Echoes: a Floydian Odyssey into blissfulnesssteemCreated with Sketch.

in #music6 years ago

2001

A well known still from the 2001, A Space Odyssey movie by Stanley Kubrick.

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How much time do you spend listening to music each day?

Wait! Before answering, let me rephrase what I had in mind: how much time do you spend listening to music each day, and only doing that?

My own answer to this question would be: basically never. Like many people, I guess, I listen to music on the way to work, at work when I want to be cut from distractions and churn out code (I am a software dev), and on the evening when I browse the net. That's about it.
Until very recently though when I managed to listen to a song I know well, and that is quite long, clocking at a little bit more than 25 minutes... Yes, 25, not a typo!
As you might expect, this is not exactly the kind of song that can be heard on mainstream radio. I know the title of the post gives the name of the song away... But, yes, it is Echoes by Pink Floyd.

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So, I rarely listen (as intensely, shall we say) to music, but this past weekend I did that just for this amazing and one-of-a kind tune. I am a huge fan of Pink Floyd's music, and as Michael Jackson, those albums never leave my smartphone. Echoes was originally written in 1971 (nearly ten years before I was born!), and included in the Meddle album. I have hard times labeling it a "song" in fact as it definitely sounds like a composition of different songs perfectly blending into a shiny diamond (pun intended, for Pink Floyd connoisseurs).

Since its conception, it has been adapted into a shorter version (16:30 in the Echoes Best Of) and has been played many times by the remaining members of Pink Floyd. The song had been dropped from live performances after 1987 as the band was reportedly not happy with the results. But in 2006, on the On an Island tour, David Gilmour chose to bring it back and close the shows with it. And what an incredible interpretation it is/was.

So, here I am, writing some code and listening to a Youtube Pink Floyd mix when I suddenly hear claps and whistles, and a few seconds later... the famous piano note resembling a sonar ping that starts the song.

I open up the tab playing Youtube, as I can't seem to recognize this live version and see this:


Echoes, as played by David Gilmour and Richard Wright, in Gdańsk Shipyard in front of an audience of 50,000 people.

Somehow, I never saw this version before. And it makes sense as I own the On An Island studio album, comprising only new songs, but I had never seen the live performance before.
Richard Wright died in 2008, and since David Gilmour said in an interview to Rolling Stone that he could not play it with someone else, it would effectively mean this was the last time Echoes was interpreted live by a member of Pink Floyd.

There is something special in this version. I don't have the prose, nor the musical knowledge to pinpoint exactly what is so pleasing to my ears. It seems that time just flies when I am listening to this song and every time they to get to the last part, I get a shiver, both because I know it is soon over, and also because it is magnificently interpreted. And this is what happened on that first listen, it just grabbed me and I stopped paying attention to what I was doing, closed my eyes and listened until the end.

And if you have only a few minutes to spare, you could start listening at the 21:06 mark. The entire band plays, but the action is centered around David Gilmour and Richard Wright. They play their parts to absolute perfection (at least, it feels like to me), guitar echoing the piano, piano echoing the guitar, then together, then apart again. The resulting sound is pure bliss.
You have to see the video: there are 50000 people listening, and it sounds like everybody just stopped breathing. My guess is that they must have had a glimpse of heaven.

As I just said, if you don't have 30 minute, please just listen to the last four minutes.

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2001spaceodyssey-logo-700x282.jpg

Picture found here

Now, if you are still reading this, you might start wondering: that's all good and well, but why has the guy put a still from the 2001, A Space Odyssey movie above? Was that a click bait?No, it was not, I am getting to the connection!

You see, Echoes came out 3 years after the movie. But there is a rumor it was constructed to match the movie ending. Always denied by Pink Floyd members, that rumor has however solid grounds as it indeed synchronizes well with the last segment of the movie, Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Additionally, Roger Waters is often cited as saying his biggest regret was not being to participate in Kubrick's movie soundtrack.

Now, how well does it synchronize? It's near perfect! And thanks to the power of Internet, Youtube, and the efforts of some good Samaritans you can now see and hear it by yourself:

The song and video synchronization can be divided into 4 parts.

The first part is the instrumental intro, the singing and is matches with planets and ray of lights moving around, and it ends with an eye blinking three times, around 7:20.
The second part is the entirety of David Gilmour's solo; it is synchronized to the protagonist discovering the various aspects of the cosmos, and it also ends with an eye that stops blinking.
The third part is the seagull part, taking its name from the fact that the seagull sound had been obtained with a wah plugged the wrong way. It starts with blinking eyes, around 11:25 and matches the hero flying over some strangely colored planets.
The final part, starting at 15:02, gets back to the original theme and matches Bowman being trained by the artifact to become a new kind of being. This is most probably where you'll see the most how well it synchronizes, with camera switches perfectly matching change in tempo or instruments (as an example, see 19:23 right before Bowman enters the room).

Random occurrences? Coincidences? You can judge for yourself...

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I don't think Pink Floyd connoisseurs would have found anything new in what I posted here, but I hope I got non-fans interested enough to check out one or more versions of this song, and maybe other songs too!

If you're still curious about Echoes, you can also check the live performance in Pompeii, Italy. It was shot in 1972, it's a bit psychedelic and it definitely has that 70's vibe! It's in two parts, part 1 and part 2 and somehow hasn't yet been removed by Youtube.

Long live Pink Floyd... and good Sci-Fi movies! 🚀

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Echoes is epic and their turning point in my opinion. It took me far too long to discover it though.

Funny, me too. I think it took me 3 years or more, from the moment I started carefully listening to Pink Floyd to the moment where the Echoes best of was released, which made me discover the song. Somehow, I rarely listened to Meddle and never got to the Echoes part until that point. It changed after that :-)

For me Echoes is thr track on Meddle. One of these Days is good, then we have Seamus.. oh dear..

Seamus may be the reason I rarely/never got to Echoes ;-) But you're right, One of these Days is a good one too.

Pretty epic stuff. It certainly takes you on a journey. Beautifully pleasing to the ears 👌

"Epic" is indeed the word that can describe this song! Thanks for the support Jessica :-)

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