Pink Floyd
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

This debut represents the first milestone for Pink Floyd after three years of hard work.
Starting in '64 as a rhythm 'n' blues cover band, they released this album in August '67, which is the result of various experiments and experiences. Dominated by the musical and poetic personality of Syd Barrett, it is divided between tracks with the classic song form structure, enriched by various elements, and instrumental episodes with an experimental approach. The opening track is titled "Astronomy Domine", which begins with a soundscape featuring a Morse code signal, a voice through a megaphone announcing the names of various constellations, a distorted guitar keeping time, and a drum playing patterns on the toms. From these first seconds, the listener is transported into an otherworldly dimension, a dimension that characterizes much of the album. The track has a tonal structure, is strophic by nature, but lacks a chorus. All instruments take on a rhythmic character, thus being brought to the same level of importance, including the voice. The vocal part, in fact, consists of a 'flat' melody, on a single note on the fifth of the chord being sung, with a second voice doubling the first on the tonic of the same chord. The use of double-tracked vocals and the type of melody creates a cold and alienating atmosphere, foreshadowing what would be the future vocal style of Pink Floyd. Manipulated sounds, such as the diminished organ chord appearing in a soundscape pause, guitar trills that increase and decrease in volume, created during the mixing phase by live adjustments on the mixer (tones, volume).

The album continues with the second track, "Lucifer Sam", with an upbeat rhythm derived from surf rock. A chromatic passage between two chords in the verse and the title itself give the piece a sinister, luciferan air, when in reality the lyrics describe the movements of Syd Barrett's Siamese cat. The feedback and wha-wha patterns that seemingly evoke dark omens are actually descriptions of the movements of an innocuous cat. This is Syd Barrett's way of confusing the listener about the real message of a song. With the third track, "Matilda Mother", the overall atmosphere changes, taking on an almost fairy-tale connotation (not surprisingly, the lyrics talk about a mother telling her daughter a fairy tale). The structure is that of the song form, but altered by strophic inserts and modal sections. Between the first and second strophic parts, there is a sung interlude that disrupts the progress of the track due to the change in dynamics both vocally and rhythmically, while at the center of the track is a modal section where the bass executes a loop over a chord, and the organ improvises on Phrygian and harmonic minor scales, giving the piece an exotic character. At the end of the track, there's a coda, a three-four dance, where a chorus performs a melody on the mixolydian scale over a drone. Listening to this piece, you feel it was constructed by means of cuts and collages (you can almost hear the artificial attack of the last verse after the organ solo), using the studio as an actual instrument, a technique that is very common today but was still experimental at the time. The album continues with "Flaming", a song form with an almost whimsical melodic trend characterized by various overdubs of voices, onomatopoeic sounds, and effects.

"Pow R. Toc H." represents the first instrumental track of the album. Clearly jazz-influenced, with Wright's piano executing pentatonics and blue notes in quite a canonical manner. However, the track evolves into a tonal section, with a chromatic chord sequence accompanying animal-like verses (a first step towards “Animals”?). A mathematical drum pattern by Nick Mason introduces "Take Up The Stethoscope". Here too, like in “Astronomy..”, all instruments take on a rhythmic character. However, the track possesses a more pronounced blues component due to the voice call-and-response and the use of the minor pentatonic in the guitar licks. In the central improvisation, slide figures and organ-guitar call-and-responses dominate. A way for Pink Floyd to interpret rhythm 'n' blues in their own way.

"Interstellar Overdrive" is the second instrumental of the album and represents, in my opinion, the true innovation, in terms of harmonic-melodic physiognomy, of the album. Introduced by a chromatic sequence of guitar chords doubled by the organ, the track evolves into an approximately eight-minute free-form. Its physiognomy is neither tonal nor modal but uses the language of dissonance. The long central part has an almost mechanical aspect, where the organ plays dissonant chords, the guitar emits high-filtered notes in sequence, slide figures are obtained by sliding steel balls over the strings (one of Syd Barrett's favorite techniques), and chromatic passages. However, the free-form has its internal dynamics created by the drum that inserts classic tom patterns at certain points, which will decisively characterize Mason's style in future works (“Time”). The free-form, born from an improvisation manipulated later with overdubs and mixing touches, closes with a long drum roll reintroducing the initial loop, which closes the track.

After this sonic “storm”, there are in sequence three tracks that show the other face of this album, the less electric side, more tied to folk music and which will characterize Syd Barrett's albeit brief solo production: "The Gnome", "Chapter 24", and "Scarecrow". In the first, Syd Barrett takes on the role of storyteller, in a song with an almost childish melody accompanied by only acoustic guitar and a percussive sound, while a xylophone executes melodic figures. "Chapter 24" has a more pastoral melodic connotation due to the use of gong bells and the organ counterpointing the vocal line in a bagpipe-like register. Of a folk-pastoral nature is the melodic line of "Scarecrow", on the mixolydian scale, characterized by a vocal line composed of multiple modules with different metrics, typical of certain traditional music. This is Pink Floyd's way of detaching from the African-American blues tradition. The last track of the album is titled "Bike", a song form with an upbeat rhythm where effects like the phaser applied to the snare drum, when it gives time at the beginning of each bar, and various noises evidently imitating those of a bicycle appear. Curiously, the last measure is a slowed metronome, where Roger Waters performs the second voice, the future singer of the group. The outro of the track is composed of clock alarms and bizarre laughter with a looping effect overlapping.

This debut album shows a band still in the experimental phase, with the desire to formally detach from canonical structures, not only by expanding their tracks with drone improvisations but by pushing this technique to the extreme with the use of dissonance ("Interstellar Overdrive"); one step further, therefore, compared to bands like the Beatles, Yardbirds, or Rolling Stones, in the evolution of pop music as a detachment from song form.