Pink Floyd ( B22 )

Musicianship

Genres

Considered one of the UK's first psychedelic music groups, Pink Floyd began their career at the vanguard of London's underground music scene. Some categorise their work from that era as space rock. According to Rolling Stone: "By 1967, they had developed an unmistakably psychedelic sound, performing long, loud suitelike compositions that touched on hard rock, blues, country, folk, and electronic music." Released in 1968, the song "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" helped galvanise their reputation as an art rock group. Other genres attributed to the band are experimental rock, acid rock, proto-prog, experimental pop (while under Barrett). and psychedelic pop, By the late 1960s, the press had begun to label their music progressive rock. O'Neill Surber comments on the music of Pink Floyd:

Rarely will you find Floyd dishing up catchy hooks, tunes short enough for air-play, or predictable three-chord blues progressions; and never will you find them spending much time on the usual pop album of romance, partying, or self-hype. Their sonic universe is expansive, intense, and challenging ... Where most other bands neatly fit the songs to the music, the two forming a sort of autonomous and seamless whole complete with memorable hooks, Pink Floyd tends to set lyrics within a broader soundscape that often seems to have a life of its own ... Pink Floyd employs extended, stand-alone instrumentals which are never mere vehicles for showing off virtuoso but are planned and integral parts of the performance.

In 1968, Wright commented on Pink Floyd's sonic reputation: "It's hard to see why we were cast as the first British psychedelic group. We never saw ourselves that way ... we realised that we were, after all, only playing for fun ... tied to no particular form of music, we could do whatever we wanted ... the emphasis ... [is] firmly on spontaneity and improvisation." Waters gave a less enthusiastic assessment of the band's early sound: "There wasn't anything 'grand' about it. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn't play at all so we had to do something stupid and 'experimental'... Syd was a genius, but I wouldn't want to go back to playing "Interstellar Overdrive" for hours and hours." Unconstrained by conventional pop formats, Pink Floyd were innovators of progressive rock during the 1970s and ambient music during the 1980s.

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