Piper at the Gates of Dawn

“Jennifer Gentle you're a witch. You're the left side, He’s the right side. Oh, no!”

I’ve been listening to Piper at the Gates of Dawn this evening, rotating the mono and stereo mixes, packaged together for the album's 40th anniversary, and despite the general consensus by Pink Floyd fans that the mono mix is superior, I find the stereo far more satisfying; the separation between instruments lends the album a scale and grandeur the mono lacks (Flaming, the best song on the album feels like black and white in the mono version to the stereo’s Technicolor), and there’s a greater depth to the “little instruments” scattered throughout the album. Still, there are moments when the mono mix surges ahead - Rick Wright’s organ is far more present on the mono Interstellar Overdrive, and there’s far more bite and attack to Syd Barrett’s guitar and Nick Mason’s drums. On my second pass of the mono version, I actually turned the volume up past my own comfort level, and the album felt genuinely abrasive, perhaps an approximation of what the band sounded like when it was playing small club dates at deafening levels. Listening to the album again this evening, the level of invention for a debut is outrageous and there’s the excitement of hearing a new language being forged (which found its greatest expression in the German avant-rock bands that followed). I’m not sure if Piper at the Gates of Dawn is a better record than Sgt. Pepper, probably not - The Scarecrow and Bike are too whimsical for their own good, but either way, stereo or mono, it’s an astonishing album...