Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

There are places on Earth which hold a solemnity of silence, a regard for the fallen which cannot, and perhaps should not, entertain the idea of any type of entertainment or jaw dropping sound of human expression; it feels disrespectful to the memory; and yet we must also acknowledge just what art can achieve in some places where the dead and lost souls can achieve in terms of atmospheric fanfare and the passion of connection of human spirit and the living.

Although released over 50 years ago as a concert film, Pink Floyd’s At Pompeii has retained the sense of the breathtaking experience and powerful memento mori of a long passed civilisation and the ghosts that haunt the volcano destroyed Roman city, and it has been enough of pull for the fans that it has been re-released in other formats across Time; and one to which finds favour in what might be a final expanded version which for arguments sake balances on the edge of the majestical superiority of expression to which the place, the band, and the Time are willing to explore.

This enhanced edition feels almost as though it has undergone a dramatic translation of feeling, it has a desire of fulfilment, of a finality that has long been tantalisingly in sight but never quite delivered, and with the addition of it being placed on vinyl and the alternate version of Careful With That Axe, Eugene, and the unedited take of A Saucerful Of Secrets having an entire side in which to find splendour in and relish the apparent fullness of the experience.

This was the Progressive legends before they released in full The Dark Side Of The Moon which would send them to another level, before the decade’s ending took them to the edge of complete meltdown as a band, but that story was not at the time written, not hinted at as the foursome spent days playing live in the remains of the Roman amphitheatre and capturing what would become a unique involvement with the historic and the encounter of the new and cool.

A passionate experiment finding its own space and time on vinyl for the first time, Pink Floyd: At Pompeii is a psychological familiarity of a pulse resurrected.

Ian D. Hall