THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

Progarchives is a peculiar site. Quite a few reviewers seem so enamoured of Pink Floyd's classic 1970s albums (particularly MOON and WISH) that they don't know how to deal with THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN, which is a totally different kettle of fish. When people rate ANIMALS (or the dreadful THE WALL) higher than this astonishing debut, something must be dreadfully wrong...

THE PIPER doesn't offer you sedate, organ-led symphonic suites or misanthropic rock songs with fabulously bombastic guitar solos. It's an all-out attack on the senses. It's supposed to make you see VISIONS, for goodness' sake! Simply put, it's one of the most original British albums of the 1960s. Naive, childlike pop songs are combined with wonderfully unsettling sonic experiments.

Between the two World Wars, Dadaists and Futurists (operating mainly in Paris, Berlin, Moscow and New York) shocked the world with chaotic, overwhelmingly unmelodious musical experiments. They reached hardly more than a handful of listeners. In the 1960s, however, Pink Floyd gave the world "Pow R Toc H", "Interstellar Overdrive" and other outrageous compositions, which they would go on to sell to millions.The importance of such as revolution is hard to overstate. The Floyd put their stamp on most of the Space Rock and Krautrock bands you'll find on this site, and they also had considerable influence on avant-garde jazz. Jan Garbarek and Terje Rypdal's brilliant early albums for ECM are full of Floydean echoes.

At the time of writing, a new 2-disc edition of THE PIPER has been announced, which will include, among other things, two of Syd Barrett's best early songs, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play". Since the original album version of THE PIPER is slightly less than 42 minutes, this kind of treatment was long, long overdue. You can always count on EMI for overcharging the listener for relatively small amounts of music - witness the way they're still trying to sell us the Beatles...