SPEAK TO ME
Credited to drummer Nick Mason, this sound collage lasts slightly longer than a minute and is an unsettling introduction to the album, fading in slowly and prompting listeners to turn up the volume, only to find the track surging to menacing sound levels in its final 10 seconds. The cut is an overture of sorts, foreshadowing the various sounds — clinking coins, ticking clocks and haunting voices — yet to come over the album’s two sides, all of it over a steady tom-tom (according to David Gilmour) standing in for a heartbeat.
Together, they evoke the emotions explored on the album, including fear, anxiety and pressure, as well as birth, time and death. The organ-like tone that groans in toward the end is a piano chord played by Rick Wright, recorded backward.
BREATHE (IN THE AIR)
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