The first time I experienced Echoes was on one of those late night 80s shows when I was in high school, probably Night Flight. It was the Pink Floyd at Pompeii performance. I only knew it was Pink Floyd because their name was printed on all the equipment boxes:
PINK FLOYD. LONDON
I thought the video was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. It kind of freaked me out too; this area of such ancient horror was spooky enough, then the occasional ghostly imagery would flash across the screen. Yikes!
So, I eventually bought Meddle at Second Hand Tunes in Evanston, IL. Echoes takes up the whole of side two. It is an incredible listening experience, sometimes I wonder at its existence. Humans made this, whoa.
Ping...ping...a cold and lonely sound. A glacier in the Arctic. Primordial mists. The whole opening makes me think of the slow evolution of life. Images of oceans, clouds, waves. Eternal silence and serenity. Majestic dreamy beauty...philosophy, archaeology, biology...science fiction and fantasy. Lost and searching, magical ancient otherworldly wisdom.
Guitar and organ and eerie tones, intensity builds, the main guitar riff falling and rising, the guitar shrieks, drums pound, the high note at 6:56.
The funky section comes in at 7:00. Organ, bass, and heavy guitar. I love the organ moment at 7:47. Rock climbing, toe tapping. David Gilmour's guitar tone, the perfect mix of sustain, reverb and delay. Space travelling. Getting out there.
Things begin to dissolve around 10:35, though the guitar rages against it. The haunted cries of seagulls, frogs, dwellers of the dark bottom of the ocean. Moaning, crying, weeping..the ghostly sounds of early life on Earth. The existential. The oneness.
We begin to come out of it around 14:45. The lone keyboard chord as the Ping returns. Slowly. Cymbals at 16:52. Muted guitar. All rising up in the morning light. Flowers bloom. The sun is coming. Drums. Stretching.
At 18:14 the guitar shatters our visions, ringing out like bells. (Reminds me of the guitars at the end of Strawberry Letter 23.) Add into the mix a rising and falling street sweeper? Leaf collector? The pace picks up at 18:43 and we soon head into the final verse, which contains my favorite line:
a million bright ambassadors of morning.
Here comes the sun...another few rounds of the main riff. Then at 21:17, the elegant and elegiac interplay between piano and guitar. Finally, at 22:10 we begin to hear the weird outro that's like an MC Escher painting, sounds seem to keep rising like one of his endless stairways.
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