The Band:

David Gilmour-Lead Vocals, Guitars/Richard Wright-Vocals, Keyboards/Phil Manzanera-Vocals, Guitars/Jon Carin-Vocals, Keyboards, Lap Steel Guitar/Dick Parry-Saxophone, Keyboards/Guy Pratt-Bass, Vocals/Steve DiStanislao-Drums, Vocals/Special Guests: David Crosby, Graham Nash, David Bowie- Vocals and Robert Wyatt –Percussion

Finally unleashed from the Pink Floyd music machine, David Gilmour bursts out with his most confident album and video yet. This concert recorded in support of Gilmour’s “On An Island” demonstrates a self assured musician who isn’t afraid of his legacy or moving forward as a solo artist. ***

Featuring long time Floyd band mate Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals as well as many special guests (including Roxy Music guitarist, Gilmour’s co-producer on his latest album Phil Manzanera and many of the same musicians that augmented the last edition of Floyd), “Live At The Royal Albert Hall” finds Gilmour pluming the Floyd songbook going all the way back BEFORE he joined the band in a tribute to his friend and Floyd founder the late Syd Barrett on “Arnold Layne” (with David Bowie singing) and covering material he recorded with Floyd on some of their less popular albums (such as the Kinks inspired “Fat Old Sun” from “Atom Heart Mother” one of the best tracks on that album) and tackling material from the band’s most popular albums. This two disc concert experience is broken up with an intermission after “Take a Breath” from Gilmour’s latest album and picking up again with “A Pocketful of Stones”. Guest vocalists Graham Nash and David Crosby harmonize on the CSN classic “Find The Cost of Freedom” while Gilmour plays before coasting into “Arnold Layne”.

Image & Sound:

A superb high definition video recording, “Hall” looks great. While there are some minor digital artifacts and flaws that occasionally crop up on the whole “Hall” looks marvelous with remarkably sharp detail and great color reproduction even in the darkest scenes. ***

Audio sounds marvelous as well with a well defined, rich sounding 5.1 mix that perfectly captures the concert experience.

The special features occupy disc two which feature 13 bonus tracks including “Wot’s…Uh The Deal” from “Obscured by Clouds” and Wright singing his marvelous “Wearing The Inside Out” (from the last Floyd album the criminally underrated “The Division Bell”). The most fun though is seeing Gilmour tackle “Astronomy Domine” from “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” the first Pink Floyd album recorded while Barrett was still at the height of his creative and mental powers.

The bonus tracks are: “Dark Globe” Astronomy Domine” “This Heaven” With additional performances from “The Mermaid Theatre” featuring: “Castellorizon” “On An Island” “The Blue” “Take A Breath” “High Hopes” ***

We also get two music videos for “On An Island” including “Smile” and the title track. There’s also a promo documentary that was made to support “On An Island”, “The West Coast” which features footage from the west coast tour with Gilmour rehearsing with Nash and Crosby as well as sound check footage. Finally we get a terrific photo gallery from the tour. ***

“Breaking Bread and Drinking Wine” shows the band during rehearsals including a visit between Gilmour, Nick Mason (he appears briefly in a tantalizing moment stepping behind the drum set but we don’t hear or see him do much) and Roger Waters (who were rehearsing next to each other at Bray Studios for their respective tour). Gilmour and Waters are friendly without being too chummy so it’s clear that their problems are in the past but I doubt that they’ll be as close as they once were. ---

Final Words: