Well, hopefully in mid-April many of you were able to get your hands on a copy of Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets 2025 Record Store Day release, of Echoes live. Produced as the band's contribution to this annual event that celebrates and supports independent record stores, it brings a superb Steven Wilson mix of the song, recorded in Germany last year, to the band's many fans. The performance matches the quality of the mix, and the presentation of the record matches as well. For those who haven't yet seen it, there's an etching on the B-side of the record, and Echoes itself plays from the inside out to maximise the sound quality.

From today, Thursday May 22nd, digital versions of Echoes have now been released for those of you who prefer this less tactile, but eminently more portable, format, and these include a Dolby ATMOS mix by none other than Steven Wilson.

As it is such a significant part of the Saucers live show, we wanted to know a bit more about Echoes from the band's perspective. How did it get included? How do you learn and rehearse such a large, multi-section piece as Echoes? What's it like to play? And why does the record play from the inside, outwards? Read on for the thoughts of the three members of the band who hadn't played it live before - Lee Harris, Gary Kemp and Dom Beken - and with thanks to Lee, we also have an exclusive clip of the band during a rehearsal of Echoes that you can see in the article below...

How did the inclusion of Echoes in the set happen?

LEE HARRIS: It would have been the elephant in the room if we didn't play it. If you think of a Saucers show as a book telling the story of Pink Floyd's early years and how they became what they did then leaving Echoes out would be like leaving the last chapter of the book out.

DOM BEKEN: It took a while… Echoes seems to live a sort of half-life in between the "early years", which is what The Saucers exist to explore and what we like to call Floyd's "Imperial Phase", so for a while we weren't certain we should go there, but the band developed to a point where we really felt there was no excuse not to tackle it. The close musical relationship between David and Rick on it was also a concern until we really felt we could do it justice.

GARY KEMP: It took a while for Echoes to be included. I think we were all slightly aware that it was "imperial Pink Floyd" and did we - could we - go near that, given that we started off with the Syd Barrett period very much, and Echoes seemed to be drawing to that later period of Dark Side Of The Moon? Also, it's a massive piece so it's very daunting.

But once we started talking about doing it, it just seemed that it was made for us. It was a track that Nick had co-written. It was very much from that era, and we wanted that challenge, we wanted to get hold of Echoes and see if we could make it work for ourselves in that small unit. Because this was the Pink Floyd era when they were still four members, not when it expanded into backing singers, and two guitar players, and ten people on stage.

It's a long piece - did you think it would prove a challenge to perform nightly?

LEE: Not musically but more in what the audience's expectation of it would be. Next to One Of These Days it would be the most recognisable song in the set and probably the one that meant most to the majority of the audience and that has proven to be the case.

It hadn't been played live by anyone from Pink Floyd since David Gilmour and Rick Wright played it 16 years before and I was confident that our audience, who are not wholly typically made up of people that go to see David (or even Roger Waters) would want to hear it live again.

DOM: We managed Atom Heart Mother, which I think is a more musically complex piece. Also, when you're on-stage playing music, time is an illusion!

When you're playing a two hour plus set, I don't find that ending one song and starting another really gives you a break, so I think of Echoes as four or five normal length songs stuck together! I guess orchestras do the same with a symphony… I suppose the audience gets a break from applauding so they're in good shape to show some extra love after a long piece.

How does a piece like Echoes come together in terms of you all learning it, and rehearsing it?

DOM: A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step… As I said, it's like a series of symphonic movements and the only extra thing to learn is how to get between them. But once the band is really listening to one another and talking musically it comes together remarkably naturally.

LEE: The first thing that happened was Dom and Nick got together and attempted to shorten the piece. Nick felt that Echoes repeated a lot of ideas. His recall was that Pink Floyd needed to fill the side of the album so instead of writing other songs they stuck to exploring it as a long piece. The edit that Dom and Nick sent us was nearly 13 minutes long and not dissimilar to the version on the PF compilation album of 2001. Gary and I in particular felt that if we were going to do the piece justice it really needed to be the full version. We didn't want people to feel shortchanged so we ended up using the Meddle version as the blueprint.

We / I ended up deciding that the second guitar solo at the beginning wasn't needed which funnily enough David seemed to have come to the same conclusion about, back in 2006. Quite a rare occurrence for guitar players to decide that there is one solo too many!

As far as learning it was concerned I made sure I knew the structure we were following but I listened to as many different versions as I could find and took inspiration from all of them (see below).

We rehearsed it full on for about 4 days in October 2021 and then reconvened for a couple of days just before the tour started in April 2022.

GARY: I think when you approach Echoes, you break it down into those sections and it seems much more simple. It's the very atmospheric introduction, it's the song itself, with Guy and myself singing. And that was tricky, getting me and Guy to work on that very tight harmony vocal, and restrain it as well, as it's sung in a very English, soft way, and that was really just the two of us with acoustic guitar just trying to get that sensibility right.

And then, there's also the first guitar solo, that I take on, and I suppose my reference for that was always Meddle, and the very first recording of the album, taking some of those melodies, trying to find some of those sounds. I've always been wary not to try and impersonate David, because we're not a tribute act, but obviously there's a voice in there that you want to try and capture and come close to, and still retain some of your own personality.

And then of course there's the really noisy Space Jam part that goes on between me and Dom, and in a way that's taken the longest to get together, working between the two of us, and finding the right resolution of his part, going into my part. Space Jam was I think the trickiest part of the whole piece for me, and that conversation that Dom and I have together. But it's also great fun to play - that guitar part is so noisy, and I love playing that! It's so big and full, and that's always what made you want to get on stage in the first place as a kid.

The middle section I don't play on at all, that's my chance to sit back. I just sort of blend into it coming out of Space Jam, the seagulls part, if you like. I sort of help cross-dissolve into what Lee's going to play and fade out of the Space Jam part. It's nice to sit back at that point and enjoy what's going on. I often take a look to my right and Nick and I have a little smile together as he sits there waiting for his moment. And we just listen to these weird effects that are going on, and see how the audience are just loving it.

And I look forward to the bit when I come back in with the...I don't know what you call that section - diggida diggida diggida - between me and Lee, we create this pulse that allows Nick to play his drum solo over.

And that was really exciting as well, because this is Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets, and we all get to show off a bit, but this is where Nick got to play his drum solo, and the focus of attention all went to him on stage for quite a few bars, and I think that was really important.

I think that's one of the reasons that I wanted Echoes to be in the set, because it really was his opportunity to shine, and he does. And of course, it's such an amazing moment when it goes into that sort of folk-dance thing that happens, which really feels like the sun has come out, and I always love that bit. I can feel the audience smiling, and sometimes crying at that point, because it's so euphoric. And then it chills out, and we go back into the verse.

The outro is beautiful, what Lee does solo-wise on his guitar, it's a beautiful sound he has achieved with the compressors and the delays, and I just play a swell guitar in the background, that's like a sort of orchestral violin type guitar. And of course, then the focus finally goes on to Dom, and back to the pings.

I love the silence that we decided to have before the song started. The space in the dark, from the finish of the last song, just holding back before that first ping in the dark, and the audience always erupt. That's a great moment, but it's also a nerve-wracking moment, because you know what's ahead of you. It's 24 minutes of intensity, and you want to get every bit right. It's true to say about the Pink Floyd audience is that they are very particular, and granular I think is probably the word, about the kind of music you are making.

Was there a specific performance of it that you had in mind for the Saucers? Which versions were used for reference while developing it for your shows?

DOM: For me, none. Really, not one single version. I think we all listened incessantly to any recorded versions we could get our hands on and internalised the moments from each that chimed most with us. As Lee mentioned, Nick and I spent a day in my home studio using the original studio version from Meddle and editing the sections to form a basic template. Amusingly, we were super economic with it and came up with a "best of Echoes" edit which was down to under 10 minutes… of course as soon as we got in the room with Lee, Gary and Guy the ideas started flowing and it more than doubled in length… quite justifiably so.

LEE: As I said, the blueprint was the Meddle version. As far as my parts are concerned I didn't want to replicate that glissando/violin type sound David did on Meddle or the 70's live versions because I already do that sound (by rubbing a slide on the strings) in A Saucerful Of Secrets and didn't want to repeat it. Gary stepped up to do that with his e-bow so I am able to play to my strengths as a blues player and took inspiration for my beginning and ending solos from David's 2006 version. Not so much the notes he played but the sound.

On the verses I use a phaser as David did in some 70's live versions. For the Space Jam / funky section there is a really cool lick that David plays that is kind of buried in the mix that I always incorporate which involves switching back and forth to the bridge pickup very quickly.

The chugging sound as we call it that comes in after the seagull section I tried to get close to the Wembley 1974 version although I'm using the phaser pedal and not a revolving speaker.

I developed my beginning and ending guitar solos over the first 60 shows we played In 2022.

Should you perform more dates at some point, could the success of Echoes lead to other pieces from the era? The Man and The Journey (without the woodwork or cooking)? The Embryo? Or is there only room for one seminal epic piece in the set (with AHM being truncated)?

DOM: Well, the future isn't very clear at the moment but there's no sense that we have finished yet…

LEE: As much as I'd like to add another long piece to the set - ESPECIALLY if it involves cooking haha - I think we'd be looking at a set that is too long. The Saucers seem to have got to a point where in the same way that everyone else has those songs from the later years that THEY have to play we now have all these songs WE have to play from the early years. Do we drop Echoes to play Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast and annoy a chunk of the audience? Do we cut Arnold Layne to play Chapter 24 or even Set The Controls for Sysyphus?!

The way that the Saucers have always worked is that we don't play any one song that any one band member really dislikes. It works because there aren't any songs that you aren't looking forward to playing but it does mean that there are going to be pieces that just don't get played.

Did Echoes bring any particular challenges on a night-by-night basis?

LEE: Perhaps for Dom who only has two hands!

DOM: There was a short but interesting period on the tour when it seemed like a good idea to black out the lighting at the beginning of Echoes so I had to find the right note on the piano for the "ping" without being able to see a thing. When you only have one note to play and you fluff it, it's a "can the ground open up and swallow me?" moment. My tech, Bob rigged up an ingenious LED and fluorescent tape system so the right note would glow.

The opening and closing of Echoes also features Lee and I improvising together in a sort of musical conversation but as he is far stage right and I am far stage left there are some venues where it's almost impossible for Gary and Guy to find a place to stand without blocking our view of one another and we're left frantically craning our necks…

It looks like a fun piece to play, and always seems to be a fan favourite in the shows - how is it for you guys?

LEE: I have a saying… Perhaps pretentious but… We don't play Echoes. Echoes plays us.

We've played it nearly 140 times live and it never gets boring. It really does feel like you are on an epic journey when you are playing it except it seems to go by in 5 minutes.

More often than not there will be people in the audience with tears in their eyes. It means so much to so many and it is an absolute honour to play it.

DOM: It's epic… every performance is a sort of conversation and dance with the audience and their reaction really affects the performance on stage. There have been nights when I look out from behind the piano during the introduction and I also see people in the front row with tears in their eyes. On the assumption they are tears of joy, that's quite magical.

How has your playing of Echoes changed since you first started playing it, in rehearsal, then live?

LEE: In rehearsals it was around the 18 minute mark. By opening night in Dublin it was 20. We are now at over 23 minutes! Some of those early performances were quite loose looking back on them. Little things change here and there every night which make every show different. It may be a slight rhythmic change or the emphasis on notes in a solo. We did add our own bits to the piece and two standouts for me… Dom had a fantastic idea which is the thunder strike you hear when I've finished the seagull section. It fits perfectly within the piece and in my mind it takes us out of that section which I think of as night and into the sunrise that follows. Also Guy's addition of his Taurus bass pedals was a brilliant move especially following Nick's part on the toms - euphoric. These are our own small embellishments/changes but perfectly illustrate what our band is all about.

DOM: In our opinion it just keeps getting better, and that's how we keep up our enthusiasm. Every night after we play our sound engineer pings over a recording which I analyse and make notes on what could be better the next night and it just carries on evolving.

Lee, what equipment do you use during the piece?

LEE: I had my wah wah customised for the seagull sound by Mike at Analog Man. I flick a switch which reverses the input and output. Other than that it's straightforward. A compressor, phaser, overdrive, distortion and delay pedal. Not all at the same time!

When did you decide to hold the guitar above you during the seagull section - and does that complicate the playing?

LEE: Only in as much as it's not as light as I'd like it to be. When we started performing it I realised that people didn't know the sound was coming from me. As far as they were concerned I was just standing twiddling the knobs on the guitar for no reason. After talking to our lighting director PK about it he said I should hold it up. So that is done purely for theatrics. I want the audience to know it's live and not a prerecorded sound or synth part. I want those close enough to see how it's done…

Dom, what equipment do YOU use during the piece?

DOM: I'm playing a piano which I sampled myself into Logic Pro. The sound Rick discovered for the piano came from running the microphone signal from the piano through a Leslie cabinet (a rotating speaker usually used for creating the sort of "wobbly" sound on a Hammond organ.) A Leslie cabinet is enormous and wouldn't fit on a theatre stage along with our other backline, so after a lot of experiments I settled on an early (Mark 1) version of Hughes and Kettners' Rotosphere. There are so many keyboard sounds and sections that I won't bore you with every single detail but my Moog Subsequent 37 handles a lot of lead synth lines and I have a board full of guitar pedals connected up like a sort of wild modular synth which I use to generate sound effects during the ambient sections. There's several Moogerfoogers, delay lines, filters and phasers etc. which I have feeding back on one another to get various bleeps, bloops and swooshes.

Echoes is commonly cited as a conversation between keyboards and guitar: how quickly were you able to develop that between the pair of you?

LEE: I don't recall Echoes being cited as that until David and Rick had resurrected it in 2006. By that time they were afforded nearly 40 years worth of experience of playing together (and apart) and it was the perfect vehicle for them to share that musical gift with us.

Dom and I at this point only have about 5 years of playing together so it's more of a natter than a conversation… although hopefully a succinct one!

DOM: Lee and I have been playing this music together since 2017 and it's become a close musical as well as personal friendship, so it really was a case of what came naturally. I listen closely to what Lee is doing and I'm grateful to him for how much attention he pays back to what I'm doing which results in some nice reinterpretations of the melodies each of us come up with.

Did you feel uneasy initially with tackling Echoes, with that concept of it being called a conversation between Rick and David? Arguably you are helping to keep his memory alive playing it as a tribute, much like any artist who has sadly died - Syd is a good example.

DOM: Well, yes but also no. When we started the Saucers I felt respectfully nervous about having Rick's role in this new band, but countered it by accepting that whilst Rick's playing has influenced mine a great deal, I would be inspired by the way he improvised and drew on his jazz and classical influences to make the keyboards his own. I do the same so that I'm not impersonating Rick but playing with a similar mind set.

LEE: I didn't feel uneasy about it because I was in a band with Nick and he has a co-write on the song and going forward if anyone had a reason to play it then it would be this band and this project.

The point is yes… that version from 2006 can be described like that for reasons I gave in the last question but the Meddle version and the 70's live versions are a different vibe. As far as playing these songs as a tribute to Syd and Rick well yes absolutely. I don't see any symphony orchestras not playing Beethoven, Mozart or Tchaikovsky etc because they have died and I think it is entirely fitting that we play these songs in the same concert halls that those symphony orchestras play in. They deserve to be treated with the same respect.

Dom, did you need to create any new "sounds" for this - such as the ping - or did you already have them to hand?

DOM: Yes, lots… there are the crows and a whole bunch of other sound effects, pads and lead synth sounds which I programmed from scratch so they fitted into our arrangement and sound. The ping, however, is exactly the same patch as the rest of the "piano through a Leslie" sound – it's just right up the dusty end of the piano!

Your keyboard setup looks pretty complex - how do you keep track of all the appropriate keys and settings throughout the show? Is Echoes more of a challenge for you than other songs?

DOM: Like everything, it's easy when you know how… Also, preparation! I have a pretty poor memory to be honest so many of the patch changes are handled by software on the computer and all I need do is hit "next setting". For those which can't be computer controlled I have a bunch of notes and reminders on the iPad you might have seen lurking in the rig. (So no, I'm not watching the football during the show!)

It took a while before Echoes was added to the set; are there any songs you'd love to try live but either have had them vetoed, knew they weren't suitable, or just not yet suggested?

LEE: I've always fancied doing Matilda Mother, Scream Thy Last Scream, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, Cymbaline and many more but someone else in the band hasn't.

Dom and I have chatted about maybe when the Saucers are over looking at getting together with some other Pink Floyd alumni and other players and doing something with the whole Pink Floyd songbook that isn't as well explored. I think it could be a great night out and like the Saucers offers something different. We'll see.

Finally, thinking about the recent Record Store Day, what are your thoughts on the Echoes vinyl release, how it has been presented (cut inside out, the etching on the back, and the packaging), and the ATMOS version that Steven Wilson has created (if you've heard it yet)?

LEE: The ATMOS mix Steven has done [which is now online] is really fun. The stereo mix… I've played that many times but at time of writing haven't had my vinyl yet so have yet to experience that. I have to stress I absolutely LOVE what Steven has done. Everyone is audible and in the right place and it just sounds like us.

DOM: I'm delighted with how its turned out and was very happy to have been able to have a fair bit of input as well. Having Steven Wilson mix it was especially pertinent to my mind. Steven not only has a huge love of Floyd and Echoes in particular but he also mixes in a both creative and artistically sympathetic way which I personally love. He balanced the live feel of the recording with a hi-fi sensibility which I'm very happy with: there's no doubt this is a live unedited one-take performance in front of an audience but there's no compromise in how the sound is presented for the home listener. The bottom end is solid, the high end sparkles and there is space throughout the spectrum for each instrument to be heard and sit in the place we envisaged for the arrangement. A proper ensemble. Only someone as intimately familiar with the piece as Steven could have managed this.

The vinyl pressing was also a worry for me: one of the greatest drawbacks of the vinyl format is the fact the disc spins at a constant 33rpm and the needle stays still. This means it is travelling more quickly through the groove at the outside of the record than it does in the middle. The result is that the amount of loudness, bass and detail you can get from a vinyl record decreases as the needle travels from the outside to the inside. In addition, the more music you try to squeeze onto one side of a vinyl record the narrower the grooves become which further restricts how much detail you can get. Our version of Echoes is right up to the limit in terms of duration for one side of a vinyl LP and I was worried that with such as dynamic piece of music, vinyl would just not be able to re-produce the crescendo and finale of it satisfactorily. Not great for a release to celebrate Record Store Day!

I had heard of "Inside Out" or "Reverse Pressed" vinyl before – it solves the problem with pieces which start quiet and finish loud by reversing the direction of the spiral groove so the music begins in the centre of the disc. However, we also really wanted to have Miles Showell at Abbey Road master Echoes for vinyl. Miles only uses Neumann cutting lathes to make his masters (they are considered the best) and I understood that these lathes are impossible to make cut a reversed groove. Sometime earlier this year Nick and I met Miles at a listening session where he revealed he had finally discovered how to modify his Neumann and brought along an example he'd mastered… and it sounded absolutely incredible. It was at that moment I decided we should do the same for Echoes, so although it's not the first "Inside out" record, I think it's the first release cut on the revered Neumann lathe at Abbey Road.

GARY: We've very excited to have had Steven Wilson working on this. Of course, Steven is ubiquitous now; he's worked on my last solo album, he's worked on the new Pink Floyd Pompeii album and film, and we were thrilled to have him work on this. Steven is a genius at doing ATMOS mixes, including for this, and he did the stereo mix as well. I've sat in his studio quite often and listened to him manipulate sounds, and he's very discerning but he's very loyal and true to the band, and to what we want, and to what the Pink Floyd audience want. If anyone knows what they want, it's Steven Wilson!

When Dom suggested that the record could be played from the inside out, and I'm sure he's explained this elsewhere, the inside of the record, of a piece of vinyl, has less bass. Of course, the bass isn't really playing on the intro of Echoes, so why not start it there, and then the better quality comes later? That's very rarely done, I don't know if anyone's done this. I've certainly never had a piece of vinyl in my collection that I play from the inside out, so that's got to be one of the reasons for wanting this record! I'm going to be showing it at parties and dinner parties for a good few months to come.

Our fulsome thanks to Lee, Dom and Gary for taking the time to give such great answers to these questions, giving an insight not just into how Echoes became a significant part of the Saucers' set, but how the band developed the performance, and what their thoughts are on it, and the recent release as a physical entity for Record Store Day, and the subsequent digital release in various formats on all the normal platforms. Thanks so much fellas!