Roger Waters has re-recorded Pink Floyd‘s ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ and will release his version as his own solo album.
The reimagined album, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon Redux’, coincides with the original’s 50th anniversary but was not worked on by any other member of the iconic band. The lead single ‘Money’ has been reinterpreted by Waters, transforming the once electrifying song into an acoustic track.
The LP was produced by the former Pink Floyd bassist along with Gus Seyffert. A studio band, consisting of Seyffert, Joey Waronker, Jonathan Wilson, Johnny Shepherd and Jon Carin, was used to record the tracks. The other Pink Floyd members, such as guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Manson, did not take part in the re-recording.
According to a press release, Waters shared: “The original ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ feels in some ways like the lament of an elder being on the human condition.”
He continued: “But Dave, Rick, Nick, and I were so young when we made it, and when you look at the world around us, clearly the message hasn’t stuck. That’s why I started to consider what the wisdom of an 80 year old could bring to a reimagined version.”
“When I first mentioned the idea of re-recording The Dark Side of the Moon to Gus and Sean we all thought I was mad, but the more we considered it, the more we thought, ‘Isn’t that the whole point?’,” he added. “I’m immensely proud of what we have created, a work that can sit proudly alongside the original, hand-in-hand across a half-century of time.”
‘The Dark Side of the Moon Redux’ is set for release on October 6 via SGB Music. Pre-order the LP here.
Waters previously revealed that he was working on re-recording the album earlier this year. In a profile by The Telegraph, the newspaper shared that Water’s solo version of the iconic rock album had been “secretly” in the works for months, without the involvement or knowledge of the other Pink Floyd members.
He then released a 52-second snippet of him listening to the first verse of a reworked ‘Us and Them’ in the studio. Waters accompanied the clip with a lengthy statement in its description, acknowledging, “it’s not a replacement for the original which, obviously, is irreplaceable”.
He continued: “But it is a way for the seventy nine year old man to look back across the intervening fifty years into the eyes of the twenty nine year old and say, to quote a poem of mine about my Father, “We did our best, we kept his trust, our Dad would have been proud of us”. And also it is a way for me to honor a recording that Nick and Rick and Dave and I have every right to be very proud of.”
Manson shared his opinion on Water’s re-recording of the LP and hailed it as “absolutely brilliant”.
“I heard the rumour that Roger was working on his own version of it,” he said when speaking at a playback of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, at London’s Dolby Atmos Immersive Studio. “There was this suggestion that this was going to be a spoiler and Roger was going to go head-to-head with the original version and so on.”
He continued: “He actually sent me a copy of what he was working on and I write to him and said, ‘Annoyingly, it’s absolutely brilliant!’ It was and is. It’s not anything that would be a spoiler for the original at all, it’s an interesting add-on to the thing.”
Waters has recently faced significant backlash following his ‘This Is not A Drill’ farewell tour show in Berlin.
During that show, Waters appeared on stage at his show wearing a black trench coat with a swastika-like emblem during a segment that revolved around a character from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, who imagines himself as a fictional fascist dictator during a hallucination.
The musician claimed that the segment was a statement against fascism, injustice and bigotry and called criticism of it “disingenuous and politically motivated”.
Waters has repeatedly denied all accusations of anti-semitism and explained that his disdain is towards Israel, not Judaism. He also accused Israel of “abusing the term anti-semitism to intimidate people like me into silence”.
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