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Home arrow Reviews arrow Albums arrow The Floydian Propulsion Project - Floydhead
The Floydian Propulsion Project - Floydhead Print E-mail

On Independent Records. Available from Floydhead.com. Track listing at foot of review. Please note that no remix albums are approved by the band themselves, their management, or their record company.

Floydhead - The Floydian Propulsion ProjectSince the mid 1990s, there have been a rash of remixes and "ambient" mixes of Pink Floyd work. On the whole, little technical ability or musical thought has gone into them. A bit of echo or boosted bass doesn't make a good remix! But then Floydhead's "Floydian Propulsion Project" arrived at Brain Damage...

The project was obviously undertaken by someone with a great knowledge and great love, of Pink Floyd's music. Hidden away amongst the lush soundscape are obscure oddities and gems from the band's recorded history, melded together in a fascinating, and refreshing, way.

Whilst, as I say, may remix projects add little to the original songs, Seth and the rest of the Floydhead crew have really gone to town, with the originals acting just as a starting point, using their own instrumentation along with samples and snippets that are so clean, it's as if they had access to the master tapes... impressive stuff.

This is the latest iteration (version 3) of the album, which has been polished and augmented with new sounds and new tracks... so owners of previous versions might still be interested in getting hold of this one.


Track one sets the scene with Heartbeat, Pigmeat given a more contemporary feel, adding in dialog from Tonite Let's All Make Love In London. Hey You follows, is given the club treatment, and apart from a loop of David Gilmour's vocal, is hardly recognisable. Any Colour You Like is given a polish and a 21st century flavour whilst keeping its core and unique sound.

Is There Anybody Out There has a mournful menace and thankfully keeps the wonderful acoustic guitar and strings of the original - one of the definate stand-out tracks. Another Brick part 1 follows, and seems to have much more of a kick than the original. Next up, Terminal Frost, and like the 1987 version, is the least interesting track on the album. An unusual choice for the project, as well...

Moving on to one of three very short, sub-1 minute tracks found here - One Of My Days, which updates in great style the rapid tuning through those 13 channels of shit, followed by a skillful meld of New Machine, Empty Spaces, and Welcome To The Machine.

Any album using a sample of The Muppets' "Pigs In Space" has to be a winner, and what better way of kicking off Pigs On The Wing? A nice, extended version, akin to the 8-track version with Snowy White.

Effervescing elephants, division bells, several small creatures, and much more, kick off Drooling and Raving, which owes more to Echoes and Embryo than anything else. A track with absolutely loads of different Floyd songs in it - how many can you spot? A great, atmospheric Signs Of Life follows, with a surprise addition at the end that works well. Two Suns In The Sunset starts in a conventional way then enjoys some complementary guitar work before merging into the tabla driven If. The heavy Indian feel takes the track into a fascinating new direction.

A bit of Pink Anderson leads to Keep Talking, with different Stephen Hawking dialogue and a kicking beat, and quickly becomes hard to recognise from the original, with ethereal bits of the familiar version drifting in the background. Several Small Species... - now surely with the officially longest song title ever (see below) - gets an update, and throws elements of early and late period Floyd songs in the mix. "All pretty avand-gard really"...

There's a fairly cheesy keyboard opener to Have A Cigar - and with the vocoder vocals, for me, one of the more dispensible tracks present. The album concludes with Obscured By Clouds and Let There Be More Light. ...Light gets a very short outing before a muzak version of Ticket To Ride sings out, in a nod to the end of Dark Side Of The Moon. Obscured, from the eponymous album (a sadly overlooked part of the band's canon) gets treated to some echo and some Jarre-esque electronica, without spoiling the feel of the track.


A solid, eminently listenable and hugely enjoyable collection - the amount of time and effort Seth and the other Floydheads have put into it is evident. It certainly bears repeated playings well - if only to spot the bits you missed in the first place! The album is a real homage to the Floyd's musicality, imagination and variety. It's one that we'll be playing in years to come, and we are sure you will too!


Track listing:

  1. Heartbeat, Pigmeat (UFO Technicolour Dream) Mix
  2. Hey You (Girls of the Rare Breed) Mix
  3. Any Colour You Like (As Long as it's Black) Mix
  4. Is There Anybody Out There? (Panoramic Paralysis) Mix
  5. Another Brick Part 1 (Ste-V's GB) Mix
  6. Terminal Frost (BeatBox Rocker) Mix
  7. One of My Days
  8. A New Machine (Empty Space : Welcome to the New Machine) Mix
  9. Pigs on the Wing (Pigs in Space) Mix
  10. Drooling and Raving
  11. Signs of Life (All Aboard the Astoria / Sea of Chaos) Mix
  12. Two Suns in the Sunset (Electropsychedeliatric Blitzkrieg) Mix
  13. If (The Tablamatic Theory) Mix
  14. The Pink Anderson Gangsta Blues
  15. Keep Talking (Mind of God) Mix
  16. Several Species of Small Fury Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict (More than a few classes of Diminutive Hirsute Organisms Amassing as one in an Astral Cavern and Rocking-out with a monolith whilst avoiding a Quantum Hyperspace Paradox) Mix
  17. Have a Cigar (Close, but no Cigar) Mix
  18. Obscured by Clouds (Moon, American, Floyd) Mix
  19. Let There be More (Lite) Mix
  20. Publius Enigma
 
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