release date: Aug. 5, 1967
format: digital
[album rate: 4 / 5]
producer: Norman Smith
label: EMI Columbia - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Astronomy Domine" - 2. "Lucifer Sam" - 4. "Flaming" - 7. "Interstellar Overdrive" - 8. "The Gnome" - 10. "Scarecrow" - 11. "Bike"
Studio debut album by Pink Floyd formed and consisting of Syd Barrett on lead guitar and vocals, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, Richard Wright on organ, piano, and vocals, and with Nick Mason on drums and percussion. 8 out of 11 tracks here are composed and written solely by Syd Barrett, which basically was the case at the early stage of the band at a time when psychedelic rock was the predominant style of the band. The remaining tracks are credited the band and Waters (#6). The album is enlisted in a number of best of albums, and is alongside the bands second album A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) lauded for being the the first real psychedelic rock albums where Pink Floyd takes experimental rock to new territories. The US version of the album also included the band's first huge single success "See Emily Play", although, that track seems very much out of sync with the rest of the compositions except perhaps from "The Gnome". Today, the album is music history. I don't find it great nor very interesting but in a musical perspective, the album is outstandingly original, and therefore enlisted in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". Needles to say, the album has been reissued in a number of editions - most noteworthy, I recon, is the "40th Anniversary Edition", which comes in a 2 and 3-disc version of the album with disc 1 containing the mono mix and with disc 2 containing a stereo version of the original European edition of the album. The bonus disc edition (disc 3) also contains the band's first three singles alongside several outtakes.
[ allmusic.com, Rolling Stone Album Guide, Q Magazine 5 / 5, The Daily Telegraph 4 / 5 stars ]
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