The release of Pink Floyd's 1967 debut album, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, on vinyl for Record Store Day 2018 proved predictably popular. With a new mono 2018 remaster by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman, and remastered from the original 1967 mono mix, the release is the latest from Pink Floyd Records. The edition re-entered the UK album charts, going straight in at number 33 (our thanks to Malcolm Walker for tipping us off about this).

The limited-edition release is on premium 12" 180-gram black vinyl, and comes paired with an exclusive poster (540 x 388mm on art paper), as well as a foil blocked outer wallet. This was to differentiate the mono version for buyers; Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis, with Peter Curzon, created this additional packaging in the form of a card envelope which features a psychedelic design, including a gold embossed version of the graphic by Syd Barrett which also features on the reverse of the original mono LP.
 It's a lovely package, and great to see the care and attention it got. On a personal note, I heard a lot of non-Floyd fans in my local record shop all commenting on how great it looked, as we were queued up to make our own RSD purchases.

The package also includes gold and black labels, gold sticker, and a poster featuring the original photograph (taken by the late Colin Prime in Ruskin Park, South London) that inspired Syd’s graphic.


For those who missed out on Record Store Day itself, selected participating retailers still have very limited stock left of this album (and other RSD releases), or alternatively, if you wish to avoid the inflated prices on eBay for this (although these are now normalising to more acceptable levels) it is being offered for sale by most Amazon stores. It's worth shopping around as they don't have consistent pricing for this, so you might find you can save a bit of money going to another 'branch' of Amazon. Here are the direct links: Amazon UK, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon Spain and Amazon Italy.