Pink Floyd - Meddle

After Syd left the band, The Floyd went from being a singles psychedelic pop band to more of an sonic ambient space rock sound with David Gilmour on board to help the cadets go to where no man has gone before with his spacey guitar work to Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Alongside their crossover between the avant-garde, film scores, and bombastic symphony orchestras with; More, Ummagumma, and Atom Heart Mother, the group pushed forward into something that was more beyond our imagination with the release of their sixth album, Meddle.
The opening One of These Days starts off with a roaring wind and then starts off with a Bass echoing the chords B and A repeatedly in an echo reverb while Rick Wright’s keyboards give a sinister tone and then David Gilmour comes in with a crunchy steel slide guitar solo and then the Bass becomes more of a helicopter sound and the voice of Nick Mason’s voice of ‘One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces!’ comes in and then BAM! The piece becomes a hellish improvisation with the drums slamming while the keyboards and guitar take turns and then ends with the wind roaring in the deserted sand. For David Gilmour’s homage to acoustic numbers helped out Floyd’s background in their influential side of music. Gilmour’s guitar work had a combination of Hendrix and of course his childhood friend, Syd Barrett, showed his folk side with the atmospheric composition A Pillow of Winds, alongside the guitar work, it fitted his vocal arrangements to infinitive melodic beauty.
The rest of the members of Pink Floyd were going into a new platform, Roger Waters keeping the bass tempo moving, Rick Wright’s bebop jazz piano work on wonderful tracks including San Tropez while the moody acoustic ballad Fearless sets the scenery of a warm and beautiful day on a sunny beach during the summer. But this is where it becomes an essential moment in Pink Floyd’s classic time in the ‘70s.
The 23-minute magnum opus Echoes is one of the most crowning achievements that’s ever been put on Meddle. Every moment on the last number is gorgeous, exhilarating, and breathtaking at the same time. With a spacey ping on the piano through a leslie speaker to an underwater guitar and keyboard instrumental pieces setting the tone of the suite and then Gilmour and Wright’s vocals coming in, just takes your breath away. The highlight is David Gilmour himself. After trying so hard to be a part of the Floyd experience, this is his breakthrough moment. His guitar arrangements, is in assumed control while the band do a jazz relative tone as he comes up with some cool guitar licks.
He uses a whammy, slide, and creating an outer space-like feel on the instrument. In the midsection, everything becomes sinister, his guitar becomes a haunting echo sound filling the thunderclouds and the late Rick’s keyboard becomes more of a surreal dark quality as the crows screech in the background. And then the heavens come up in the climax of the finale of Cloudless ambassadors, then ending into a Tangerine Dream’70s guitar work for the angels coming singing on a higher note. As this is going on in the last minute, the piano sends its final blast off and heads up into the solar system that begins on the first note of the piece.
Listening to it over a dozen times, you can tell that the Floyd were ready to go into the Dark Side and going eclectic and balancing on the biggest wave by the clouds obscuring on them.