Artist: PINK FLOYD
Album: A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON (CD)

Release date: 1987
Media type: CD

A Momentary Lapse of Reason is Pink Floyd's 1987 album, the band's first release after the official departure of Roger Waters from the band in 1985. The album reached #3 on both the U.S. and UK charts. It was released in the UK and the rest of Europe on EMI and on Columbia Records for the rest of the world.

After Roger Waters had declared Pink Floyd ended in 1985, David Gilmour attempted to continue the band together with Nick Mason. A bitter dispute with Waters ensued, but Gilmour and Mason eventually settled out of court for the legal right to continue using the name Pink Floyd. In exchange, Waters dissolved his former management partnership with Steve O'Rourke and gained exclusive rights to some traditional Pink Floyd imagery, including the original flying pig design, almost all of The Wall concept (all the songs except the three for which Gilmour wrote the music, "Young Lust," "Run Like Hell," and "Comfortably Numb") and everything to do with The Final Cut. Richard Wright re-joined the band during the recording sessions for this album, but only as a salaried session musician.

The recording sessions started in October 1986 as a new David Gilmour project. Gilmour revealed on the Shine On and A Momentary Lapse of Reason episodes of In the Studio with Redbeard that AMLoR was almost his third solo album as the material initially sounded too weak to be a PF album. Then in the same interview said that by Christmas of 1986 that he had confidence to turn the album into a Pink Floyd project.

The music press responded with mostly negative reviews of the album (though Rolling Stone claimed it portended "a Floyd with a future"), despite its heavy airplay rotation on video and radio music stations. Waters himself described it as "a pretty fair forgery or a good copy" of a Pink Floyd record; his most generous appraisal was that the album contained "maybe the odd moment when I heard something and thought, 'Well, maybe I'd have done something with that'." But Waters also commented that to him, Pink Floyd no longer existed. The music press also reported that Gilmour had actually considered offering an olive branch to Waters by asking him to help with some of the lyrics.[citation needed]

The album was performed largely by David Gilmour and several session musicians. The most famous of these was Tony Levin (of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame), who played bass on most of the tracks. Nick Mason felt he was out of practice on drums, and thus nearly all of the percussion parts were either programmed or delegated to others. For example, Carmine Appice played drums on "The Dogs of War" while Jim Keltner played on "On the Turning Away" and "One Slip". The drum machine, used on "Sorrow", was programmed by Gilmour.

Session keyboardist Jon Carin, whom Gilmour met and played with in Bryan Ferry's band at Live Aid, went on to collaborate with both Pink Floyd and Roger Waters on subsequent albums and tours. Pink Floyd's original keyboardist Richard Wright arrived during the sessions, but did not officially rejoin the band due to concerns about his severance contract with Waters (the initial album lists Pink Floyd as consisting of only Gilmour and Mason; however, later re-releases add his name). Wright can be heard playing on a few tracks, notably "Sorrow", which features his background vocals. Most other keyboard parts on the album were played by Carin, Gilmour or Ezrin.

It has been rumoured that some of the songs on A Momentary Lapse of Reason were David Gilmour's rejected contributions to The Final Cut. Early demos to songs like "The Dogs of War," "Round and Around," and the melody to "On the Turning Away" are the only known songs to be rejected.

The recording heard in the middle of "Learning to Fly" is of Mason talking to an air traffic control tower in his private aircraft (both he and Gilmour became enthusiastic pilots after conquering their mutual fear of flying). It incidentally holds the distinction of being the first song to be released worldwide as a CD-only single.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason is Pink Floyd's first fully digital recording; however, the acoustic drums and bass guitar tracks were recorded on analog equipment.

TRACKLIST:

01 "Signs of Life" (David Gilmour, Bob Ezrin) – 4:24
Instrumental

02 "Learning to Fly" (Gilmour, Anthony Moore, Ezrin, Jon Carin) – 4:53
03 "The Dogs of War" (Gilmour, Moore) – 6:05
04 "One Slip" (Gilmour, Phil Manzanera) – 5:10
05 "On the Turning Away" (Gilmour, Moore) – 5:42
06 "Yet Another Movie" (Gilmour, Patrick Leonard) – 7:28

6a. "Round and Around" (Gilmour)
Instrumental

07 "A New Machine (Part 1)" (Gilmour) – 1:46

08 "Terminal Frost" (Gilmour) – 6:17
Instrumental

09 "A New Machine (Part 2)" (Gilmour) – 0:38
10 "Sorrow" (Gilmour) – 8:46

LINE-UP:

David Gilmour – vocals, guitars, keyboards, sequencers
Nick Mason – drums, percussion, drum machine, sound effects
Richard Wright – keyboards, backing vocals

Additional personnel:

Tony Levin – bass guitar, Chapman Stick
Bob Ezrin – percussion
Carmine Appice – drums
Jim Keltner – drums
Jon Carin – keyboards
Tom Scott – alto and soprano saxophones
Scott Page – tenor saxophone
Patrick Leonard – synthesizers
Bill Payne – Hammond organ
Michael Landau – backing guitar
John Helliwell – saxophone (mistakenly credited as John Halliwell)
Darlene Koldenhaven, Carmen Twillie, Phyllis St. James, Donnie Gerrard – backing vocals
Spherical sound by: Ken Caillat, Tom Jones, Sarah Nean Bruce