On Independent Records. Available from Floydhead.com. Track listing at foot of review. Please note that no remix albums are approved by the band themselves, their management, or their record company.
 Since
the mid 1990s, there have been a rash of remixes and "ambient" mixes of
Pink Floyd work. On the whole, little technical ability or musical
thought has gone into them. A bit of echo or boosted bass doesn't make
a good remix! But then Floydhead's "Floydian Propulsion Project"
arrived at Brain Damage...
The project was obviously
undertaken by someone with a great knowledge and great love, of Pink
Floyd's music. Hidden away amongst the lush soundscape are obscure
oddities and gems from the band's recorded history, melded together in
a fascinating, and refreshing, way.
Whilst, as I say, may remix
projects add little to the original songs, Seth and the rest of the
Floydhead crew have really gone to town, with the originals acting just
as a starting point, using their own instrumentation along with samples
and snippets that are so clean, it's as if they had access to the
master tapes... impressive stuff.
This is the latest iteration
(version 3) of the album, which has been polished and augmented with
new sounds and new tracks... so owners of previous versions might still
be interested in getting hold of this one.
Track one sets the scene with
Heartbeat, Pigmeat given a more contemporary feel, adding in dialog
from Tonite Let's All Make Love In London. Hey You follows, is given
the club treatment, and apart from a loop of David Gilmour's vocal, is
hardly recognisable. Any Colour You Like is given a polish and a 21st
century flavour whilst keeping its core and unique sound.
Is There Anybody Out There has a
mournful menace and thankfully keeps the wonderful acoustic guitar and
strings of the original - one of the definate stand-out tracks. Another
Brick part 1 follows, and seems to have much more of a kick than the
original. Next up, Terminal Frost, and like the 1987 version, is the
least interesting track on the album. An unusual choice for the
project, as well...
Moving on to one of three very
short, sub-1 minute tracks found here - One Of My Days, which updates
in great style the rapid tuning through those 13 channels of shit,
followed by a skillful meld of New Machine, Empty Spaces, and Welcome
To The Machine.
Any album using a sample of The
Muppets' "Pigs In Space" has to be a winner, and what better way of
kicking off Pigs On The Wing? A nice, extended version, akin to the
8-track version with Snowy White.
Effervescing elephants, division
bells, several small creatures, and much more, kick off Drooling and
Raving, which owes more to Echoes and Embryo than anything else. A
track with absolutely loads of different Floyd songs in it - how many
can you spot? A great, atmospheric Signs Of Life follows, with a
surprise addition at the end that works well. Two Suns In The Sunset
starts in a conventional way then enjoys some complementary guitar work
before merging into the tabla driven If. The heavy Indian feel takes
the track into a fascinating new direction.
A bit of Pink Anderson leads to
Keep Talking, with different Stephen Hawking dialogue and a kicking
beat, and quickly becomes hard to recognise from the original, with
ethereal bits of the familiar version drifting in the background.
Several Small Species... - now surely with the officially longest song
title ever (see below) - gets an update, and throws elements of early
and late period Floyd songs in the mix. "All pretty avand-gard
really"...
There's a fairly cheesy keyboard
opener to Have A Cigar - and with the vocoder vocals, for me, one of
the more dispensible tracks present. The album concludes with Obscured
By Clouds and Let There Be More Light. ...Light gets a very short
outing before a muzak version of Ticket To Ride sings out, in a nod to
the end of Dark Side Of The Moon. Obscured, from the eponymous album (a
sadly overlooked part of the band's canon) gets treated to some echo
and some Jarre-esque electronica, without spoiling the feel of the
track.
A solid, eminently listenable and
hugely enjoyable collection - the amount of time and effort Seth and
the other Floydheads have put into it is evident. It certainly bears
repeated playings well - if only to spot the bits you missed in the
first place! The album is a real homage to the Floyd's musicality,
imagination and variety. It's one that we'll be playing in years to
come, and we are sure you will too!
Track listing:
- Heartbeat, Pigmeat (UFO Technicolour Dream) Mix
- Hey You (Girls of the Rare Breed) Mix
- Any Colour You Like (As Long as it's Black) Mix
- Is There Anybody Out There? (Panoramic Paralysis) Mix
- Another Brick Part 1 (Ste-V's GB) Mix
- Terminal Frost (BeatBox Rocker) Mix
- One of My Days
- A New Machine (Empty Space : Welcome to the New Machine) Mix
- Pigs on the Wing (Pigs in Space) Mix
- Drooling and Raving
- Signs of Life (All Aboard the Astoria / Sea of Chaos) Mix
- Two Suns in the Sunset (Electropsychedeliatric Blitzkrieg) Mix
- If (The Tablamatic Theory) Mix
- The Pink Anderson Gangsta Blues
- Keep Talking (Mind of God) Mix
- Several Species of Small Fury Animals Gathered Together in a Cave
and Grooving With a Pict (More than a few classes of Diminutive Hirsute
Organisms Amassing as one in an Astral Cavern and Rocking-out with a
monolith whilst avoiding a Quantum Hyperspace Paradox) Mix
- Have a Cigar (Close, but no Cigar) Mix
- Obscured by Clouds (Moon, American, Floyd) Mix
- Let There be More (Lite) Mix
- Publius Enigma
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