Pink Floyd conquered the world with its eighth LP, 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, which became one of the bestselling albums of all time. Its music is certainly adventurous, but to these ears, not quite as experimental—or exciting—as much of what the band released before the masses took notice.

You can find performances of some of the best of that earlier work in Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII, a concert film that Pink Floyd first released in 1972. A significantly enhanced version of the movie debuted in theaters in March of this year and has just been issued on Blu-ray and DVD. The music from this new version is available for download, on CD, and, for the first time, on vinyl.

The title, Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII, is a bit of a misnomer. For one thing, while the movie was initially released in the year denoted by the Roman numerals, the performances took place in late 1971. Moreover, Pink Floyd recorded only three of them in the ruins of the ancient amphitheater in Pompeii, Italy. (However, these are lengthy numbers that account for roughly two-thirds of the 64-minute concert.) They include the psychedelic instrumental title track from 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, which owes debts to avant-garde classical composers, and two more intense instrumentals: “One of These Days,” and “Echoes,” both from the then soon-to-be-released Meddle, with the 25-minute latter number divided into two parts that bookend the show.

For various reasons, the band had to record the other performances in studios in Paris. They include the spacey “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” which first appeared on A Saucerful of Secrets and is the only song here credited solely to Roger Waters rather than to the entire quartet. Also filmed in Paris: a reading of the single B-side “Careful with That Axe, Eugene,” which opens serenely, builds methodically, and ends with Waters’s blood-curdling screams; and “Seamus” (retitled here as “Mademoiselle Nobs”), a brief blues number from Meddle that finds the group’s David Gilmour playing harmonica as a Russian wolfhound named Nobs barks and yelps. (It works better than that description might lead you to expect.)

The visuals, which are as unusual as the music, contribute to the sense that you’ve entered some sort of LSD dreamworld. For starters, there’s the amphitheater, which offers a stunning backdrop for the performances there. Moreover, images of the musicians at work are interspersed with ones of bubbling mud and bodies of Pompeii residents that were petrified when the Vesuvius volcano erupted in A.D. 79. As for living people, there are none at the Pompeii concert aside from the band and a handful of crew members. Director Adrian Maben opted to film the group with no audience because he wanted to keep the focus on the music.

This is far from the first time that Pink Floyd at Pompeii has been reissued. An initial 60-minute release in 1972 was followed two years later by a theatrical version that added footage of the band working on Dark Side of the Moon at London’s Abbey Road Studios. Then came a 90-minute Director’s Cut in 2003 and, in 2016, the band included stereo CD and surround-sound film editions in its mammoth Early Years box set.

Still, the new releases feature more than enough enhancements to justify their existence. Working from the recently discovered original 35mm negatives, the film has been restored, frame by frame; expanded slightly to 92 minutes; and digitally remastered in 4K. (It’s more than half a century old, so don’t expect widescreen. However, the picture’s quality belies its age.) Moreover, the audio has been remastered and skillfully remixed by Steven Wilson, who has done similar work for such bands as Yes, King Crimson, and Jethro Tull. Moreover, it is presented in several formats, including 5.1 surround and—for the first time—Dolby Atmos on the Blu-ray.

Also, the CD and vinyl editions add an alternate take of “Careful with That Axe, Eugene” and an unedited, nearly 13-minute version of “A Saucerful of Secrets.” The Blu-ray, meanwhile, offers two options: you can watch the film, which incorporates the London material, or, should you prefer to skip the studio chatter, you can view only the concert.

If you visit Pompeii, as this writer did in 2019, you can see an exhibit that commemorates Pink Floyd’s performance there. Happily, though, you don’t have to travel to Italy to experience the thrilling music on these new releases.

Also Noteworthy

Julee Cruise, Fall • Float • Love (Works 1989–1993). Julee Cruise, who appeared in the late David Lynch’s groundbreaking TV series, Twin Peaks, also provided vocals for its soundtrack. It is her ethereal voice you hear on such numbers as “Into the Night,” which features a jolting orchestral part; “Falling,” a lyrics-augmented version of the show’s theme that became an international hit; and the sax-spiced “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart.”

All those songs, as well as material by Cruise that found its way into such other Lynch films as Blue Velvet, show up on a two-CD set called Fall • Float • Love (Works 1989–1993). Featuring material produced and almost entirely composed by Lynch (lyrics) and composer/arranger Angelo Badalamenti (music), the package includes Cruise’s aptly titled 1989 album, Floating into the Night, and its 1993 follow-up, The Voice of Love. Augmenting the songs from those LPs are more than half a dozen bonus tracks, among them a demo version of “Falling,” a partially a cappella reading of “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart,” and “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears,” a non-album Elvis Presley cover featured in Wim Wenders’s 1991 science-fiction film, Until the End of the World.  

You can hear hints of jazz as well as of early vocal groups like the Paris Sisters and the Teddy Bears in songs like these, but this often breathtakingly beautiful dream pop lives in a world of its own. One hopes that this release will expose a new generation to the work of Cruise, who died by suicide in 2022.

Emma Wilson, A Spoonful of Willie Dixon. On her 2023 sophomore CD, Memphis Calling, British singer Emma Wilson included a Willie Dixon cover. For her third album, she devotes the entire program to that blues giant. However, the title’s promise of a “Spoonful” turns out to involve a teaspoon’s worth of music, not a tablespoon’s worth, as the set contains only six songs and clocks in at under 31 minutes.

It’s a notable half hour, though. Wilson’s spirited vocals are up to the task, and so is her band, whose instrumental breaks prove just as impressive as her singing. The setlist embraces several of Dixon’s most widely covered numbers, among them “I Can’t Quit You, Baby,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” and, as the album title suggests, “Spoonful.” Also here are a few lesser-known compositions: “Good to the Last Drop,” which Dixon wrote with his wife, Marie Booker, and blues guitarist Buster Benton; “I Want to Be Loved,” which the Rolling Stones have also interpreted; and “It Don’t Make Sense (You Can’t Make Peace),” an antiwar song that Dixon penned in the 1980s.