Roger Waters likely surprised some, including his former bandmates, when he revealed plans to re-record Pink Floyd’s legendary The Dark Side of the Moon album on his own. But one of Waters onetime cohorts, drummer Nick Mason, has weighed in with his review of Waters’ forthcoming revisiting of the classic record.
According to NME, Mason appeared at a playback of The Dark Side of the Moon that was taking place at London’s Dolby Atmos Immersive Studio when he addressed Waters’ re-recording plan.
“I heard the rumor that Roger was working on his own version of it,” Mason explained. “There was this suggestion that this was going to be a spoiler and Roger was going to go head-to-head with the original version [50th anniversary box set] and so on.”
“He actually sent me a copy of what he was working on and I write to him and said, ‘Annoyingly, it’s absolutely brilliant!’ It was and is,” said Mason, adding, “It’s not anything that would be a spoiler for the original at all, it’s an interesting add-on to the thing.”
READ MORE: Roger Waters Shares First Music From His ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ Re-Recording
Mason himself has found an outlet recently to revisit Pink Floyd’s work, playing alongside Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp under the moniker Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets.
As NME notes, Mason is open to the idea of revisiting past works and presenting them in a new manner, explaining, “One of the things I like about any sort of existing piece of music is to develop it or find some extra quality in it. I just like this idea of developing music rather than trying to retain it exactly as it was.”
Back in January, the members of Pink Floyd revealed that a 50th anniversary box set for The Dark Side of the Moon was in the works. The box set features CD and gatefold vinyl editions of the remastered album, Blu-Ray and DVD versions with the original mix, as well as CD and vinyl of The Dark Side Of The Moon – Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974.
A 76-page hardcover music book is also included in the set, in addition to some collectibles, such as posters, stickers, a replica of a press invitation to hear the album a month before it came out and the Thames & Hudson book that was announced last week, which contains previously unseen photographs from the band’s tours between 1972 and 1975. Get your 50th anniversary The Dark Side of the Moon music and related merch at this location.
Earlier this month, Waters gave fans their first taste of his re-recording, serving up an in-studio excerpt of his new version of “Us and Them.” Waters’ re-recorded version is expected to arrive in May.
In related news, Mason also recently supported Waters in another venture. The drummer was one of the many peers and celebs who recently signed a petition calling for a reversal of the Waters performance ban in Germany that led to the cancellation of two shows. Waters has been fighting to have the shows reinstated, revealing plans to seek legal action after dates in Munich and Frankfurt were called off citing the singer’s alleged “anti-Israel behavior.”
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