The Piper at the Gates of Dawn [3-CD Deluxe Edition] (Import)

EMI Records managed to miss marking the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album, but they just about made up for it with this triple-CD set, packaged in a handsome hardcover book format. It offers fans of the early Pink Floyd a chance to do something for the first time in the CD era (and for the first time since the year 1967) -- immerse themselves, up to the neck at least (if not quite to the top of the head) in the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd sound. EMI pulled out all the stops with this triple-disc set commemorating the 40th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, containing the stereo and mono mixes of the album on two separate digital platters, and augmenting them with a bonus CD containing the band's three early singles, plus two previously unreleased alternate takes (an "alternative version" of "Matilda Mother" and "Take 6" of "Interstellar Overdrive"). A more modestly packaged and priced double-CD set, containing just the mono and stereo album mixes, was also released, intended to satisfy the more budget-conscious fans out there, but the fact is that anyone who cares about early Pink Floyd, or who would be interested in hearing the two different mixes of Piper, is precisely the kind of listener who would want the third disc -- apart from presence of the rarities and the single-only sides (five songs that are as good as anything on Piper), the triple-disc includes a replication of Syd Barrett's collage artwork from 1965. This is a wonderful feature that almost makes up for the lack of liner notes outside of photos and lyrics; perhaps the story of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is well known to the collectors who would invest in this triple-disc set, but a deluxe edition such as this cries out for historical notes. Nevertheless, this is a very nice set and it would be worthwhile if it simply reissued the music, for this is an album that truly does warrant close examinations of the mono and stereo mixes, as they are subtly but notably different from each other -- the balances of instruments are very different on some of the songs, and it seems as though some ideas that were tried for the mono mix (which, naturally, came first) on particular songs were abandoned for the stereo mix, while other ideas for the sound were, of course, unique to the stereo version. Additionally, the five songs released on singles by the group that year, "Arnold Layne," "Candy and a Currant Bun," "See Emily Play," "Apples and Oranges," and "Paintbox," were all superb pieces of psychedelic pop, funny and cutting lyrically with lots of layers, in their music as well as their meanings, to be enjoyed and savored (a sixth song, "The Scarecrow," came from the album); and while the French edit of "Interstellar Overdrive" and a stereo mix of "Apples and Oranges," may sound like we're getting into outre minutiae, along with the two alternate takes they're all distinctly different from the established versions. The assembling of all of this material in one place -- which, astonishingly, has never been done before -- allows us the most thorough overview yet achieved of the group's surviving work from 1967, which also represented the peak of Syd Barrett's tenure with the band. He would become a less substantial and sustained, more erratic presence from then on until his departure in 1968. And while even this set isn't complete in that regard -- the makers would have had to license the Peter Whitehead-recorded pre-EMI Pink Floyd recordings done in connection with the director's Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, and searched out more outtakes (of which none apparently survive), as well as including "Remember a Day," which was recorded at the Piper sessions but not released until a year later -- it is the most concentrated and intensive look ever given at this glorious and all-too-brief period in the band's history. For those listeners who recognize that importance, this is a necessary reissue -- and for those who don't, and need to discover the early Floyd and what they were about, it's every bit as essential. Indeed, for that group of listeners, it's a revelation-in-the-making. ~ Bruce Eder & Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi