Pink Floyd - Too Late... (The Montreux 40th Anniversary Series) HRV 036 - 2010

Too Late For Mind Expanding

O Festival de Montreux, rapidamente se converteu em um dos mais importantes do mundo, seu fundador, Claude Nobs (1936/2013), iniciou o evento com um orçamento de apenas 10 mil francos suíços (8 mil euros hoje), com o apoio dos irmãos Ahmet e Nesuhi Ertegun, da Atlantic Records de Nova York, descobridores de vários talentos musicais.

Inicialmente, era reservado exclusivamente a artistas do jazz, mas a partir dos anos 1970 foi abrindo suas portas a outros estilos e recebeu músicos consagrados como Frank Zappa, Deep Purple, e o "Pink Floyd".

Nobs foi imortalizado como "Funky Claude" na música "Smoke on the Water" da banda Deep Purple, que fala sobre um incêndio que queimou o cassino de Montreux durante o show de Frank Zappa, em 1971.

"Pink Floyd" por sua vez, cerca de um mês após o lançamento do seu quinto LP "Atom Heart Mother", fez dois shows no famoso "Casino Altes em Montreux". Ambos os concertos foram gravados pela EMI e seleções destes dois foram liberadas em acetatos promocionais. Porém, não foram destinados ao lançamento comercial, eles foram usados ​​como material promocional, terminando por adentrar círculos de colecionadores na década de oitenta, inclusive contendo uma entrevista em francês, (no post: Too Early For A Gig) com David Gilmour.

O show, que durou mais de duas horas, foi caracterizado na época como etéreo, dotado de sublimes arranjos musicais. Abaixo um vídeo que contêm a íntegra deste lendário espetáculo, justamente oriundo da gravação à qual este post se reserva. Ao invés de tentar descrever algo em respeito ao desempenho das canções, que como reportado nas manchetes da ocasião, "Pink Floyd" chegou muito perto da perfeição, seguramente sua audição por parte do amigo, é incomparável, e muito mais prazerosa alternativa.

Um exemplo do alinhamento perfeito entre desempenho e qualidade sonora, de um dos mais incríveis documentos do "Pink Floyd" de todos os tempos, onde se pode ouvir e conhecer daquilo que estavam realizando nesta brilhante e inspirada etapa na história da banda de forma límpida e cristalina. E este dos melhores registros do show. Boa audição!

2:13:54

Pink Floyd
The Montreux 40th Anniversary Series
Too Late For Mind Expanding (HRV CDR 036)
Montreux Casino, 21 Nov 70, Switzerland
Mastertape by Victor
Remastering by MOB (2010)
Produced by Harvested Records

Disc One
01. Astronomy Domine
02. Fat Old Sun
03. Cymbaline
04. Atom Heart Mother
05. Embryo

Disc Two
01. Green Is The Colour
02. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
03. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
04. A Saucerful Of Secrets
05. Just Another Twelve Bar
06. More Blues

Mp3 - 320 Kbps - 48 kHz

mediafire.CD1 - (140,12 MB)

mediafire.CD2 - (139,00 MB)

FLAC = CDs 1 & 2

uploading.CD1.part1 - (212,41 MB)

uploading.CD1.part2 - (176,40 MB)

uploading.CD2.part1 - (200,73 MB)

uploading.CD2part2 - (176,40 MB)

ou

4shared.CD1.part1 - (217,51 MB)

4shared.CD1.part2 - (180,68 MB)

4shared.CD2.part1 - (205,55 MB)

4shared.CD2.part2 - (180,67 MB)

It was 40 years ago today !

This new Harvested release provides the first of the two Montreux 1970 concerts in the most complete form and with the best possible quality. The main source was Victor's raw master transfer already shared last year. The ending part of Green Is The Colour and the following track Careful With That Axe Eugene, not present on Victor's master, were taken from "The Good" recorder that surfaced some years ago on "The Good... The Bad" RoIO ref. FA033.

Victor's raw transfer shared in November 2009 was first thought to be from the second concert, mainly because it matched "The Good... The Bad" RoIO that was labelled from 22Nov70. However, based on Victor's recollections of the two shows and some pictures from his reels, it now appears that the present show with the two "blues" encores is actually from 21Nov70 (this show ended late, forcing the band to finish with a quiet blues). The second concert was added at the last minute for the next afternoon at 2.30pm (Roger sarcastically said "good morning" to the audience) and at this second show the encore was Interstellar Overdrive. But that's for our next release... ;-)

Victor's master is a superb audience recording and a compilation cassette he did in the past from both concerts was copied by someone and ended up on the 1995 "Smoking Blues" bootleg ("Smoking Blues" is therefore at least 1st or 2nd gen, and even with that lineage some people thought it was from soundboard or from some EMI acetates that are most probably pure legend). Embryo, Just Another Twelve Bar and More Blues from "Smoking Blues" are from 21Nov70, but the versions presented here are upgrades, coming directly from the master and with an uncut More Blues (fading out on "Smoking Blues").

Despite its fantastic quality, Victor's master had some flaws that needed to be corrected. The speed was not consistent throughout the show: for some tracks, speed was absolutely perfect, while for others speed gradually slowed down (probably an "end of reel" effect during the play-back). Fat Old Sun, Atom Heart Mother and A Saucerful Of Secrets suffered from that slowing-down phenomenon and speed was corrected for these three songs. There were some channel loss and levels fluctuations, the most obvious being during the first verse of Fat Old Sun. These were repaired. There were also drop-outs here and there, especially during the first 2 minutes of Cymbaline (one drop-out every 862ms, thus 140 drop-outs were manually corrected one by one in order to fully restore these first minutes of Cymbaline). The right channel became slightly weaker during Set The Controls and A Saucerful Of Secrets, where more drop-outs were present on that channel. These flaws were attenuated as much as possible. Last but not least, there were several cuts on the master: the very first chord of Fat old Sun was missing and has been restored, a short cut during Mother Fore (AHM) was carefully patched, and the central part of Celestial Voices (ASOS) that was missing due to a tape flip, was restored from another show in order to save the continuity and progression to the climax of the song.

The end of Green Is The Colour, Careful With That Axe Eugene and the first 30 seconds of Set The Controls were taken from "The Good" source. A lot of work was needed in order to restore that part, because of abrupt speed fluctuations during Careful, and also because "The Good... The Bad" RoIO comes from a "tweaked" tape: the original audio capture is pure mono (there is absolutely no stereo separation between the instruments), but someone found funny to play with the faders during the analog transfer, introducing artificial panning in order to fake stereo effects (these tricks were clearly done during an analog mixing of the recording, not in the digital world). Speed was corrected segment by segment, and levels were carefully adjusted in order to restore the original music as it was on the master, i.e. in the centre of the stereo image, before the artificial panning ruining most parts of "The Good... The Bad".

So there you are. The 21Nov70 Montreux concert in all its glory !

This is a rare case where all the stars were aligned: we have the best audience recording from that era, and at the same time the Floyd performance was really magic that night. All five songs of CD1 were delivered with fire and passion (including the most powerful rendition of Funky Dung ever recorded). And on CD2, the first part of A Saucerful Of Secrets (Something Else) shows the Floyd sounding like King Crimson would sound three years later. Another highlight of CD2 is Just Another Twelve Bar: even if not too interesting from a musical point of view, this song is a true rarity in Pink Floyd live repertoire (even if it's mainly based on the bass riff from Biding My Time).

(Victor's 2009 transfer: 2 x Sennheiser MD-421 > Uher 4200 reel recorded at 19 ips > Audio CD > EAC > FLAC
"The Good" recorder: unknown gen > Scotch Reel > DAT(0) > WAV@48Khz > Speed & Pitch Correction > FLAC@48Khz)

Enjoy !

MOB (November 21, 2010)
Harvested Records