Pink Floyd continues to release reissue projects from different periods of the group’s past. An upgrade of the original Delicate Sound of Thunder serves as a follow-up to 2019’s The Later Years box, as the double live album from 1988 returns in several formats – including a three-album vinyl set, a two-CD edition, Blu-ray and DVD formats, as well as a four-disc box that includes two CDs, a DVD and a Blu-ray.
The DVD and Blu-ray in the four-disc box features five additional performances more than the 16, not previously available on the Later Years box, or standalone DVD, or Blu-ray. Along with the four-disc box, the vinyl set is what most Pink Floyd fans will want to have – even if they have the Later Years box, as it only included two seven-inch vinyl singles.
The vinyl edition of Delicate Sound of Thunder features nine additional performances not included on the original double album. This 23-track count is the same as the new double-CD set. Additionally, the three-album set is packaged in a slip case, includes a 24-page booklet and the albums are housed in poly-lined sleeves in individual album jackets. The albums are pressed on 180-gram vinyl and the tracks were remixed from the original master tapes.
Pink Floyd’s performances were taken from five August 1988 shows at the Nassau Coliseum in New York, on the heels of the release of 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason – their first album after the departure of Roger Waters. The core group of David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright was joined by Jon Carin, Tim Renwick, Guy Pratt, Gary Wallis and Scott Page, with Margret Taylor, Rachel Fury and Durga McBroom on backing vocals.
Delicate Sound of Thunder kicks off with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts 1-5” and then for the rest of the first album and Side A of the second album, there are 10 songs from Momentary Lapse of Reason. After the only song that dates to Pink Floyd’s early career, “One of These Days” from Meddle, the rest of the set features music from Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and then one more song from A Momentary Lapse of Reason. There are no songs from Animals or The Final Cut.
Not only are there additional performances included on this reissue, but several tracks – “Sorrow,” “On the Turning Away,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Dogs of War,” “Another Brick in the Wall, (Part Two),” “Us and Them,” “Run Like Hell” and “Time” – feature unedited versions available now for the first time on vinyl. Occasional editing has been done to remove an ’80s-era musical gloss that sometimes marred the original performances, notably on “Money” and “Learning to Fly.”
Hearing these tracks in their remixed and in some cases dramatically changed ways, straight through on all three vinyl discs, is about the best official live album Pink Floyd audio experience – outside of the rare Pulse four-LP analog vinyl set.
Delicate Sound of Thunder is, in fact, one of only three official stand-alone live Pink Floyd albums. Pulse was released in 1995 as a four-LP or two-CD set from the tour to support The Division Bell, another post-Roger Waters project. The third is Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, released on CD in 2000. Prior to that, one disc of the 1969 double-album Ummagumma contained live material.
Neither Is There Anybody Out There? nor Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii – originally issued in 1972 on film with a subsequent releases on DVD in 2000 and on compact disc in 2016 as part of The Early Years box – has been reissued on vinyl. Pink Floyd fans, I’m sure, would love to have all of this concert material on their turntables in the future.
There is also a wide assortment of live material from many periods in Pink Floyd’s career to draw from on the Early Years and Later Years sets that would make for excellent vinyl releases. Who knows what else lurks in the vast Pink Floyd archives? Releasing the new mix of A Momentary Lapse of Reason would be the most obvious next vinyl project that fans would love to see.
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