The ancient Roman city of Pompeii has witnessed some pretty intense happenings over the centuries. In AD79, the nearby Vesuvius erupted and buried the city in volcanic ash. Nearly two millennia later, another elemental force of nature flexed its might within Pompeii’s ruins. For it was here, in the autumn of 1971, that Pink Floyd played the most remarkable concert of their career, four serious young long-hairs prising cosmic sounds from electric guitars, prehistoric synthesisers and hammered gongs, to split the sonic atom.
Half a century on – and 40 years after bassist/vocalist and arguable band-leader Roger Waters’ exit from the group – the watershed concert movie that chronicled this space-rock landmark has enjoyed a 21st-century makeover. The original 35mm negative has been restored frame by frame, its hallucinatory soundtrack given a Dolby Atmos remix by prog polymath and Porcupine Tree bandleader Steven Wilson, who declares it “the absolute zenith of Pink Floyd as an experimental rock band, the definitive statement of that era”.
