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The first long-playing record by Pink Floyd sees the light under the auspices of the most mercurial talent of post-beat English music: Syd Barrett. An ungrammatical guitarist and singer, a composer ahead of his time, he radicalized together with Pink Floyd those psychedelic aromas that England, straddling two musically rich decades, proposed.
Kinks, Donovan, Rolling Stones baptized the psychedelic spirit mostly through aesthetic poses and bizarre arrangements, Pink Floyd instead codified the grammar of European popular music through the experiences of the new Californian trends, inspiring them in turn. The PATGOD is the least emblematic 33 rpm of Pink Floyd’s discographic journey. An unresolved, unsteady work that dazzles with the inspiration of the bandleader, the three-dimensionality of Waters' bass, the expertise of Wright - devil and holy water at the organ and piano - and the rainforest primitivism of the titanic Mason.
The narcotic exile of the young guitarist almost entirely emptied them of their creative urgency. During the '70s they were reduced, except for a small handful of LPs, to professional executors of lounge psychedelia.
"Astronomy Domine" the opening track, is all a pulsating of intergalactic frequencies and guitar slashes. The bass produces notes that seem to want to remain suspended and, along with a solemn drumming, place the listener in a mass of heretical liturgy. The chorus is introduced to us by a vaudeville guitar that, doffing its hat, raises the curtain on an alien song. This is modern psychedelia, because it is so in its substance.
A 1950s noir atmosphere gravitates over the riff of "Lucifer Sam". The attentive listener perceives the piece as a unicum in which musical fragments, paradoxically almost independent, are circularly connected through a process of barely hinted pauses. In its sonic evilness, it is a song that makes one uncomfortable, ‘…that cat has something I can’t explain. It terrifies the implication that well describes the Polanski-like spirit of the piece.
The third composition fully reflects Barrett's narrative and musicality, that solipsism of a troubadour that will be fully expressed in the matured work (The madcap laughs) and the physical and artistic decline (Opel).
The musical landscape initially seems to gaily accompany the fantastical lyrics, suddenly, the arpeggio becomes frenzied and the falsetto counterpoint pushes the piece towards a percussive and organistic drift. "Mathilda Mother" thus situates itself in a decidedly more musical path compared to the subsequent Flaming. This somewhat drugged children's rhyme is accompanied by whistles, carillons, cuckoos, cymbals, and junk shop knick-knacks.
Before closing, there is time for Pow R. Toc H. and Take thy stethoscope and walk.
The first would fit perfectly in Crown of Creation by Jefferson Airplane the following year, its subdued anticipation of the apocalypse, its tension entirely of disaster, anticipates the masters of flight from the bay.
The next track is the only one written by Waters, it is divided into three medium-length sections. The first is a frontal percussive and spasmodic assault on alienated lyrics (good in phonetic rendering but conceptually overused over the years). The second is composed of magmatic guitar and organ solos on a less dissipated rhythm than the previous one. Finally, the piece returns to singing and vertiginously implodes into a liberating falsetto.
Interstellar Overdrive is what Pink Floyd could have played without Barrett, but which Parson, funky guitars, and grandeur demoted to predictability.
There are few tracks in rock history that more than this define the concept of psychedelic jam. In its spanning across virtually infinite soundscapes, it is the most reliable magnifying glass to detect the ensemble’s potential as a collective.
The Gnome and the beginning of Barrett’s solo songbook, whimsical and dreamy folk, have the flaw of accentuating the leader's egocentrism, relegating the other personalities to the role of supporting actors.
With Chapter 24 and Scarecrow, they chisel out two docile, fragile, and perfect little works like Haiku.
The first text references the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching, of which Syd was a devotee. Almost a mini-symphony of the Orient, it shows, rather naively, the mystical and somewhat airy sensitivity of the author.
Scarecrow is almost a post-scriptum to it. A bittersweet footnote that despite the elementary musical progression (a silly tip-tap and a distracted almond-eyed organ) sublimates, lightening it, the very serious & serious composure of the previous composition.
Bike is the classic impossible Barrettian melody. Certainly one of the most dated songs, it benefits from spatial intrusions that seem to want to ennoble it from its ‘beat’ conception. However, it is such an inviting song for its freshness, and for the extreme band-like countability, that it could have been the ideal lead single of the album.
Childlike stories and vaguely religious suggestions are the interpreters of Barrettian paper dreams. Unripe but functional to the spirit of their sound, they are perhaps the “weak” link of the band's creative DNA.
Despite this, this absolutely non-aligned product, in our opinion, is the most inspired record of 60s English psychedelia, with due respect to the fans who own 8 unofficial live recordings of the The Wall tour but ignore this alternative link between ‘beat’ and ‘progressive’.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Astronomy Domine (04:12)
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda
And Titania, Neptune, Titan.
Stars can frighten.
Blinding signs flap,
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam. Pow, pow.
Stairway scare Dan Dare who's there?
Lime and limpid green
The sounds surrounds the icy waters underground
Lime and limpid green
The sounds surrounds the icy waters underground.
02 Lucifer Sam (03:07)
Lucifer Sam, siam cat.
Always sitting by your side
Always by your side.
That cat's something I can't explain.
Jennifer Gentle, you're a witch.
You're the left side
He's the right side.
Oh, no!
That cat's something I can't explain.
Lucifer go to sea.
Be a hip cat
Be a ship's cat.
Somewhere, anywhere.
That cat's something I can't explain.
At night prowling sifting sand.
Hiding around on the ground.
He'll be found when you're around.
That cat's something I can't explain.
04 Flaming (02:46)
Alone in the clouds all blue
Lying on an eiderdown.
Yippee! You can't see me
But I can you.
Lazing in the foggy dew
Sitting on a unicorn.
No fair, you can't hear me
But I can you.
Watching buttercups cup the light
Sleeping on a dandelion.
Too much, I won't touch you
But then I might.
Screaming through the starlit sky
Traveling by telephone.
Hey ho, here we go
Ever so high.
Alone in the clouds all blue
Lying on an eiderdown.
Yippee! You can't see me
But I can you.
08 The Gnome (02:13)
I want to tell you a story
About a little man
If I can.
A gnome named Grimble Grumble.
And little gnomes stay in their homes.
Eating, sleeping, drinking their wine.
He wore a scarlet tunic,
A blue green hood,
It looked quite good.
He had a big adventure
Amidst the grass
Fresh air at last.
Wining, dining, biding his time.
And then one day - hooray!
Another way for gnomes to say
Oooooooooomray.
Look at the sky, look at the river
Isn't it good?
Look at the sky, look at the river
Isn't it good?
Winding, finding places to go.
And then one day - hooray!
Another way for gnomes to say
Oooooooooomray.
Ooooooooooooooomray.
09 Chapter 24 (03:42)
A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset.
The time is with the month of winter solstice
When the change is due to come.
Thunder in the other course of heaven.
Things cannot be destroyed once and for all.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.
A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.
10 The Scarecrow (02:11)
The black and green scarecrow as ev'ryone knows
Stood with a bird on his hat and straw everywhere
He didn't care...
He stood in a field where barley grows
His head did no thinking his arms didn't move
Except when the wind cut up rough
And mice ran around on the ground
He stood in a field where barley grows
The black and green scarecrow is sadder than me
But now he's resigned to his fate
'Cause life's not unkind
He doesn't mind
He stood in a field where barley grows
11 Bike (03:21)
I've got a bike
You can ride it if you like
It's got a basket
A bell that rings
And things to make it look good
I'd give it to you if I could
But I borrowed it
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I've got a cloak
It's a bit of a joke
There's a tear up the front
It's red and black
I've had it for months
If you think it could look good
Then I guess it should
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I know a mouse
And he hasn't got a house
I don't know why
I call him Gerald
He's getting rather old
But he's a good mouse
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I've got a clan of gingerbread men
Here a man
There a man
Lots of gingerbread men
Take a couple if you wish
They're on the dish
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I know a room full of musical tunes
Some rhyme
Some ching
Most of them are clockwork
Let's go into the other room and make them work
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Other reviews
By charles
From the very first record, you can tell what they would do in the future, which is create a sound all their own.
Excellent record, which deviates a bit from the typical Pink Floyd sound but is still a colossus in the history of music.
By zaireeka
Written at the tip of LSD.
One of those clocks, orphaned by the irreversible madness of Syd Barrett, was preserved by his old companions and made to chime once again at the start of Time.
By Moro1
Only Barrett can explain the masterpiece he composed and wrote, and he does it through the stories of a king told in a mother’s fairy tale.
He sang it almost 40 years ago and it is still the most beautiful of all.
By anthon
"From these first seconds, the listener is transported into an otherworldly dimension, a dimension that characterizes much of the album."
"Interstellar Overdrive represents the true innovation, in terms of harmonic-melodic physiognomy, of the album."
By AJAX
The early Pink Floyd managed to synthesize into a unique and inimitable vision the impulses from West Coast acid rock, ... and the love for genuinely English fairy-tale elements.
'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' captures both sides of the coin, marking a year when pop and the avant-garde went hand in hand.
