty typical performance, but at least the camera work is good, scanning around the band and not just sitting on one performer. After viewing a well-dressed and groomed audience, there is a nice performance of "Cymbaline".

There is another extract of the performance of "Atom Heart Mother" with brass and choir conducted by Jeffrey Mitchel at "Musikforum Ossiachersee" in Ossiach, Austria on July 1. The excerpt is only 3 minutes of the performance with the choir and band, but you just get into it and it's over. There is then a performance of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" followed by an interview done on ABC TV (Australia) at the "Get to Know" Randwich Race Course in Sydney Australia on August 15. The performance is shown, however, the version of the song is from the "Ummagumma" album, dubbed in to the video. It is only an excerpt from that however, but the interview is interesting enough, with the whole band and the female interviewer stays off camera. The nice thing is the interview allows all members of the band to converse and it plays for about 4 minutes or so, so it is insightful in regards to where the band was at the time.

There is a portion of an UK documentary called "24 Hours - Bootleg Records" which has an interview with PF's manager Steve O'Rourke and shows the band working on "Echoes". They talk about his attitude about bootlegs and show the band's reaction upon hearing part of a bootleg recording. Then there is another, fascinating interview with Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell regarding record cover designs for PF's albums. Following this is an animated video created by Ian Emes for "One of These Days".

There is another section from the Ossiach, Austria documentary about "Atom Heart Mother" with the narration in German and various clips of people, PF fans, and the band preparing and playing the song along with the choir and orchestra, this time in color and also a much longer clip. Then we finally get a full performance of "Atom Heart Mother" on the next track, this time recorded at the 1971 Hakone Aphrodite Open Air Festival in Hakone, Japan in August. This is a 15 minute video of the band only version that isn't done very well, showing clips of the band and etc. The music itself may or may not be the recording from the venue, but we definitely are not watching a performance of the actual audio. It's all of rather questionable quality.

The final item on the video disc is the audio only presentation of "Echoes" in the original 4.0 Quad mix which sounds even better on Quadrophonic or surround sound.

The material on this disc is probably only going to be interesting to the hard-core PF geeks. It's all interesting and a nice variety of material, but it almost seems they were trying to fill a disc with material. 3 stars.

What's Missing?

There is only one difference between the single volume box set and the full box set that has everything from every volume in this series. That is found on the 7th volume of the totally inclusive boxset which is a 5 minute performance made on September 30 for the BBC of a track titled simply "Blues". That's it.

In Conclusion

Overall, except for the CD, this boxset is quite a disappointment. It is lacking is substance and quantity and the only thing you have to make up for it is the excellent tracks on the CD, even though there are only 5 tracks, but they are very long. Even though this is a time when the band's ingenuity and creativity was quickly growing, and the music of this time was some of their best, the boxset itself is lacking. 3 stars overall.