Category Archives: News

Uncut Magazine – Roger Waters & Their Mortal Remains

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A new Uncut manifests itself this week (it’s in UK shops on Thursday, but should be turning up with subscribers any moment now) and, as you’ll see, our cover star is Roger Waters.

The small matter of 25 years after his last rock album, an urgent, raging Waters has returned, with much he needs to say. Is This The Life We Really Want?, according to producer Nigel Godrich, gives Waters a “reboot in the same way The Force Awakens gave Star Wars back to the fans.” And in our exclusive interview, Waters elucidates. “It’s not much of a leap from ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ to ‘Money’, ‘Us And Them’ or ‘Welcome To The Machine’,” he says. “They’re all interconnected in ways that are… unsubtle.”

There’s plenty to talk about, of course, as Pink Floyd’s retrospective exhibition opens at the V&A in London and Waters plots his imminent Us + Them live extravaganza. In a wide-ranging conversation with Michael Bonner, Waters touches on Floyd and The Beatles, 9/11, Brexit (“All through my youth I fought the Farages of this world”), Bernie Sanders and, of course, Donald Trump. “There’s a resistance everywhere,” he says. “I want people who come to the show, particularly in the United States Of America, to understand that what I’m doing is symbolic of the general resistance to the absolute inhumanity of the status quo.”

The magazine can be purchased online in a few days through Newsstand.co.uk.

Which One’s Pink? – A Tribute To Pink Floyd Host Benefit Gig For Former Lead Guitarist

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A Special benefit concert taking place on the 18th May at 19:00–23:00 PDT at The Canyon Club & Special Events Center, Agorua Hills, California by Californian based tribute band  W1P (Which Ones Pink?) has been set up in aid of former lead guitarist John Stack.

 

Former W1P (Which Ones Pink?) lead guitarist John Stack has been in a horrible motorcycle accident requiring multiple surgeries and a long, difficult rehabilitation. Which One’s Pink? and friends are putting on a very special concert to benefit John’s family in this very challenging time. This show will feature an awesome set of Pink Floyd from Which One’s Pink? and incredible performances from John’s large stable of musical friends. We also plan on holding a silent auction of very cool items!

Please come support John and his family at what promises to be an incredible event. Tickets are available from ticketmaster by clicking here

For those unable to make the event, With the advances on technology you will now be able to watch the show streamed live to your home. To tune in you can do so by clicking here

If you wish to donate, a GoFundMe page has been set up to help his through his difficult rehabilitation and medical surgeries. https://www.gofundme.com/john-stack-medical-bills

From all of us at A Fleeting Glimpse we wish them the best of luck in helping Johns recovery

Sennheiser Announce Pink Floyd-themed headphones

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Fans of Pink Floyd can now flaunt it everywhere they go, courtesy of some rad-looking special-edition Sennheiser Momentum HD1 headphones.

Audio giant Sennheiser has announced a new special-edition version of its acclaimed Momentum HD 1 wireless headphones that is aimed squarely at the ears of Pink Floyd fans worldwide.

The new headphones are inspired by the Dark Side of the Moon album, and feature a purple gradient colorway on the exterior of the earcups, as well as the classic triangular Pink Floyd logo. The headband of the HD 1 headphones also features rainbow stitching.

Sennheiser’s spiffy new cans come as a celebration of the band’s new exhibition, Their Mortal Remains, which opened at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on May 13. The exhibition features a massive 3D audio setup that was also crafted by Sennheiser and allowsfans to experience a Pink Floyd concert as though they were actually there.

The company has a long-standing relationship with the iconic band, which has used Sennheiser-branded microphones on stage throughout its concert career.

“This project epitomizes our commitment to support the artists and engineers that record, stage, and perform music,” said Sennheiser co-CEO Andreas Sennheiser “And no less importantly, it represents the fans that enjoy the work of artists – whether in the shared experience of a concert hall or in the cherished private worlds we can experience with a set of headphones.”

“It is a true pleasure to mark this major cultural event with a dedicated new version of the Momentum that celebrates both design and an enduring love of music. This is also a wonderful way to continue our history as a company working with Pink Floyd,” added Sennheiser co-CEO Daniel Sennheiser.

Even without the addition of cool graphics, we are fans of the Momentum Wireless, especially their vast and dimensional soundstage, as well as their impressive battery life.

Anyone interested in picking up a pair of the new headphones can check out Sennheiser’s website, where they can be pre-ordered for $500. The company says the special-edition Momentum HD 1 headphones will ship toward the end of June.

Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason wants to play drums for Harry Styles

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Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has said that he wants to play in Harry Styles‘ band.

The One Direction star released his self-titled debut solo album on Friday(May 12). To promote the record, he appeared on Radio 2’s Breakfast show with Chris Evans this morning, alongside fellow guest Nick Mason.

On the show, Mason described first hearing Styles’ song ‘Sign Of The Times’. He said: “I happened to be driving along and I heard Harry’s single. I listened to it and the DJ said afterwards, ‘It sounds a bit like Pink Floyd to me’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, I could play that’. I listen to music on the radio in a particular way, which is [in terms of the] drums and bass. My belief is that bands are made up of bass, drums and a bunch of novelty acts. Anyway, I heard [Style’s single] and I thought I’d ask Harry if I could play drums on a track on his next album.”

“I would say yes,” Styles replied, adding that Mason could play on his live tour. “My drummer Sarah [Jones, former New York Pony Club/Hot Chip drummer] is actually a major fan of yours,” Styles continued

The world’s first Pink Floyd exhibition is coming to Dortmund in 2018

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Spring 2018 the world’s first Pink Floyd exhibition is taking place in Dortmund. Dortmund is the only city in the German-speaking world and the Benelux countries where the exhibition is shown. Visitors are expecting a multimedial hearing and visual journey into the Pink Floyd cosmos.

On May 13, 2017, the first Pink Floyd exhibition opens in London: “The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains”. The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Her Mortal Remains. The exhibition runs from 13 May to 1 October at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Edwin Jacobs, director of Dortmund U, has taken the first international retrospective of one of the world’s most influential music bands to Dortmund, where she is shown on the 6th floor of Dortmund U.

The visitors are expecting a multimedial hearing and visual journey into the band’s 50-year history and an exclusive insight into the Pink Floyd cosmos – the music and the instruments, the visual design of the albums and the stage design The tours and performances. In the process, the visitors follow the workings of the band and their transformation – from the psychedelic rock group in the 1960s to one of the most commercially successful bands.

The Dortmund U

The Dortmunder U is a cultural center with international appeal and the most impressive building in Dortmund. It was built in 1926/27 as the first high-rise building and beer factory of the Union Brewery. Crowned with a light pyramid, the ferry and warehouse was one of the most modern buildings at that time. Since 2010 the Dortmunder U with its unique installation is a center for art, culture and creativity. The U is one of the youngest and most innovative houses in Germany, about 70 per cent of the guests are under 50 years. Last year the Dortmund U was awarded the “European Cultural Brand of the Year”.

 

Pink Floyd : Their Mortal Remains Exhibition, Review / Sneak Peak in Telegraph

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Pigs fly at the Victoria & Albert Museum, alongside sheep, replica warplanes, exploding fridges and UFOs, while a giant psychotic inflatable headmaster descends from the ceiling wielding his cane over a huge purple replica of Battersea Power Station. Like the band it celebrates, Their Mortal Remains certainly does not lack ambition.

Visitors enter through a replica of a touring van, advance down a psychedelic rabbit hole of swirling op art and emerge into a dazzling space of hard reflective surfaces and audacious installations. Room after room is packed with a veritable treasure trove of artefacts and information about one of Britain’s most innovative and revered rock bands. You can walk through album sleeves, remix classic tracks, peer closely at lyric notebooks and vintage instruments, all the while listening to the band and their collaborators articulate the creative steps behind some of the most astonishing music and iconic imagery of the rock era.

Imaginatively conceived, fascinatingly curated, beautifully designed and stunningly realised, the Pink Floyd exhibition is something of an audio-visual tour de force for a museum that has become adept at putting pop culture in a highbrow gallery space. If, ultimately, it does not have the revelatory impact and intense personality of the V&A’s ground-breaking David Bowie Is exhibition in 2013, that is perhaps inherent in the nature of an oddly faceless band. As the joke used to go, “Which one’s Pink?”

There is an absence that haunted Floyd throughout their career, and haunts this exhibition too. Their 1975 masterpiece Wish You Were Here is evoked in a shiny, square, white space filled with images of the cryptic album sleeve. The warmth and beauty of the music itself plays second fiddle here to the contributions of Floyd collaborator Storm Thorgerson and his Hipgnosis design team.

In a glass cabinet, however, you can find one small Polaroid of a plump, bald, unassuming fellow, which close examination reveals to be founding member Syd Barrett visiting Abbey Road Studio unannounced as the band recorded their spine-tingling tribute to him (and Wish You Were Here’s opening and closing track), Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Barrett was Floyd’s only real rock star, the maverick genius who set them off on their extraordinary trajectory, but whose contribution was cut short by psychosis (exacerbated by drug use). He is affectionately recalled on one wall display but, without him, the rest of the exhibition is beset by a peculiar lack of human focus.

The core four piece line up from 1968-1985 (guitarist-vocalist David Gilmour, bassist-vocalist Roger Waters, keyboard player Rick Wright and drummer Nick Mason) were all middle-class, educated, intelligent, accomplished musicians. Their inventive use of sound technology, explorative approach to avant-garde musical ideas and astute incorporation of wider artistic, social, philosophical and theatrical concepts made them key figures in the psychedelic explosion (and its progressive rock offshoots), but they were not particularly psychedelic in themselves.

Interrogated on short, three-minute films accompanying each exhibit, they tend to be quite dry and dispassionate, creating a very cool and cerebral mood, with the madder and more enigmatic aspects of Floyd conjured by emphasising sleeve and stage designs.

Also, it may be stating the obvious to say that music is vital to the Pink Floyd story, but this exhibition would be much diminished as a walking tour without the Bluetooth headphones bringing static installations to musical life. While it is a treat to walk through a darkened corridor illuminated by a holographic representation of the pyramid prism from Dark Side of the Moon, it is still the swirling keyboards and cosmic lead solo that really blow the mind.

As it is, the exhibition fades off into empty spectacle towards the close, suffering much the same fate as Pink Floyd’s career. It is hard not to conclude that chief lyricist Roger Waters was right, and that Floyd should have ended when he left in 1985. The spikiest character in the band, Waters apparently insisted that Floyd’s remaining years as a touring and recording heritage act be kept separate, in this show, from their imperial Sixties and Seventies phase. But the result is three later rooms featuring recreations of overblown cover and stage designs that lack any intellectual rigour or artistic purpose, effectively a monument to a band who had by then become a monument to themselves.

There is, however, one final act of grace in a concert experience room at the very end, where you can see and hear the briefly reunited Pink Floyd’s valedictory performance of Comfortably Numb at Live8 in 2005, delivered in Sennheiser surround sound. It is absolutely gobsmacking, putting you right in the centre of one of the greatest pieces of music ever performed. Wish you were there? You will feel like you were.

Flying pigs inspired by Pink Floyd’s Animals will obscure Chicago’s Trump Tower this summer

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Flying pigs inspired by Pink Floyd’s Animals will obscure Chicago’s Trump Tower for one glorious day this summer
Roger Waters himself signed off on the design.

Inspired by Pink Floyd’s famous Battersea flying pig, an architect is working to relieve commuters of having to see our President’s name emblazoned on the side of Chicago’s Trump Tower, which looms over the Loop as a constant reminder of our country’s current state. The solution? Four flying, gold-colored pigs, strategically placed to obscure Trump’s name.

Architect Jeffrey Roberts first announced “Flying Pigs on Parade” back in November and it’s now queued up for a tentative launch this summer. According to Architectural Digest, each pig will measure 30-feet by 15-feet and be tethered to a barge on the Chicago River. The pigs will fly for just a single day, but Roberts plans to take them around to other Trump-infested cities throughout the country.

“In 1977 Pink Floyd rendered their musical interpretation of the allegory into the concept album Animals in response to social-political conditions in late-70’s Britain,” Roberts writes on the project’s website. “Like Orwell’s book, the interpretive messages of Animals have unfortunately become highly relevant again.”

As he holds the image rights, Roger Waters himself needed to sign off on Roberts’ re-appropriation, which he was apparently happy to do.

“The art folly has been created to provide visual relief to the citizens of Chicago by interrupting the view of the ostentatious Trump Tower Chicago sign,” Roberts says. “The design follows rigorous rationale in providing layers of meaning but ultimately allows for interpretation by individual viewers.”

“Ultimately,” he continues, “this is a very rational design and is in direct contrast to the chaotic nature and bizarre antics of our current leadership.”