A Soniclovenoize re-imagining
Side A:
1. Vegetable Man
2. Apples and Oranges
3. Late Night
4. Remember A Day
5. a) Golden Hair
b) Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun
Side B:
6. Lanky, Part One
7. Paint Box
8. Clowns and Jugglers
9. Scream Thy Last Scream
10. Jugband Blues
Here is the first of a trilogy of my re-imagined albums that postulate "What if Syd Barrett hadn't been dismissed from Pink Floyd?" The Shape of Questions to Heaven is the theoretical 1968 follow up to 1967's The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, and culls material from Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets sessions and Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs sessions to create a second album of Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd, an album that most certainly never was.
To create this second Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd album, we must put forth very specific constrictions of what source material to include. The first of the source material would be the only songs on A Saucerful of Secrets to feature Syd Barrett: Remember a Day, Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun and of course Jugband Blues. More Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd songs were recorded during these late 1967 recording sessions which didn't make the album that we can also include: the single release Apples and Oranges and Paint Box (taken from the Piper At The Gates of Dawn 40th Anniversary remaster and Relics, respectively) as well as the unreleased Barrett-penned Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream (taken from The Syd Barrett Tapes bootleg). Already we have more than half an album!
The sequence of The Shape of Questions to Heaven was heavily influenced by its actual previous album The Piper At The Gates of Dawn but almost all of the tracks were crossfaded to create a continuous two sides of music (a tactic Pink Floyd would later explore in the following years). My re-imagining begins with a duo of uptempo rockers (Vegetable Man and Apples and Oranges) before a low-key decent with the following two songs (Late Night and Remember The Day), allowing the side to slowly wind down. Side A concludes with an original edit of Golden Hair and Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun, crossfaded into each other creating a seven-minute epic. Although placed with a record-flip in-between, the psychedelic-jazz jam Lanky, Part One continues the mood set by the previous suite, even staying in the same key and mode. After the rare stereo mix of Richard Wrightís Paint Box, the album picks up for a glorious and increasingly paranoid finish with Clowns and Jugglers, Scream Thy last Scream and the prophetic Jugband Blues.
Sources used:
Pink Floyd - A Saucerful of Secrets (1994 remaster)
Pink Floyd - The Piper at The Gates of Dawn (2007 Remaster)
Pink Floyd - Relics (1996 reissue)
Pink Floyd - The Syd Barrett Tapes (bootleg, 2008 Needledrop Records)
Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs (1994 Harvest remaster)
Syd Barrett - Opal (1994 Harvest remaster)
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