New Music

Live At Pompeii

Pink Floyd legend returns to Roman amphitheatre in style Pink Floyd’s association with the amphitheatre at Pompeii goes back to 1971 when their performance there was famously captured on film by Adrian Maben and has subsequently become part of the band’s folklore. In July 2016 David Gilmour took a stellar band back to Italy as part of his Rattle That Lock tour, playing two nights at the ancient venue to an audience of a few thousand enthralled fans. The shows were all about spectacle: lights, lasers, the signature massive circular screen, pyrotechnics – all adding to the theatre of the occasion.

This release is multi-format in that there’s the twin CD pack we’re considering here, the DVD and Blu-Ray videos and the deluxe box set with an extra 207 minutes of footage on an additional Blu-Ray disc. The latter packages all deliver visual evidence of the atmosphere in the arena, with footage shot at 4k resolution and glorious quad sound. The CDs, however, consign all imagery to the imagination and let the music alone take centre stage, leaving it to speak for itself.

The set list naturally draws heavily on Rattle That Lock, calling on Gilmour’s previous album On An Island for a couple of tracks, the rest composed of classic Waters-era Floyd tracks like The Great Gig In The Sky, Wish You Were Here and One Of These Days as well as cuts from the three-piece studio albums like Sorrow and What Do You Want From Me? The playing is impeccable throughout, with Gilmour’s soaring lines at the focus of every song, the set gathering momentum as it races towards the climactic showpiece, Comfortably Numb. The CD set does an admirable job of summing up the experience from an audio point of view, but we would heartily recommend one of the DVD packages in order to witness the full extravaganza. [DM] Standout track: A Boat Lies Waiting For fans of: Pink Floyd, Roger Waters