Steven Wilson has likened Wet Dream, the recently re-released debut solo album from Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright, to “a long-lost 1970s Pink Floyd album that you’ve never heard.”
Originally released by Harvest on September 22, 1978, the largely-instrumental 10-track album, recorded by Wright in France in early 1978, went largely unnoticed at the time of its release, charting only in Norway, where it peaked at number 20: in the US, the album peaked at number 203. Remixed by Porcupine Tree frontman Wilson, the reissued edition of Wet Dream was released digitally on July 28, on what would have been Wright's 80th birthday, and will get a vinyl release via Parlophone on September 29.
Speaking to The Telegraph, in a paywalled interview, Wilson suggests that, for Pink Floyd fans, particularly those who enjoy "the more melancholic" side of the band's recordings, there's much to like about the album.
“I knew the record and I knew that it had never been given a proper opportunity to be re-appraised,” Steven Wilson tells me. “Or even appraised, actually. It kind of got buried at the time; there’s never been a proper re-issue campaign that I’m aware of. So if you imagine there’s a long-lost 1970s Pink Floyd album that you’ve never heard, this is kind of it.
“But the appetite for new Pink Floyd music now is almost bigger than it’s ever been because they haven’t made a lot of music, and their legendary music is only growing in stature,” Wilson says. “But here we have an album from the 1970s that has a lot of that DNA… there’s a lot of what you associate with classic Pink Floyd, especially Wish You Were Here. The Hammond organ, the slight jazz chords, his voice, it’s all there in this record.”
“I was checking out the [Pink Floyd] forums to see how people were reacting when this record was announced,” he adds. “And one of the things that blew my mind was that a lot of people were saying that they didn’t even know this record existed. So the timing is really good."
In related news, Roger Waters will release his re-recording of The Dark Side Of The Moon through SGB Records on October 6. Waters will premiere the album, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, at the London Palladium on October 8.
