The Endless River has as its starting point the music that came from the 1993 Division Bell sessions, when David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason played freely together at Britannia Row and Astoria studios. This was the first time they had done so since the ‘Wish You Were Here’ sessions in the seventies. Those sessions resulted in The Division Bell, the band’s last studio album.
In 2013 David Gilmour and Nick Mason revisited the music from those sessions and decided that the tracks should be made available as part of the Pink Floyd repertoire. It would be the last time the three of them would be heard together. The band have spent the last year recording and upgrading the music, using the advantages of modern studio technology to create The Endless River.
The Endless River is a tribute to Rick Wright, whose keyboards are at the heart of the Pink Floyd sound. It is a mainly instrumental album with one song, ‘Louder Than Words’, (with new lyrics by novelist Polly Samson), arranged across four sides and produced by David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, Youth and Andy Jackson.
‘Louder Than Words’, the new song by Pink Floyd, had its first radio play on BBC Radio 2's Chris Evans show (9 October).
‘Louder Than Words’ is performed by Pink Floyd. Taken from David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason's 1993 Division Bell sessions it has new lyrics by writer and Division Bell lyricist Polly Samson.
David Gilmour said: "The music for Louder Than Words is from those final sessions, the three of us playing together on the houseboat Astoria with Rick's idiosyncratic keyboards reminding me now that you don't know what you've got until it's gone. At the start of the album I asked Polly to write the lyrics. She felt that what I played her didn't need words, that hearing us play was more interesting. In the end she wrote just this one, which expresses, beautifully I think, the way the three of us, me, Nick and Rick have something when we play together, that has a magic that is louder than words".
Release date: 10 November 2014
Track list:
Things Left Unsaid
It's What We Do
Ebb and Flow
Sum
Skins
Unsung
Anisina
The Lost Art of Conversation
On Noodle Street
Night Light
Allons-y (1)
Autumn '68
Allons-y (2)
Talkin' Hawkin'
Calling
Eyes to Pearls
Surfacing
Louder Than Words