Pink Floyd
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Warning: the following review was written spontaneously by the author to denote and connote an album that is almost impossible to describe, being something “that he can’t explain.” The author apologizes in advance for any clichés or superficiality in certain areas. Lastly, the author wishes you a good reading.

The first purely psychedelic album conceived by an English band: space travels in sound like "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive"; psychedelic folk ballads like "Flaming", "The Gnome", and "The Scarecrow" which, even though they are short sketches, are full of suggestions, rich in meaning; "Lucifer Sam" with surf rock influences; "Matilda Mother" begins with a liturgical atmosphere along which unfolds a fairy-tale-like story told by the mother to the child; "Pow R Toc H", a sound experiment between the comic and the tragic, between the entertaining and the haunting, in which the two Rogers (Roger Waters and Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett) engage in schizoid, demented vocalizations, then give way to Wright's piano in a perfect classical style, reminiscent of detective films; "Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk" is a perfect synthesis of what the band does best: a three-minute jam where everything is thrown in, with Waters' first lyrics as well.

And finally "Chapter 24" and "Bike". Both very haunting; in the first, as already mentioned for "Matilda Mother", there is a liturgical, spiritual air, evoking the East, as the text is inspired by the I Ching. Perhaps the most haunting in the album. "Bike" is the weirdest, most alienated, and alienating piece that respects the song form. It too lasts only three minutes, but in those three minutes, for heaven's sake! You witness something never heard before. A text that seems stupid, banal, childish regardless, but which actually hides a true philosophy, a naïve and primitive idea of exchange between a boy and a girl. The boy feels he needs the girl in question, saying she is "the kind of girl who fits in his (his) world" and to win her over he promises her anything, except his bike, because he borrowed it. Genuine unconventional love song. Who the hell else but Syd Barrett would have thought to write, dedicate such a love song to a girl? Not to mention the music. Two sections alternate: the first presents the text, sung on an apparently jolly base, but with a haunting undertone. In the second section, the jolly element is completely lost because your ears encounter a cacophony of sounds, including clocks, announced at the end of the text by Syd, and duck sounds made by human voices.

A word for "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn": insane! I would add another similar: mad! “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” is indeed the craziest album, alongside “The Marble Index” by Nico, that I have ever heard.

10/10

PS. Only 10/10???