MQR is once again proud to present our newest title, Forever and Ever, a mashup of The Division Bell and The Endless River designed to make The Division Bell less radio-friendly and The Endless River less avant garde. It is intended as a true final Pink Floyd record, an alternate reality version of what should have been released in 1994.
When we first listened to The Endless River we were sadly disappointed by the lack of any sort of actual songs on the record. Other that Louder Than Words, there was nothing with a traditional song structure to it or lyrics on the record. We heard many pieces of things we had heard before, either on bootlegs or on the Colours of Infinity soundtrack, even a piece of the soundscape used as an opening act on the 1994 tour and later released on the P*U*L*SE cassettes. Being mostly recorded in tandem with The Division Bell it also contained a lot of things similar or duplicated compared to what's on that album.
We see The Division Bell as one of Pink Floyd's better efforts, the first record to sound like a band (rather than a solo album) since Animals. It was, however, a bit heavy on the pop songs.
Both albums are flawed, but after just one listen }{eywood had about 22.6 ideas that led to one big design concept: if the two were combined to form a single long album they might balance each other. So he spent a couple of days investigating the issue, and this is what he came up with.
Using a couple of bootlegs, the Endless River tracks from the album proper with the bluray and bonus disc extras, a bit of the PULSE soundscape and, of course, The Division Bell, he edited, resequenced and crossfaded the tracks into a new album, one that still has "songs" but is also far more floyd-y sounding, with spacey sections and a great deal of instrumental tracks, sort of like how they used to make records before Roger Waters took over the group and made it more about lyrics (so...many...words...) and less about music. There were several more pieces of music available on bootlegs that were not used for The Endless River, but the sound quality wasn't up to the standard set by these albums, and many were incomplete fragments anyway.
Why didn't we use all the bonus material from TER? Nervana has no ending, just an abrupt fade out, and it really doesn't fit here because it sounds like Black Sabbath. TBS14 has a really bad drum sound, just a mic open in a room near drums, and it's not produced to be used for an album. It also had no true ending. The other songs are just alternate/early mixes of the stuff on the albums. We did, however, use part of Evrika (A) to add some additional lead guitar to the end of Wearing The Inside Out.
In case some diehards out there are wondering, we also originally intended to throw some of La Carerra Panamericana in there too, but it's too hard to remove all the documentary sounds and dialogue to reveal the music. Also, it was released in 1992, a year before the TDB sessions began, and therefore doesn't technically belong with this material.
Our original intent was not to alter the running order of TDB, just add to it, but once the whole project was assembled we decided it was better for the overall flow of the record to move the pieces around. Influenced by the four album sides approach taken by The Endless River, we put together six suites, each separated from the others, plus Marooned. After playing through the record with the 6 pieces in various orders we found the best place for Marooned and the current running order was decided upon. As with The Division Bell, Wearing the Inside Out ends part one, landing it right in the middle of the entire piece, a fitting tribute to Richard that makes him the centerpiece of the record.
Many songs have obviously had alterations, intended to facilitate better segues. The intro to Cluster One has been extended by using the crackling earth noise and some voices from opposite ends of the PULSE soundscape. Allons-y has been extended by splicing in the first verse (without the 2014 overdubs) and the middle 8 (unused on the album version) from 209, a bootleg that Lordsnooty circulated around the time Pink Floyd began work on The Endless River. Poles Apart has had the anomalous middle "carnival" section removed and Surfacing inserted in it's place. This is certainly the original middle section, sped up for use on The Endless river so the fans don't notice the similarity. We slowed it back down and put it back in it's proper place. The final note of Night Light was reduced to just bass frequencies, stretched, and used to add low end to the first minute of Keep Talking. Wearing the Inside Out, as mentioned above, has additional lead guitar in the middle 8 and at the end, also taken from Evrika (A). The cymbal swell that cues it in is from Evrika (B). A nature sounds montage was again extracted from the PULSE soundscape to make an introduction for Take It Back. The extended ending for Take It Back from the 12" single was used to make a bridge into Sum. First In Space is a track we created out of parts of the PULSE soundscape and named after the "still first in space" slogan used on The Division Bell Tour shirts. We included this because a small fragment of it was used on The Endless River as the start of the track Sum, but on Sum the keyboards that appear after the soundscape are from the end of Take It Back. We therefore joined Take It Back and Sum using those keys, leaving the soundscape portion of the track with an uncertain destiny. We therefore extended it and used it elsewhere. Carnival Relations is the middle section that was removed from Poles Apart, given a new home. A bonus band quote has been added to Things Left Unsaid, this time by Roger Waters (we reunited the ban virtually for their final record). It's What We Do has been removed from in between Things Left Unsaid and Ebb & Flow and placed elsewhere. TBS9 has had some extraneous drum sounds removed to clean up the start a bit, and a couple of small edits to remove sloppy playing. And finally, the end of High Hopes fades into the crackling earth noise again as it fades out, giving the endless-loop wraparound that all the best Floyd albums have. There's also a suprise if you crank it up.
Although we weren't trying to remix the songs, we did have to address Louder Than Words. The vocals were too loud in this song, and conspicuously lacking in reverb. This made it stand out from the rest of the vocal tracks. Using phase manipualtion we separated the vocals in the verses from the rest of the mix and added some effects, then put them back.
Influenced by the way The Endless River is broken into four album sides, this is made up of six suites. Each is separate from the others with the pieces making it up all connected. It's sort of like 6 short album sides, although not as short as the ones on The Endless River.