Pink Floyd
Meddle

THE REVIEW

After the release of Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd were under pressure to release a worthy follow-up to the previous album.
The initial sessions focused on the project of recording an entire album without musical instruments; the idea was to use kitchen utensils, bottles, cutlery, glasses, lampshades, pieces of sawn wood. Realizing the impossibility of completing such a project, they redirected their efforts to a 20-minute track provisionally titled "Nothing – Parts 1 to 24". Pink Floyd attempted a new approach, recording the basic tapes one at a time, without listening to each other. "At the end of January (1971), we listened to what we had recorded and found ourselves with thirty-six different fragments, which sometimes related to each other, sometimes not," recalls Gilmour. Using material also from previous sessions, they tried it live in April as "Return Of The Son of Nothing". The title remained that way for several months until the track was included in MEDDLE, occupying an entire side, with the definitive name of "Echoes".

Considered by many to be the true masterpiece of Pink Floyd, "Echoes" is a suite of more than twenty minutes, and on its own would be enough to elevate Meddle to the level of a masterpiece. Musically well-constructed, with precise architectures that develop in a crescendo, it contains within it a "song" in two parts separated by an oasis of sounds. Of the period between Barrett's departure and the release of The Dark Side Of The Moon, this is probably the most representative track, as well as the best in terms of sound, lyrics, and interpretation. The highest point reached by "those" Pink Floyd, and also the last real suite they created.

The initial note that opens and closes the track was carefully studied after being born by chance from the piano being fed into a Binson eco unit. And there are some refinements, like this one mentioned by Gilmour: "Consider the final chorus, the infinite background chorus. There are musical effects through which a melody seems to continue... like in Escher's drawings, where the stairs go up, up, and never reach anywhere. Well, there is a melody that continues to be played, again and again, and at the same time it rises to higher frequencies, almost imperceptibly, and reaches nowhere. So is the Echoes chorus at the end".
A great live success, being one of the most requested and, in more recent concerts, one of the most missed.

The other track from Meddle that became a classic is "One Of These Days", an instrumental where a heavily effected and dubbed bass is the real protagonist. Mason's voice, filtered to become unrecognizable, states "one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces". Then a slide style guitar starts with distortion, and it's a delightful frenzy of sounds with a driving rhythm.
It's noteworthy that in Italy the track has been the historic theme song of the sports program Dribbling for years.

The rest of the album, as with Atom Heart Mother, consists of pleasant songs that balance out the expanded atmospheres of the suites. Excellent "Fearless", a piece we could define as country rock, with a good feel, a desolate lyric accompanied by a chorus of football fans singing the anthem "We'll Never Walk Alone". "A Pillow of Wind" is a splendid acoustic piece, proof of the excellent Waters/Gilmour partnership. "San Tropez" is a kind of jazz cocktail by Wright, the most refined and "classic" in the compositions of the period.
At the close of the first side, a fun track born from an improvisation in the studio featuring a dog was included. Waters: "Dave took care of Seamus while the owner was in the USA, and he brought him with him to the studio. One day he said: 'I want to show you something, this dog sings'. He pulled out a harmonica and started playing it, and suddenly the dog started barking. So we involved him in a little 12-bar track".

The cover, always by Hypgnosis, depicts an ear immersed in water. Notably, inside is the appearance of a photo of the group, which would be the last until the release of A Momentary Lapse of Reason. A detail that surely contributed to amplifying the aura of mystery and fascination that characterized Pink Floyd for many years.