“It’s always important to have some relevance to a younger audience. “I think that for any band, but especially for a band our age, the concept of our stuff appealing to a younger audience is the best feedback that you can get,” Mason said when I pointed out the healthy streaming numbers Pink Floyd enjoys to this day. Highlights do, however, include an Atmos mix that surpasses any of the previous surround mixes of Dark Side across the years-from the ’74 Quad mix to the ’03 SACD surround mix and more recent 5.1 mix from the excellent Immersion edition released in 2011-as well as a live performance of Dark Side from London’s Wembley Arena during the band’s 1974 tour. And while it doesn’t include anything truly new, the album-once the go-to LP in high-end HiFi stores to demonstrate what a great stereo system could offer-has never sounded better. With that in mind, Sony Legacy released a gorgeous new box set this week commemorating the album’s 50th birthday. Listen to a whole thing, a whole piece, all the way through, and get really into the mood of the whole thing, rather than listen to shorter pieces. “But there are still lots of people who love to listen to music that way. “These days, you have to get into the right mood to listen to a whole album, I guess,” Gilmour mused when we last spoke, a few years back, of Dark Side’s legacy as probably the best and truest concept album. It’s also the album that catapulted Pink Floyd-a band that had never sold more than 250,000 copies of any of its previous, psychedelic/prog-tinged albums-into the rock ’n’ roll stratosphere, forever changing the lives of Waters, guitarist David Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason. It’s the best-selling British album ever, and the third best-selling album of all time-behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller and AC/DC’s Back In Black-with sales approaching 60 million copies worldwide, and streaming numbers, across all discernible demographics, to match. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which turns 50 this month, is the granddaddy of all classic rock albums. Still, Waters hates to give even an inch: “Even if it does,” he says pointedly, “it’s nothing to do with the music.” Still, much like the “ Paul is dead” rumors The Beatles had to contend with in the late ’60s, Waters once admitted to me-at a Manhattan recording studio a few years back, after our conversation turned to Dark Side of the Moon-that it’s a badge of honor for his former band’s landmark album to hold such an exalted place in pop culture that it’s birthed such a wild conspiracy theory. True to form, Roger Waters, the bassist and primary lyricist of Pink Floyd until the mid-1980s, has a deeply held opinion on that particular urban legend. “There’s all these assholes who, for years, have been going, ‘Oh, you know, Dark Side of the Moon absolutely syncs up with The Wizard of Oz.’ And you know what? No, it fucking doesn’t!”

Album dark noise