Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd


The cultural phenomenon and bar non the most popular and successful Floyd album of all time. You'll be hard pressed to find many people who've never heard of this album or can't recognize the cover. Before this album people were clammoring about the amazing production and sound effects of Beach Boy's Pet Sounds and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonley Hearts Club Band but in those areas Dark Side came out and blew them again. The effects, production, and song transition were of a quality never seen before, and never duplicated again.

The opener, "Speak to me/Breathe" goes a supurb job of setting up what the album with be. The guitar and keyboard almost blend together into one unit, the sound effects at the beggining, and setting up the general theme: Life passing you by, while still being a great song.

With absolutley no break, so song transitions perfectly into "On the Run." As a song it's not much, but just a great chance to show off the sound effects used in the album.

A low roar soon becomes the chiming of hundreds of clocks to introduce one of Floyd's most sucessful radio songs, "Time." A slow drum/key board beat build up to the song. Walter's tells a story of your life slipping away from you, "Staying home to watch the rain, you are young and life is long ,and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run - you missed the starting gun."

A slow piano melody leads into "Great Gig in the Sky." Over the melody an old man can be heard saying "Why should I be afraid of dying? There's no reason for it, you gotta go sometime." setting a contrast from the last track, which seemed to speak of death in a very frightened way. The moaning vocals are supurb.

"Money", perhaps Floyd's most well known song follows. Once again, the guitar and keyboard seem to blend together to create an amazing flowing sound. Dick Parry plays a moaning saxophone solo at the climax.

More great song transitioning as "Money" leads into the album highlight, "Us and Them." An absolutley beutiful song that opens up with a light piano melody and more great, more subdued, sax playing by Perry which continues throughout. The three end-verse climaxes of the track are simply breath taking.

No room for a break after that epic though, as it leads into the third lyric-less song of the album, "Any Colour You Like." The song sounds very much like a non-objective painting, with diffrent, dramatic sounds splashed throughout.

The brilliant song transitions don't take a break for a minute, as we head into the eerie "Brain Damamge." The hauntic lyrics are matches by the sounds of the same feeling. As eerie as the lyrics are, they are quite nonsensical, "The paper hold their folded faces to the floor, and every day the paper boy brings more."

The final track, "Eclipse" sums up the album, sending the message that life is what you make it. The last thing you hear on the album is the very fitting "There is no dark side of the moon, actually ... matter of fact, it's all dark."

The theme, sound, and production is some of the best of all time. Almost everyone will tell you this is the best Floyd Album ever.

9.6/10