Pink Floyd - The Endless River

Pink Floyd's 2014 album Endless River works as the best marriage of the classic psychedelic and early-prog Floyd with the modern Gilmour-led band. The series of instrumental vignettes re-visit ideas and passages from the band's past, anywhere from Saucerful of Secrets to Wish You Were Here, while utilizing the production standards from the two Gilmour albums. And the lone song with vocals, the regret-sounding, melancholy "Louder Than Words", sums up the history and feeling of the band from their lost period, from the late 70s to the new millennium. Gilmour and Nick Mason, who were able to take the keyboard parts of the too-soon-departed Richard Wright and construct some fantastic, coherent pieces of music seamlessly around them. It sounds as if Wright was right there as an active participant in the studio.

By and large it’s an understated affair but unmistakably the Floyd, divided into four sides (and available on double vinyl), each with a different mood from the next. It also packs a great deal into 53 minutes – not least because some of the tracks are barely more than a minute and a half long. Nothing is dragged out.

Heavyweight double vinyl produced by Pink Floyd Records in 2014. Gatefold sleeve.