The Dark Side Of The Moon is probably one of the most well known albums ever made and now there’s a new version about to hit the shops on September 26th, the Immersion Edition.
For £89 (or $110 in the US), you can get a 6 disc set of various surround sound mixes, video and a pile of other memorabilia.
It starts off as you might expect, with a digitally remastered version of the album on the first disc, done by James Guthrie in 2011.
The second disc is where the collection starts to get interesting. The CD is a new mix of Pink Floyd’s live performance of The Dark Side Of The Moon at Wembley in 1974. Usually you would associate live performances with a DVD, but here there is no video as it was originally recorded for BBC radio. Coming immediately after the studio album in the collection, this can only be to really get to you concentrate on how different the live performance is from the studio version which we already know so well.
Disc 3 is an audio DVD, with two different surround mixes and an exact copy of the mix on disk 1. I’m not entirely sure why including a duplicate of the original mix was thought to be necessary, especially when you consider that the majority of people may not even listen to the surround mixes because high quality, full-range surround setups are fairly uncommon in the standard home cinema and full range standard stereo is increasingly popular.
On the fourth disc, we finally get some video to watch! It includes a couple of live tracks from 1972 in Brighton, three short films of the 1973 British, 1974 French and 1975 North American Tours 2003 documentary on Dark Side Of The Moon. Also included is a documentary on The Dark Side Of The Moon, made in 2003. If you can’t wait to see it, then have a look at this video on Recording and Producing ‘Money’ in the meantime.
The fifth disc is essentially a Bluray version of disc four, with a 96kHz copy of one of the new surround mixes and a 96kHz copy of the original 1973 stereo mix thrown in to fill up the extra space.
The final disc, is another audio CD and looks the most promising. It contains demos and live tracks made before the album was originally released, which should give an interesting look into why and how the album ended up as it did.
If you buy the Immersion Edition, you also get :
- 40 page booklet
- Photo book
- Artwork print
- 5 Collectors’ Cards
- Replica of The Dark Side Of The Moon Tour Ticket
- Replica of The Dark Side Of The Moon Backstage Pass
- Scarf
- 3 x Black marbles
- 9 x Coasters
- 4-8 page credits booklet
Which is all very nice if you desperately want an odd number of Pink Floyd coasters, but I don’t really understand why bother with the scarf and marbles? The only thing that might actually get interest me in buying is the last disc, but I don’t think it’s worth £89. I’d rather dig out a copy of the original mix on CD, turn it up a bit and enjoy it how it sounded when first released.
[image via Esparta]
