07-05-2025
'Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII' album offers "sublime" remix
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII
Sony Music (LP)
By Bill Kopp
A legendary Pink Floyd live performance finally gets a standalone release, with a striking new mix by Steven Wilson. Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII, released May 2.
Debuting in theaters in 1972, Pink Floyd at Pompeii represented a radical departure from typical concert films. Where films like Woodstock, Monterey Pop and The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter focused on artist, spectacle and audience in nearly equal measure, Pompeii would be a nearly meditative experience. Outside of the extra studio footage director Adrian Maben shot in London to expand the film's runtime to theatrical length, not a word is spoken during the entire film. With their gear set up in the ancient ruins of Pompeii, Italy, the four members of Pink Floyd – joined only by a small sound crew and Maben's film team – get about the business of playing five songs. No audience is present.
The songs played in Pompeii during the four-day shoot would be a mix of new pieces and older ones, some dating back four years to a time when the group was reeling from the loss of its founder and original leader, Syd Barrett. But by '72, Pink Floyd – bassist roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Rick Wright, and Barrett's replacement David Gilmour on guitar – was well on the creative path that culminated in the 1973 epic work The Dark Side of the Moon. Pompeii captured the group at a critical juncture: its journey from deeply experimental music to cohesive, album-long pieces nearly completed, the foursome found itself in a position to showcase its musical strengths. Arguably, an audience would have only got in the way.
The core of Maben's film would be the five set-pieces of music, a sampling from their second album (and first with Gilmour), 1968's experimental and often abstract A Saucerful of Secrets. The title track featured bracing and anti-melodic elements: Waters playing gong and cymbals, Wright hitting the keys of a grand piano with tightly clenched fists, Gilmour conjuring otherworldly sounds from his Stratocaster, and Mason laying down some brutal yet mesmerizing percussive work.
In contrast to that avant-garde cacophony, 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' is a contemplative, hypnotic piece of music. A third 'old' piece, alongside that pair of older works, is a live reading of the band's 1968 B-side 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene.' The atmospheric and moody meditation is barely contained malevolence, with Waters' blood-curdling scream guaranteed to tingle spines.
The third in a series of epic-length Pink Floyd works, 'Echoes' – from the band's 1971 Meddle LP – exemplified everything that the foursome had learned along the way. With peerless gentle vocal harmonies from Gilmour and Wright plus a clearly defined progressive character (complete with distinct musical movements), 'Echoes' encapsulated the Pink Floyd musical ethos in a single, 23-minute track. For Pompeii, the song was split into two pieces, the first ended by what sounded like the weight of the band crashing in on itself.
As presented onscreen, 'One of These Days I'm Going to Cut You Into Little Pieces' is effectively a duet between Gilmour and Mason; the other two members of the band are barely seen. But the audio component of the song places Waters' throbbing bass front and center. Wilson's mix leverages The power and fury of the instrumental work.
A lighthearted acoustic blues, 'Mademoiselle Nobs' is a loose variation on the Meddle track 'Seamus,' featuring Gilmour on harmonica, Waters on electric guitar and Wright holding a mic in front of a wailing dog. (Mason nowhere to be seen nor heard.) The tune's inclusion lightens the vibe a bit, neither enhancing the overall experience nor doing any harm. Its inclusion – if only for completists' sake – is nice enough.
For listeners who appreciate the years of reinvention that the group explored between [Syd] Barrett's departure and the creation of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII is an essential artifact documenting the band's astounding progress of that period.
The same is true for the abstract 'Pompeii Intro.' In the film, the studio track plays while static scenes of the desolate Pompeii landscape are shown. Establishing a mood for the audience-less concert to come, the piece consists of insistent percussion and spacey sonics, both courtesy of the revolutionary VCS3 synthesizer, a key tool in the creation of The Dark Side of the Moon.
The soundtrack to Pink Floyd at Pompeii would not be released on record alongside the film's 1972 premiere. While the music from Pompeii would be bootlegged – sourced first from VHS or Beta video tapes and later from a 1982 laserdisc – no official release of the music would come until the massive 2016 boxed set The Early Years. Titled Live at Pompeii, it would be included as part of that collection's 1972: Obfusc/ation volume in a new stereo mix. That release, however, would not include 'Pompeii Intro' and 'Mademoiselle Nobs.'
Ace remixer Steven Wilson – an artist with his own massive body of work, and a longtime fan of Pink Floyd's music – is the man responsible for the new and vastly improved mix of the audio portion of the Pompeii material. His treatment of the recordings could be heard on the recent two-days-only screenings of a restored print of the film and is receiving release as a two-record set.
Wilson's work is sublime. Beginning with a well-recorded performance made under controlled conditions, one might wonder what could be done to improve upon what already existed. But subtle and judicious choices in terms of stereo placement and in the relative volume of instruments and voices has resulted in a definitive aural experience of the Pompeii tracks. Wilson applies a light touch, avoiding radical changes yet tweaking the mix in a way that highlights the most remarkable ingredients in the performance without giving short shrift to supporting elements.
Wilson's stereo mix (on double vinyl) is nothing short of glorious. The close vocal harmonies on 'Echoes' are brighter than on the 2016 CD (or in earlier prints of the film). And the stereo panning on parts of 'A Saucerful of Secrets' heightens the interstellar sonic overdrive of the work.
The version of 'A Saucerful of Secrets' as seen and heard in the film is edited down to 10 minutes; the new 2-LP release includes that edit as well as a recording of the full piece, both with Wilson's new mix. An alternate take of 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' is included as well; the performance differs little from the take shown in the film. It too was part of the 2016 CD release; here it receives the Wilson treatment.
For listeners who appreciate the years of reinvention that the group explored between Barrett's departure and the creation of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII is an essential artifact documenting the band's astounding progress of that period. For those whose knowledge and appreciation of Pink Floyd begins with Dark Side, this new archival release helps answer the how-did-they-get there question. Either way, it's an important piece of the puzzle.
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