“…And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes”…

It’s not a different tune. And it is a very different band they’re in. Freddie Feldman/Vocomotion Studios and a select group of skilled singers have accomplished what we have all been trying since 1973: found a new way to sing along with some of the greatest instrumentals in recorded history. Their all-a cappella version of Pink Floyd’s opus is an ambitious tribute to a beloved classic album.

Like many before me, I discovered Pink Floyd and “Dark Side” in my late high school and early college years. Somehow, the experiences in a young man’s life at that time are universal. Rodger Waters played on that universal awakening in a message that speaks to anyone who owns a set of earphones. No wonder the album spent about 750 weeks on the charts!

I’ve always been a big fan of covers and remixes. I’m fascinated by hearing someone’s take on the original. So, when “Dark Side of the Moon A Cappella” arrived in my mailbox, I couldn’t wait to see if they could do it. Could they actually pull this off? Here’s how it breaks down song by song:

Speak to Me / Breathe
The a cappella version starts as an almost exact replica to its older brother. Then, one minute and eleven seconds in…it happens. What was originally David Gilmour’s mix of several guitar tracks played over two more pedal steel tracks have been replaced by what is clearly the human voice. What was once backup singers double-tracked have not been replaced as perfectly. This isn’t a copy. This isn’t a cover…it’s a complete re-working.

On The Run
In the early 70’s, the “Dark Side” sound was revolutionary. Richard Wright was one of the first musicians to sit down and play around with something called a Synth EA. This was an early synthesizer with a small keyboard type input board attached to it. Wright played a few bars, turned a speed control knob, and suddenly had the pulsating opening to “On The Run”. Why didn’t they think of this earlier? The a cappella version of the “Synth EA” trick is right on. In this ProTools world, these musicians take a low tech approach to recreating the past.

Time 
While listening to the album, you constantly catch yourself trying to mentally pull back the curtain to see what kind of vocal wizardry went into creating and re-creating the individual sounds (the “Wizard of Oz” reference was intentional; we’ll get to that later). It’s hard to imagine how a human could sound so clearly metallic as the ticking clocks in the beginning of “Time”. The moment you’re fully expecting these musicians to break into ringing noises, they take a left turn. “Get Up!” “Good Morning” “It’s time to wake up!” they shout, as the song ticks past the fourteen second mark. On the original, the clocks ring simultaneously around twenty-one seconds. When played along with “The Wizard of Oz”, the bells should ring just as Miss Gultch rides in for the first time on her bicycle. This is one key moment that does not match completely with the movie when you use the a cappella version. The artists tried to keep in perfect time with the original. It’s ironic that this song would be where they fall a few seconds short (given the song title), although the overdriven guitar sound is amazing here.

Great Gig in the Sky
(Original singer) Clare Torry walked into the studio with one direction: think about death and pour your heart out. She did it in one take. When she slumped back into the mixing booth, she began apologizing. Clare Torry thought she had done it all wrong. What she did was etched in all our minds. Thirty years later, the re-creation is just that. It’s beautifully sung, but lacks the spontaneity and soul of the Torry original. I hear she took home £30 for her work. That was the standard fee back then.

Money      
“cough”, “hmmm”, “brrrr”, “huh”. The song that changed Pink Floyd’s lives is definitely changed here. It’s that signature sound of a handful of change thrown into a metal mixing bowl from Rodger Waters’ wife’s pottery shop. I can’t understand why they would change the sound of money to the sound of a confused chest-cold. The song continues with Gilmour’s solos replaced by scat.

Us and Them
David Gilmour once said this song is about “Whether or not the human race is capable of being humane”. “Us and Them” makes simple statements. Its brilliance is in its simplicity. Here, the a cappella version truly shines. It would be easy to go overboard here, but they kept it true to the original.

Any Colour You Like
I suspect I’m not the only Pink Floyd fan in the world who can sing right along to an instrumental. I’ve simply never heard others do it. As each measure passes, you find yourself rooting for the performers in this song as you would for a Little League game. Great job, guys!

Brian Damage
One problem I have with this version of “Dark Side” is just how American it is. You guys, it’s British! “Got to keep the loonay’s on the pawth”. Here, the suburbia cuts through like a razor blade: “Gawt to keep the looneez on the path”.  C’mon. Fake it. They do earlier - why not here?

Eclipse
Coming full circle, eclipse is a quality re-telling of the original story. Simple and complex like the album itself.

During the recording, Rodger Waters grabbed (the studio) Abby Road’s old Irish doorman Jerry Driscoll, and handed him a set of small cards. The cards contained handwritten questions ranging from “What’s your favorite colour?” to “When was the last time you were violent?” His responses (along with several others) went right into a tape recorder, and ended up being the closing sounds on the album. So it’s the old Irish doorman you hear explaining: “There is no dark side of the moon, really - matter of fact, it's all dark.”

The truth is there is a “Dark Side of the Moon”. There has been for thirty years. Now there’s an a cappella side as well.

So did they pull it off? That depends on how you look at this project. Perhaps, the album cover is a metaphor with which you could describe the album itself. The simplicity of the original prism - white light transformed into its composite spectrum - has been replaced by a cute reworking of the original idea: a rainbow shooting out of a human mouth. This is in no way an attempt to re-invent the prism. Who would want to do that anyway? This is an interpretation on the original.

Order at: www.DarkSideVoices.com

David Malkoff is an Emmy Award-winning television reporter for CBS4 in Miami, FL. He is a lifelong music enthusiast and music sponge, and enjoys everything from musical theatre to, well, Pink Floyd.

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