Well here it is, the first song from Roger Waters' Dark Side Of The Moon Redux ahead of the album's October 6 release. It's his take on Money and a dramatic reimagining – stripped down, strings, slower tempo, sans guitars and with Rogers' low gravelly vocal giving it a whole new mood.
The words 'Tom' and 'Waits' are going to be bandied around a lot in comments under this one with the new spoken word sections over a jazzy breakdown. Nobody can accuse Roger Waters of phoning in a fascimile here.
"When we recorded the stripped-down songs for the Lockdown Sessions, the 50th anniversary of the release of The Dark Side Of The Moon was looming on the horizon," says Waters in a statement. "It occurred to me that Dark Side of the Moon could well be a suitable candidate for a similar re-working, partly as a tribute to the original work, but also to re-address the political and emotional message of the whole album.
"I discussed it with Gus [Seyffert, producer and bass] and Sean [Evans, creative director], and when we'd stopped giggling and shouting 'You must be fucking mad' at one another we decided to take it on. We are now in the process of finishing the final mix. It's turned out really great and I'm excited for everyone to hear it. It's not a replacement for the original which, obviously, is irreplaceable. But it is a way for the seventy nine-year-old man to look back across the intervening fifty years into the eyes of the twenty nine year old and say, to quote a poem of mine about my Father, 'We did our best, we kept his trust, our Dad would have been proud of us'. And also it is a way for me to honor a recording that Nick and Rick and Dave and I have every right to be very proud of."
A new version shaped in a new era, Waters' re-recording first came to light in the media back in February. Former Floyd bandmate and drummer Nick Mason – who has remained on good terms with Waters – has now heard the whole thing and hailed it as "absolutely brilliant".
“I heard the rumour that Roger was working on his own version of it,” he told the NME at a playback of the original version of The Dark Side Of The Moon, at London’s Dolby Atmos Immersive Studio. “There was this suggestion that this was going to be a spoiler and Roger was going to go head-to-head with the original version and so on.
“He actually sent me a copy of what he was working on and I wrote to him and said, ‘Annoyingly, it’s absolutely brilliant!’" added Mason. "It was and is. It’s not anything that would be a spoiler for the original at all, it’s an interesting add-on to the thing.”
More info on preorders at rogerwaters.com
