The Wait for Great-Sounding Audiophile-Quality Pink Floyd Vinyl Is Over: Pressed on 180g LP, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn Mastered by James Guthrie, Joel Plante, and Bernie Grundman

Pink Floyd’s transformative debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, forever changed psychedelic rock. The only one of the band’s albums to be helmed by the fractured genius of Syd Barrett, the 1967 effort finally sounds as it should on vinyl LP. Mastered by James Guthrie, Joel Plante and Bernie Grundman and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is part of the long-overdue Pink Floyd catalog-reissue campaign that is restoring the group’s prized works to analog. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, right next door to the Beatles as the latter worked on Sgt. Pepper, the Top Ten album comes across as a wonderful mix of the whimsical and weird. Filtered through an LSD lens and shot through with melodic acid-pop and experimental instrumental workouts, it includes the space-rock classic “Interstellar Overdrive” and dramatic “Astronomy Divine.” 

Pink Floyd featuring Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason first broke onto the music scene in 1967 with the hit single “Arnold Layne.” Despite the departure of Syd Barrett, the group, which soon recruited David Gilmour, recorded some of the most innovative and ground breaking records of their era, culminating in 1973 with one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, The Dark Side Of The Moon. There followed numerous global number-one albums, including The Wall, Animals, Wish You Were Here, The Final Cut and 2014’s finale, The Endless River.

1. Astronomy Domine
2. Lucifer Sam
3. Matilda Mother
4. Flaming
5. Pow R. Toc. H
6. Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk
7. Interstellar Overdrive
8. The Gnome
9. Chapter 24
10. The Scarecrow
11. Bike