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Roger Waters releases re-recordings of Pink Floyd’s ‘Speak to Me’ and ‘Breathe’

Thu 21 September 2023 14:11, UK

Roger Waters, the former bandleader and bassist of Pink Floyd, has shared the latest single to preview his forthcoming The Dark Side of the Moon Redux album.

‘Speak To Me’ and ‘Breathe’ are the first two tracks on the original release of Pink Floyd’s classic 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. The former, a rare solo writing credit for drummer Nick Mason, is just over one minute long and serves as an overture for the record.

The two songs bleed seamlessly into one another and are often regarded as a singular three-minute and 54-second song, ‘Speak to Me/Breathe’. Now, Waters has re-recorded the tracks for the next preview of his reimagined album following ‘Money’ and ‘Time’. ‘Money’ and ‘Us and Them’ were the only songs to be released as singles from the original album.

As heard in the video below, Waters’ new version of ‘Speak to Me’ is prefaced by the lyrics from ‘Free Four’, a song from Pink Floyd’s 1972 album Obscured By Clouds.

Waters’ The Dark Side of the Moon Redux will be released on October 6th via SGB Records. The P format will include re-recordings of the ten original songs and a new 13-minute composition inspired by the seminal release.

“The original Dark Side Of The Moon feels in some ways like the lament of an elder being on the human condition,” Waters says in press materials. “But Dave, Rick, Nick and I were so young when we made it, and when you look at the world around us, clearly the message hasn’t stuck. That’s why I started to consider what the wisdom of an 80-year-old could bring to a reimagined version.

“When I first mentioned the idea of re-recording The Dark Side Of The Moon to Gus [Seyffert] and Sean [Evans], we all thought I was mad, but the more we considered it, the more we thought, ‘Isn’t that the whole point?’. I’m immensely proud of what we have created, a work that can sit proudly alongside the original, hand-in-hand across a half-century of time.”

Waters will premiere the new album with a live performance at London’s Palladium on October 8th.