Pink Floyd - Delicate Sound Of Thunder - The Complete 1987-1988

Pink Floyd
Delicate Sound Of Thunder - The Complete 1987-1988 Tour
(Magna Qualitas Records : MQR-011)

Soundboard Recordings
Encoded: 320 Kbps MP3

Booklets & Fill Artwork Included

Magna Qualitas Records is proud to announce our newest release: A radical reworking of Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder called Delicate Sound of Thunder: The Complete 1987-1988 Tour.

Delicate Sound of Thunder was a live album released in November 1988 highlighting the return of Pink Floyd after years without a tour. The last actual tour was the Animals tour in 1977 (The Wall tour only played 4 cities, and therefore wasn't really a tour per se). This tour with the newly reconstituted David Gilmour led Pink Floyd was very successful and it was inevitable that a live album and video were spawned by it.

Delicate Sound of Thunder was recorded over five nights at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York in August 1988. Because it was released with vinyl as the primary medium, CD being an afterthought, it does not contain the entire set performed at these shows. A companion video, however, contains quite a bit of the material missing from the CD. Unfortunately many of the songs that appeared on the CD were edited on the video making it necessary to have both to get full performances of all the included material.

This is a composite of the audio from both the CD and the LaserDisc releases of the concerts (Delicate Sound of Thunder has never been officially released on DVD) that we've beefed up with some additions to make into a complete show.

As a bonus we've added the five songs that don't exist on any release of Delicate Sound of Thunder ("A New Machine Parts 1 & 2", "Terminal Frost", "Welcome To The Machine" and "Echoes"), the missing 38 seconds of "Signs of Life", and a couple of minutes cut from "On The Run", all sourced from bootleg soundboard recordings, thus completing the setlist. For all the soundboard tapes used many tools were utilized, including stereo sparialization of specific frequency bands, EQ, noise reduction and a few ancient Chinese secrets, to try to match the mix and quality of the official release for seamless integration. We've also enhanced the audience throughout the show because we feel that anyone who attended the North American shows as }{eywood did (he saw 6 of them) knows that the crowds were loud and enthusiastic, and the album does not represent the way it sounded at the actual concerts.

We've also included several bonus tracks that are the original edited versions of songs from the CD and LaserDisc.

We believe that this is a far more faithful representation of the show as it appeared on the 1987-88 tour, one with all the songs and all at their full length. You will never find an official version or a bootleg SBD recording that contains the complete setlist from this tour with this quality, so we hope you enjoy it.


A NOTE ON DISC DIVISIONS:
This album is designed for both continuous seamless playback on harddrive based players and for CD burning. It contains optional tracks at the end of the sets to be used for different purposes. For seamless playback put the fadeless segues in your playlist. For CD burning optional fade-ins and -outs are also provided. Use these instead of the seamless segues and your CDs will have smooth fades at both ends. This feature will be also be incorporated into MQR's live releases in the future. We aim to keep everyone happy no matter what your listening preferences.

February 22, 2013
TECHNICAL NOTES:
Source list and abbreviations:

CD - obviously the CD
LD - LaserDisc
OB - Orange Bowl, Miami SBD tape
MB - Melbourne SBD tape
PH - Philadelphia SBD tape
NC – Nassau Coliseum SBD tape
AO - Atlanta Omni SBD tape - In 1987 three nights at The Omni were recorded and filmed with the intent of making a live album, but due to technical difficulties and lackluster performances the recordings were shelved. Only a few recordings of these shows ever surfaced officially on B-sides and in videos. New shows were recorded at Nassau Coliseum early the following year which later became the Delicate Sound of Thunder album. Now for the first time several unreleased portions of the Omni shows are seeing the light of day as part of this expansion of the DSoT album.
RTN - David Gilmour's Remember That Night DVD (used for dialogue)
DS4 - Dark Side of the Moon quadrophonic mix (used for effects)
WYWH4 - Wish You Were Here quadrophonic mix (used for effects)
AUS - The Australian Pink Floyd Show - Live at Hammersmith DVD (used for effects)

Track list and source details:
01. Shine On You Crazy Diamond – Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 20, 1988.
Source: The intro is from LD because we liked the Jacob's ladder electrical arc sounds added to the mix, then cuts to CD just before the "Syd's theme" guitar notes.

02. Signs Of Life - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988 (keyboard half) and The Omni, Atlanta, GA November 3, 1987 (guitar half).
Source: The intro rowing sound effects are from OB, then the first half of the song is from LD, but on that version 38 seconds were cut from the second half. We used the AO recording for the second half of the song. Because this song is artificially overlapped with Learning to Fly on the video release the synth sound making up the long fade of this is spliced on from the end of the Momentary Lapse of Reason album.

03. Learning to Fly - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988.
Source: All from CD. The dialogue after the song is from a couple of sources. Most of the dialogue is from the OB, and the "Hope you all enjoy yourselves" is from MB.

04. Yet Another Movie/Round And Around - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 19, 1988.
Source: CD

05. A New Machine Part 1 - Recorded at the Orange Bowl, Miami, FLA November 1, 1987.

06. Terminal Frost – Recorded at the Orange Bowl, Miami, FLA November 1, 1987.

07. A New Machine Part 2 – Recorded at Tennis Center, Melbourne, Australia except the second line which is punched in from the Orange Bowl, Miami, FLA November 1, 1987.

08. Sorrow - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988.
Source: CD

09. Dogs of War - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 21, 1988.
Source: CD. Dialogue from OB.

10. On the Turning Away – Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 20, 1988.
Source: The first half of the song is from CD. The guitar solo at the end is from LD except for eight bars that were edited out of the video, yet existed on the CD. With the exception of this part the solo is at its full length in the video, but edited shorter and differently on the CD. Of course we used the longest version. The intro dialogue is from OB. The dialogue after the song is taken from the Remember That Night DVD. Since Dave says the same thing at every show on every tour we weren’t too particular about the date as far as the dialogue goes. The minute of audience that divides the sets is taken from, of all places (.......OK, we're letting you all in on one of our regularly used tricks here.) the end credits of Iron Maiden's Live After Death video. It's over a minute and a half of continuous smooth audience noise that we like to use for a lot of things. This shows up discreetly in several places throughout this album.

11. One of These Days - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 21, 1988.
Source: CD. For most of this concert the audience sound has been enhanced and it is not mentioned in detail every time. In this song we mention it with explanation. Audience enhancement was used in this song at the start of the bass solo to account for the appearance of the pig and at the start of Dave's big lap steel solo because the light show went totally crazy in that spot at the shows.

12. Time - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 19, 1988.
Source: CD. Audience enhancement has been added at Rick's first solo vocal because he always got a big cheer when he sang the bridges in Time.

13. On the Run - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 19, 1988 and The Omni, Atlanta, GA November 3, 1987.
Source: Because the version of this released on the LD version is an edit with nearly two and a half minutes of the song missing we added a significant portion of this track from AO. The first 30 seconds or so are from the Nassau Coliseum show from the LD, then it fades to AO for about 2 1/2 minutes, and finally returns to LD for just over the last minute. Because the Omni and other SBD tapes lack the prerecorded sound effects they were dubbed in from the rear channels of the quadrophonic mix of Dark Side of the Moon. Although this is technically cheating, we find it acceptable because these sounds were on prerecorded tape at the shows anyway and would have been added in post-production by Pink Floyd when assembling the album.

14. The Great Gig in the Sky - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988. Source: LD

15. Wish You Were Here - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 20, 1988. Source: CD

16. Welcome to the Machine – Recorded at Tennis Centre, Melbourne, Australia February 19, 1988.
Source: This song presented its own problems: the tape effects were not very audible on the recording we used (MB). This left the song sounding very empty because the throbbing bass synth note that drives the beat of the song was one of the missing sounds, as were all the "whoosh, swish" noises that make "Machine" so...well...machine like. We replaced the pulsing synth note from a few different sources. We sampled a couple of beats of it from one of the tracks on the multichannel mix in the 2011 Wish You Were Here box set and used it in a few spots, and thankfully The Austrailian Pink Floyd Show recently put out a live DVD where they performed the song. We took the 5.1 mix from AUS and removed certain parts of tracks (the center channel with the vocals and guitars were the first to go, and we took out the female backing vocals by editing around them) and after some clever editing and phase cancellation we were left with a backing track that contained all the synth sounds, plus the reverb from the vocals. We speed synced this to the PF version, thus replacing the missing sounds while adding little else (The only exception to this is the additional female backing vocals in the second verse that are more like the way Roger Waters performed the song on his solo tours. We couldn't cut them out of the second verse like we did the first because there was a hihat cymbal in the backing track in that verse, and to cut the vocals would have left dropouts in the percussion). The recorded intro of the song up until the guitar comes in is from NC. The door buzzer was enhanced by a sample taken from WYWH4. The tape effects at the end are from the WYWH stereo mix.

17. Us and Them - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 22, 1988.
Source: CD

18. Money - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988.
Source: CD.

19. Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 19, 1988.
Source: CD. The dialogue afterwards is from the OB.

20. Comfortably Numb - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988.
Source: CD. Dialogue after is from the OB. An encore break was created with additional audience noise.

21. One Slip - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988.
Source: LD

22. Run Like Hell - Recorded at Nassau Coliseum, NYC August 23, 1988.
Source: The intro is assembled from three sources: The CD, the LD, and OB (we made it longer because we just love the sounds Dave makes with the delayed guitar at the start of the song). The body of the song is from CD, but the last couple of seconds of the music at the end are from LD in order to get the explosion. We beefed up this explosion with additional explosion sounds that had more low bass, and we also added a series of explosions to the end of the breakdown after the synth solo where the pyro towers blew off at the concerts. The dialogue at the end is from NC.
(A note on the explosions: In the DSoT video the sparkler cannons are on the stage at the back because the video was filmed at an indoor venue. The majority of the tour, however, was in outdoor stadiums in which the sparker cannons were on the top of the lighting scaffolding. This was far more impressive than what is shown in the video, particularly because the video is in slo-mo and edited more complexly than necessary. What }{eywood remembers from the 6 shows he saw on this tour was much different than the official release, and is deserving of being audible on an audio-only document)

23. Echoes – Recorded at Lester J. Pearson International Airport, Toronto, Ontario in early September, 1987, CNE Stadium, Toronto, Ontario on September 21, 1987, JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA on September 19, 1987 and Municipal Stadium Chicago, Ill on September 25, 1987.
Sources: PH, HR, BBC 71 & audience tapes from Toronto, Philadelphia and Chicago. Plus 4 2006 Gilmour shows.

BONUS TRACKS:
We have included the original edited versions of the songs we expanded as well as edited versions of some of the other tracks as they appear on the LD release and the edited guitar solo version of On the Turning Away as found on the CD.
24. Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part 1 – LD
25. Signs of Life (video edit) – LD
26. Learning to Fly (single edit) – LD (also released as a single)
27. On the Turning Away (album version) – CD
28. On the Run (video edit) – LD
29. Comfortably Numb (video edit) – LD
30. Shine On You Crazy Diamond Part IV (video edit) – LD