This was the album which
streamlined and established the hallmark of the Floyd's mature style: a
dense and colourful weave of actuality sounds (notably the football
chant on Fearless) original electronic textures, and more conventional
rock instrumentation. "Meddle" contains two extremely
important songs in the Pink Floyd story. One, the powerful, spacey "One
Of These Days", marked a welcome return to simplicity; while the
other, the side-long "Echoes", is a progressive rock classic.
On this track they managed to dispense with additional musicians
and became, in effect a four-piece orchestra. The song marked the first
real appearance of the lush, symphonic sound that was such an obvious
feature of their music from then on. "Echoes" featured Dave
Gilmour's first significant contributions to the group's sound.
David Gilmour: "We did loads of bits of demos which we
then pieced together, and for the first time, it worked. This album was
a clear forerunner for Dark Side Of The Moon, the point when we first
got our focus."
Nick Mason: "We spent a long time starting the record.
We'd worked through the Sounds Of Household Objects project, which we
never finished. The idea was always to create a continuous piece of
music that went through various moods and this was the album that
established that. Rick was the guy who got it off the ground with that
one note at the beginning."
Rick Wright: "I was playing around on the piano in the
studio but it was actually Roger who said, Would it be possible to put
that note through a microphone and then through the Leslie? That's what
started it. That's how all the best Floyd tracks start, I believe."
The title "Meddle" was meant to be a pun - "a play
between 'medal' and 'interfere'".
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