Definitely Not Another Brick In The Wall!

It was 2005 and my uncle introduced me to this artist. I was hooked! 

The first song I heard was comfortably numb and it was right there I fell in love with the style of music. This song could relax you in the most tensed of situations. Retrospectively, it usually makes me think of the days I was a kid. As a kid, I used to suffer from severe asthma attacks and I used to lie on the bed gazing through the window sill at trees swaying to a tune made by air. It used to relax me a lot then. It was haunting. And a song to bring out those memories from a deep brain is simply an amazing feat. Each one of us would have had such abstract thoughts in our childhood which we would probably not admit today. But, each one of us will have some abstract memory flashing in our eyes if you'd listen to 'comfortably numb'. 

The guitar literally sings in Gilmour's solos. And there is something in the singing of the guitars, that will relax you in any given tensed moment, like a shot of morphine during a pain attack. And like morphine, it lets your thoughts wander into the space of your mind; a kind of introspection. It lets you rest and face things with the numbness of objectivity. Psychelic rock to the core, not the fuzzy ones. This one is real beautiful. Colorful patterns, slurred imagery in a great musical form is something not many can produce.

And to think of abstraction in every song in a commercial format where every other song relaxes on romance or other insane abstraction is a completely different ball game. Almost all songs evoke present thoughts. But for music to invoke thoughts on a positive plane and feel about it is an accomplishment in itself. 

Most musicians always talk about the technical aspects of music in a song. But I differ in it, because any song's motive is to emote. It has to make you feel. That's the purpose of a song, entertain. Technically, it might be a great song, but if it can't make you feel, there's no point in music or emotion. I've also had critics exclaim at the style of music presented by Pink Floyd. They exclaim it to be aberrations in a bad form. But, why can't aberrations be great to listen? It is not perfection that make human beings interesting to watch. It is only their aberrations that make them an interesting watch. Abstractly, we can confirm that only aberrations entertain. 

Another funny yet interesting comparison is to that of being single. If anybody listens to Pink Floyd, he is perceived as a desperate single bad-for-dating 'thing'. Well, it is actually, sensible-and-happy-to-be-single 'things' that listen to them. It kind of puts them in focus of what can be achieved by sensibility and sonic experimentation when there are all those romantic songs out there which just wants to make a mark in a listener's mind for a temporal time frame. You can listen to PF any time, but I don't think that happens with all the romantic numbers except for a few numbers.

And to think of sonic experimentation, Gilmour's voice and guitar were always experimented. Take the slide guitar for instance. It does make a lot of difference and does create an ambience that no other instrument tries to create. The ambient sounds that come part of any song like ordinary irrelevant sounds of everyday life like, coins clinging, sounds of an airplane, distant sounds of conversations, telephone clicking, creates a mood to every song and the message of the song is kind of introduced in these indistinguishable voices / sounds. Heavy and sensible synthesis of guitars create a whole lot of effect to the ambience. If you had listened to enigma, you would be able to appreciate the ambience setting. But, honestly Enigma's setting is highly negative. It takes a great deal of understanding of sounds to create a positive ambience which is pretty much acquired by PF. And to think of experimentation, 'Keep Talking' is a song that will inspire experimentation. Gilmour sings with a voice synthesizer that nearly sounds like an electric guitar with the effects pedal.... and it talks!

Some of the best compositions are Comfortably numb, brain damage, high hopes, keep talking, another brick in the wall, shine on you crazy diamond (the best!). I recently listened to Ummagumma and man... It is one crazy experimentation!


All in all, not many will like this genre of songs. But for those who like, it is like a marijuana addiction. It just grows onto you. I'm not sure whether this is a good appreciation to Pink Floyd, but I've grown into an ardent fan of PF and it feels really good to have lived in the times of such musicians.