So should you fork out cash for the latest reissue of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn? I did and am kinda kicking myself about it.

This is supposed to be the first of the Pink Floyd 40th anniversary reissues, another sick ploy by record industry scum to rip-off the diminishing subset of people who continue to fork out cash for CDs. What amazes me is the fact that I fall for it most of - if not all of the time.

What's on offer here is an allegedly remastered version of The Piper, the mono mix of the album and a collection of unreleased B-sides and rarities. Let's go over these in turn.

Disc 2 - remastered Piper: Fuck you with a stick, EMI! There's no fucking way this sounds particularly different from the earlier remaster of Piper. Unlike the King Crimson and the Yes remasters where you could hear a lot more of what was happening in their very busy and layered compositions (and didn't make me feel too bad about picking up their entire discographies twice), there's nothing in this CD to make it a particularly worthwhile addition to the package.

Disc 1 - mono Piper: A concession to the droves of people who listen to music on their iPods, which with its vastly inferior sound reproduction, makes just about everything sound like a mono recording. A great argument against buying a hi-fi system.
But bitterness and rancour aside, this mix does sound slightly interesting, adding an odd calustrophobic vibe to what's an already frequently disturbing album. Whether its worth your money depends on how much of a fan of early Floyd you are. You really ought to ask yourself how many times you are going to listen to the mono recording of the album. I've asked myself this and the answer is not very often!

Disc 3 - the rarities: A very mixed bag. Arnold Layne, Paintbox and See Emily Play have been available on various compilations (including the rather excellent Relics) for years now. The draws are among the first official global release of Candy and a Currant Bun, 2 versions of Apples and Oranges, a French edit of Interstellar Overdrive (that's pretty brutally truncated) and an unreleased take of Interstellar Overdrive.
Candy and a Currant Bun essentially betrays the huge Beatles influence on early Floyd, Apples and Oranges is interesting in a whimsical manner but definitely not likely to make it to the list of anyone's favourite tracks by the band. The unreleased take of IO is marvellous though — a more conventional jam oriented track with focussed playing, sort of like a lo-fi Red/Starless-era King Crimson.

Rounding out the package is excerpts from Syd Barrett's diaries which — if this is a representative sample — were pretty fucking boring. Rambling stoner bullshit with gradeschool level collages, the likes of which deviantart.com has the market cornered on these days.

Net-net I highly reccomend The Pipers at the Gates of Dawn as an album. It's one of the few records made which is truly peerless; there's frankly never been a better mixture of fairy-tale whimsy and drug-induced paranoia. All stitched through by a guitarist who seemed to have some interesting ideas in his head which got horribly mangled on their way out, but still managed to remain something that was quite pioneering and awesome. Just make sure you buy the regular CD — it was available for a fairly reasonable Rs 350 when I last checked.

I'd reccomend this edition (priced at Rs 1,200 here - cheap compared to the price overseas where it retails for close to $40) only to a weird subset of people who are die-hard fans but for some unaccountable reason don't own the album already.