The Endless River

The Endless River
Pink Floyd studio album
Publication (s)	November 7, 2014
Label (s)	Parlophone , Columbia
Format (s)	CD , LP
Genre (s)	Progressive rock
Title (number)	18th
running time	52:46
occupation	David Gilmour - guitar , vocals , keyboards and programming Nick Mason - drums and percussion Richard Wright - keyboard Guy Pratt - bass Bob Ezrin - bass Jon Carin - keyboard Damon Iddins - keyboard Gilad Atzmon - saxophone Durga McBroom - backing vocals Louise Clare Marshal - backing vocals Sarah Brown - backing vocals Stephen Hawking - Digital Voice
production	David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera , Martin Glover and Andy Jackson
Studio (s)	u. a. Abbey Road Studios , Britannia Row Studios , Astoria Houseboat
chronology The Bell Division The Endless River -

The Endless River is the 15th and final studio album by the British rock band Pink Floyd . It was released on November 7, 2014.

For the album, the remaining band members David Gilmour and Nick Mason revised recordings that had not been used for the 1994 album The Division Bell . The Endless River is dedicated to the keyboardist and co-founder of the band Richard Wright , who died in 2008 . Roger Waters , with whom Gilmour, Wright and Mason performed again in 2005, did not take part in the album.

Gilmour's houseboat Astoria , on which parts of the album were recorded

The street front of the Olympic Studio , where most of the demo recordings for The Division Bell were made.

Mason and Gilmour in 2011 at a Roger Waters The Wall concert in London.

Richard Wright at one of his last concerts (2006).

Emergence

Gilmour, Mason and Wright recorded about 65 musical ideas together at Britannia Row Studios in January 1993 . However, only a small portion of it was actually used for The Division Bell . At times it was planned to add another album with instrumental ambient pieces (working title: The Big Spliff ) to the album , but this was discarded again. From this material and other unpublished recordings, some of which go back to 1968, Gilmour and Mason developed The Endless River from 2012 with Phil Manzanera and other producers . Gilmour and Mason confirmed that only a small part of The Big Spliff (compiled by Andy Jackson) was ultimately used for the album.

The album's title refers to the penultimate line of High Hopes , the final track on The Division Bell :

"The water flowing / The endless river / Forever and ever."

Gilmour told the LA Times the following about the admission process:

“Over the past year we've added new tracks, re-recorded others, and generally used modern studio technology to make a Pink Floyd album for the 21st century. Now that Rick dies, and with it the chance to ever record with him again, it feels right to make these reviewed and revised recordings available as part of our repertoire. "

Cover

For the cover of the album, Pink Floyd could no longer fall back on their longtime designer Storm Thorgerson († 2013). His former Hipgnosis colleague Aubrey Powell used a design by Ahmed Emad Eldin as the basis for the front cover. The work was supported by the design company Stylorouge. The cover sparked divided reactions from the public, Arno Frank called it an "exquisite hideousness" on Spiegel Online .

Pink Floyd had already featured a man in a rowboat ("Boatman") graphically on the record cover in 1987 for A Momentary Lapse of Reason and 1994 for The Division Bell .

promotion

Before the tabloid The Sun was able to announce the album on July 6, 2014 based on information from a production associate, Gilmour's wife Polly Samson announced the title and a planned release date for October 2014 via Twitter. Both details were missing from Dan Wooton's article the next day.

On September 22, 2014, the album was officially announced by the band and the record company for November 2014. It was subsequently advertised extensively in London, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Milan, New York and Sydney. There shouldn't be a tour for the album because, according to Gilmour, it would be "impossible" without Wright.

A music video for Louder than Words was released on the band's YouTube channel when the album went on sale . The video focuses on the drying up of the Aral Sea . Large parts of the video were shot by the director Po Powell on the almost dry Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan . Powell contrasts the seemingly surreal landscapes with the hopelessness of a family whose grandfather still owned his own ship , which is now lying as a decaying wreck on the salty seabed.

reception

The album has already been presented to selected journalists in advance, including in London, Berlin and Cologne. The reactions were mostly positive, some listeners said they saw reminiscences of earlier works by the band. Christoph Henrichs wrote a review for the Handelsblatt that contains 20 allusions to earlier lyrics by the band. Also Hartmut Rosa says in his review for Time this aspect ( let the listener hear his own past ) and the album is called a remarkable achievement and a worthy late work .

The review website Metacritic calculated a Metascore of 60 shortly after the album was released, based on 18 reviews from English-language media. Negative reviews from The Independent and the Los Angeles Times flowed in as well as positive reviews from Record Collector , Billboard and The Observer . The response in the German-speaking media was similarly mixed.

Economic success

The most pre-ordered the endless river still suppressed a week before its release, the album Four of One Direction from first place on Amazon UK and ended up with 139,351 sales, the third highest sales figure in 2014, immediately topped the British album charts . On November 27, 2014, the vinyl edition sold a total of 6,000 copies, making it the UK's most successful vinyl release in 2014 and the fastest-selling vinyl record since 1997.

Track list

1. Things Left Unsaid (David Gilmour, Richard Wright) 4:27
2. It's What We Do (Gilmour, Wright) 6:18
3. Ebb and Flow (Gilmour, Wright) 1:56
4. Sum (Gilmour, Nick Mason, Wright) 4:49
5. Skins (Gilmour, Mason, Wright) 2:38
6. Unsung (Wright) 1:08
7. Anisina (Gilmour) 3:17
8. The Lost Art of Conversation (Wright) 1:43
9. On Noodle Street (Gilmour, Wright) 1:43
10. Night Light (Gilmour, Wright) 1:43
11. Allons-y (1) (Gilmour) 1:58
12. Autumn '68 (Wright) 1:36
13. Allons-y (2) (Gilmour) 1:33
14. Talkin 'Hawkin' (Gilmour, Wright) 3:30
15. Calling (Gilmour, Anthony Moore) 3:38
16. Eyes to Pearls (Gilmour) 1:52
17. Surfacing (Gilmour) 2:47
18. Louder than Words (Gilmour, Polly Samson) 6:37

Deluxe Edition bonus material

1. TBS9
2. TBS14
3. Nervana
4. Anisina (video)
5. Untitled (video)
6. Evrika (A) (video)
7. Nervana (video)
8. Allons-y (video)
9. Evrika (B) (video)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nick Mason: Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd. Phoenix 2005. ISBN 0-7538-1906-6 . P. 315.
2. ↑ ^{a b} The Endless River - The full 9min EPK on YouTube , November 3, 2014.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Anja Kleinelanghorst: "The Endless River": A warm farewell from Pink Floyd n-tv.de, October 28, 2014.
4. ↑ Daryl Easlea: The Return of the Parts of Something: The Making of the endless river. In: Prog , October 2014. pp. 38–45.
5. ↑ Alex Young: Pink Floyd reveals details of the new album, The Endless River . September 22, 2014. Retrieved September 22, 2014.
6. ↑ Randall Roberts: Pink Floyd offers release date, cover art for album 'The Endless River' . Tribune Publishing . September 22, 2014. Retrieved September 22, 2014.
7. ↑ Mohamed Khairat: Egyptian teenager designs Pink Floyd's new album cover. egyptianstreets.com, September 23, 2014.
8. ↑ Arno Frank: Cover of the new Pink Floyd album: Exquisite horror. spiegel.de, September 24, 2014.
9. ↑ Alexander Gorkow: New album from "Pink Floyd": In a boat above the clouds. Sueddeutsche.de, September 24, 2014.
10. ↑ Dan Wooton: Pink Floyd to release new album In: The Sun , July 6, 2014.
11. ^ David Gilmour: There's No Room in My Life for Pink Floyd . October 29, 2014. Retrieved November 9, 2014.
12. ↑ David Gilmour's new album "Coming Along Very Well ..." in 2015 . October 29, 2014. Retrieved November 9, 2014.
13. ↑ Louder than Words on YouTube , November 7, 2014.
14. ^ Pink Floyd - Louder Than Words promo video. On: brain-damage.co.uk, November 11, 2014.
15. ↑ Louder Than Words. Franz Hendricks, October 11, 2014, accessed November 7, 2014 . 
16. ^ At the "The Endless River" session in London. on laut.de , October 18, 2014.
17. ↑ In honor of the dead keyboardist. In: Tages-Anzeiger , October 17, 2014.
18. ↑ Christoph Henrichs: That is the end. In: Handelsblatt , October 17, 2014.
19. ↑ Hartmut Rosa : Louder than words , in: Die Zeit, No. 45, p. 46, October 30, 2014
20. ^ Critic Reviews for The Endless River. On: Metacritic (as of November 17, 2014).
21. ↑ Arjun Kharpal: Pink Floyd album becomes most pre-ordered on Amazon . cnbc. November 10, 2014. Retrieved November 14, 2014.
22. ↑ Liv Moss: Pink Floyd on track for first Number 1 album in nearly 20 years! . The Official Charts Company. November 5, 2014. Retrieved November 5, 2014.
23. ↑ Pink Floyd score first Number 1 album in nearly 20 years! . November 17, 2014. Archived from the original on December 25, 2014. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
24. ↑ Dave Lee: Vinyl record sales hit 18-year high . November 27, 2014. Retrieved November 27, 2014.

Web links

• The Endless River on the official homepage (with audio samples).
• Andy Greene: David Gilmour: 'There's No Room in My Life for Pink Floyd.' In: Rolling Stone , October 29, 2014.
• Andy Greene: Nick Mason: 'I'm Not Entirely Sure Pink Floyd Is Over.' In: Rolling Stone , October 31, 2014.