The Endless River

The Endless River is the 15th and final studio album by English rock band Pink Floyd, released in November 2014 by Parlophone Records in Europe and Columbia Records in the rest of the world. It was the third Pink Floyd album recorded under the leadership of guitarist David Gilmour after the departure of bassist Roger Waters in 1985, and the first following the death of keyboardist Richard Wright in 2008, who appears posthumously.
The Endless River is a double-album that comprises mainly instrumental and ambient music composed on material recorded during sessions for the previous Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell (1994). Additional material was recorded in 2013 and 2014 on Gilmour's Astoria boat studio and in Medina Studios in Hove, England. It was produced by Gilmour, Youth, Andy Jackson and Phil Manzanera. Only one track, "Louder than Words", has lead vocals. After the death of longtime Pink Floyd artist Storm Thorgerson in 2013, the cover was created by artist Ahmed Emad Eldin, design company Stylorouge and Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Thorgerson's design company Hipgnosis.
The Endless River was promoted with the "Louder than Words" single and artwork installations in cities around the world. It became the most pre-ordered album of all time on Amazon UK and debuted at number one in several countries. The vinyl edition was the fastest-selling UK vinyl release since 1997. The album received mixed reviews: some critics praised the nostalgic mood, while others found it unambitious or meandering.
Recording
The Endless River is based on music recorded during the sessions for Pink Floyd's previous studio album, The Division Bell (1994). The Division Bell was recorded in 1993 and 1994 in Britannia Row Studios in London, and on the Astoria boat studio, belonging to guitarist David Gilmour. Pink Floyd recorded hours of music during the sessions; the engineer Andy Jackson edited it into an hour-long ambient composition tentatively titled The Big Spliff, but the band did not release it.
Keyboardist Richard Wright died of cancer on 15 September 2008. In 2013, Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason decided to revisit the unused Division Bell recordings to make a new album, rerecording parts, adding new ones, and using modern studio technology. Gilmour said: "With Rick gone, and with him the chance of ever doing it again, it feels right that these revisited and reworked tracks should be made available as part of our repertoire." Only a small part of The Big Spliff was used.
Gilmour asked guitarist and producer Phil Manzanera, who co-produced his 2006 solo album On an Island, to work on the material. Manzanera, Jackson and engineer Damon Iddins spent six weeks assembling four 14-minute pieces. Gilmour gave two pieces to producer Youth, who added guitar and bass parts. In November 2013, Gilmour led sessions with Manzanera, Youth and Jackson to record material with Mason, saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and bassist Guy Pratt. Vocalists including Durga McBroom recorded backing vocals, and Gilmour recorded lead vocals on "Louder than Words", with lyrics by his wife, author Polly Samson. Bassist and songwriter Roger Waters, who left Pink Floyd in 1985, was not involved.
"Autumn '68", named in reference to the 1970 Pink Floyd song "Summer '68", features a recording of Wright playing the Royal Albert Hall pipe organ during the rehearsal for Pink Floyd's show at Royal Albert Hall on 26 June 1969. "Talkin' Hawkin contains a sample of scientist Stephen Hawking's speech taken from a British Telecom commercial also sampled for The Division Bell on "Keep Talking". Mason received writing credits for "Sum", and "Skins", a two-and-a-half-minute drum solo. Gilmour said The Endless River would be Pink Floyd's last album, saying: "I think we have successfully commandeered the best of what there is ... It's a shame, but this is the end." Mason concurred, stating that he "believed it would probably be the last Pink Floyd album."
Composition
The Endless River comprises four pieces, which form a continuous flow of mostly ambient and instrumental music. Gilmour said: "Unapologetically, this is for the generation that wants to put its headphones on, lie in a beanbag, or whatever, and get off on a piece of music for an extended period of time. You could say it’s not for the iTunes, downloading-individual-tracks generation." Mason described the album as a tribute to Wright: "I think this record is a good way of recognising a lot of what he does and how his playing was at the heart of the Pink Floyd sound. Listening back to the sessions, it really brought home to me what a special player he was."
"Louder than Words" is the only track with a lead vocal. Samson wrote the lyrics after observing the band's interaction during the rehearsals for their 2005 Live 8 reunion, their first performance with Waters in over 24 years. She said: "What struck me was, they never spoke ... It’s not hostile, they just don’t speak. And then they step onto a stage and musically that communication is extraordinary." The album title is taken from a lyric on the last track of The Division Bell, "High Hopes": "The water flowing / The endless river / For ever and ever." Gilmour said it suggested a continuum between the records.
Packaging
The Endless River cover art depicts a young man punting a Thames skiff across a sea of clouds towards the sun. After the death of longtime Pink Floyd artist Storm Thorgerson in 2013, Pink Floyd collaborated with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Thorgerson's design company Hipgnosis. Powell discovered 18-year-old Egyptian artist Ahmed Emad Eldin and asked to use the concept from his piece Beyond the Sky for The Endless River. Eldin was a Pink Floyd fan and accepted enthusiastically. Powell felt Ahmed's concept had "an instant Floydian resonance", and described it as "enigmatic and open to interpretation". The final cover is a recreation of Eldin's work by London design firm Stylorouge. Powell felt that the cover summed up the title and music, and was appropriate for the recording on the Thames.
The Endless River was also released in boxed DVD and Blu-ray "deluxe" editions, containing a 24-page hardback book, postcards, and a bonus disc of three additional tracks and six music videos. The DVD edition includes the album in Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround sound, plus a 48 kHz /24 bit stereo version. The Blu-ray has DTS Master Audio and PCM, 96/24 5.1 surround and a PCM stereo 96/24 version.
Promotion
Pink Floyd were affected by the sale of EMI to the Universal Music Group, which lasted from 2011 to 2013. The European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission approved the sale with conditions, including the sale of certain EMI assets. Pink Floyd, along with many other bands under the EMI roster, were transferred to different labels during the process. The Parlophone Label Group was formed under Parlophone as one of many assets to be sold off by Universal following the acquisition of EMI, with Pink Floyd transferred to the Parlophone Label Group during the sale. The Warner Music Group, in 2013, struck a deal with Universal to buy the Parlophone Label Group from EMI, acquiring publishing rights to Pink Floyd's back catalog and future releases in the process.
In a tweet on 5 July 2014, Samson released the album title and a projected release window of October 2014 to pre-empt a tabloid newspaper report. The announcement was followed by backing vocalist Durga McBroom posting a photo of her alongside Gilmour in the recording studio. Details about The Endless River were announced on Pink Floyd's website on 7 July.
Pink Floyd and Parlophone unveiled The Endless River on 22 September 2014, including the release date, artwork and track listing, accompanied by a promotional website, a hyperstitial for the Pink Floyd website. The site featured an artist's statement, photographs from the Division Bell sessions, pre-order details and two teasers, one featuring a 30-second snippet of "It's What We Do", and a television advertisement, featuring the album's geometric-based artwork. Pre-orders on physical and digital formats started the same day. Prominent installations of the album's artwork were placed around the world, including a four-sided 8m tall billboard placed in South Bank, London, and large-scale poster advertisements in cities such as Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Milan, New York and Sydney.
The album's only single, "Louder than Words", premiered on Chris Evans' breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 as a shortened radio edit. Gilmour and Mason appeared in an interview for BBC Radio 6 Music to promote the album and to discuss Wright's contributions. The track "Allons-y (1)" was made available to download from the iTunes Store on 4 November 2014. In the week before release, The Endless River became the most pre-ordered album in Amazon UK's history; the following week, the record was broken by III by Take That. There was no Endless River tour, as Gilmour said it was impossible without Wright.
Critical reception
On the review aggregator site Metacritic, The Endless River has a score of 58 based on 24 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times praised the nostalgic "Floydian" sound, reminiscent of Pink Floyd's work prior to The Wall (1979), and wrote: "How fitting that a band so accustomed to loss should close their account with an engrossing elegy to their own past." Cameron Cooper of The Music gave the album three and a half out of five, writing that it felt "less like a swansong and more like a final homage ... the lack of vocals gives the music more freedom, allowing it to speak for itself". In The Guardian, Alexis Petridis described it as "not a new album from an extant band, but an echo from the past – or a last, warm but slightly awkward group hug ... on those terms, it works just fine". He praised the lead single and final track "Louder than Words" as "stately, poignant and open-hearted". In Rolling Stone, David Fricke wrote: "Wright was the steady, binding majesty in the Floyd's explorations. This album is an unexpected, welcome epitaph." The Observer wrote that the album is "an understated affair but unmistakably the Floyd ... a pretty good way to call it a day."
J.C. Maçek III of PopMatters wrote: "Without the vocals, something is very clearly missing and the listener is left wanting more. While this makes for a good album, The Endless River is not quite fitting to serve as the final album of the greatest rock band of their kind, to say nothing of one of the greatest rock bands of any kind ever to perform." Andy Gill of The Independent called it "just aimless jamming, one long thread of Dave Gilmour's guitar against Rick Wright's pastel keyboards and Nick Mason's tentative percussion, with nary a melody of any distinction alighted upon for the duration .... without the sparking creativity of a Syd or Roger, all that's left is ghastly faux-psychedelic dinner-party muzak." The NME wrote that The Endless River was "a collection of spruced-up outtakes ... On those limited terms it works well enough, and it's interesting from a certain geeky perspective, but it's never quite as satisfying or substantial as you want it to be." Pitchfork wrote that The Endless River "is quintessentially and self-consciously Pink Floyd, for better or for worse ... it proves to be one of the few Pink Floyd releases that sounds like a step backwards, with nothing new to say and no new frontiers to explore." Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times called it "so excruciatingly dull (even by Pink Floyd's often-dull standards) that the band's name on the cover feels like a straight-up bait-and-switch".
Commercial performance
In the week before its release, The Endless River displaced Four by One Direction as the most pre-ordered album of all time on Amazon UK. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, with sales totaling 139,351 the third highest opening sales week of 2014, making it Pink Floyd's sixth UK number one. As of 27 November 2014, the vinyl edition had sold 6,000 copies, making it the fastest-selling UK vinyl release of 2014 and the fastest-selling since 1997. The album also debuted at number one in several other countries, including France, Germany, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, and Canada. In the US, it debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 with 170,000 copies sold in its first week; by January 2015, it had sold 355,000 copies there. Worldwide, The Endless River sold over 2.5 million copies in 2014.
Track listing
All tracks produced by David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, Youth and Andy Jackson.
Personnel
Adapted from the 2014 release
Pink Floyd
David Gilmour – guitars , EBow guitar , lead vocals , backing vocals , keyboards , piano , EMS VCS 3 , bass guitar , Hammond organ , percussion , voice samples , producer
Nick Mason – drums , percussion , rototoms , gong , voice samples
Richard Wright – Hammond organ , Farfisa organ , Royal Albert Hall Organ , piano , Rhodes piano , electric piano , keyboards , synthesiser , voice samples
Additional musicians
Guy Pratt – bass guitar
Bob Ezrin – bass guitar , additional keyboards , co-producer 1993 sessions
Andy Jackson – bass guitar , effects , engineer, producer, mixing, mastering of bonus content on DVD and Blu-ray
Jon Carin – synthesisers , percussion loop
Damon Iddins – additional keyboards
Anthony Moore – keyboards
Gilad Atzmon – tenor saxophone , clarinet
Durga McBroom – backing vocals
Louise Marshall – backing vocals
Sarah Brown – backing vocals
Stephen Hawking – voice sample
Youth – producer, additional programming, engineering, sound design, assorted synthesisers and keyboards
Eddie Bander – additional programming, engineering, sound design, assorted synthesisers and keyboards
Michael Rendall – additional programming, engineering, sound design, assorted synthesisers and keyboards
Escala:
Chantal Leverton – viola
Victoria Lyon – violin
Helen Nash – cello
Honor Watson – violin
Production and design
Phil Manzanera – producer
Damon Iddins – engineer
James Guthrie – mastering for CD
Joel Plante – mastering for CD
Doug Sax – mastering for the vinyl issue
Aubrey Powell – creative director
Stylorouge – sleeve design
Ahmed Emad Eldin – album cover concept
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
Certifications
Release schedule
Adaptations
Ian Emes, a British artist and film director, and Pink Floyd's original animator, created a film using The Endless River music that was released in 2019.
See also
List of music released posthumously
References
Bibliography
External links
The Endless River promotional website
2014 albums
albums produced by David Gilmour
albums produced by Phil Manzanera
albums produced by Youth (musician)
albums published posthumously
albums with cover art by Hipgnosis
ambient albums by English artists
blues rock albums by English artists
Columbia Records albums
Parlophone albums
Pink Floyd albums
Warner Records albums