In 1993, a documentary was released about the Mandelbrot Set and fractal geometry, called Fractals: The Colors of Infinity. I watched the first 22 minutes of the documentary, and it is rather fun to watch. However, I was also focused on hearing the unreleased background music that was done by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, but I’m going to say that the music was done by Pink Floyd because some of the tracks were recorded during the sessions of 1994’s The Division Bell album. One of them was later released on 2014’s The Endless River, which was the last official Pink Floyd album.
I’m going to go through the documentary to try and find the background music, listen to it (even though bits of dialogue and narration can be heard in the music, but it doesn’t matter), and then give a summary as I review it.
“#1”-The same music from the track “Things Left Unsaid” off of The Endless River, but this time featuring ambient bird sound effects.
“#2”-This is a heavy prog piece featuring Gilmour’s blazing guitar solo work, along with bass and 90’s crime drama-style percussion.
“#3”-An ambient piece featuring brassy synthesizer, similar to the opening of the Dire Straights song “Money for Nothing”.
“#4”-A jazzy piece driven by electric guitar and synthesizer. This reminds me of the song “Empty Night” by the South Korean group Sanullim (Mountain Echo), from their 1978 album Vol. 3.
“#5”-This has Hammond organ, atmospheric keyboards and soaring guitar work.
“#6”-Similar to the previous piece, with Hammond organ and guitar, but is more atmospheric and also featuring strange electronic sound effects.
“#7”-A track recorded during the Division Bell sessions, featuring ambient synths, tribal percussion, acoustic guitar, bass, and spacey guitar soloing. In fact, this was recorded as an exercise to the track “High Hopes”, before the final version of that particular track was recorded.
“#8”-This has a rapid synthesizer melody similar to the track “On the Run” from 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, along with a rapid cymbal rhythm. I bet the synth used was an EMS VCS3.
“#9”-This has ambient synths, one of them is a string synth, another sounding like a flute.
“#10”-This is similar to the 7th track, but this time, it has different guitar melodies, and a more ambient string synth.
“#11”-The same music from the first track, minus the bird sound effects.
“#12”-The same as track 2, played during the documentary’s closing credits.
NOTE: Although there are 20 pieces of music that were used, I didn’t add or describe the other 8 tracks to the list because they are just very short snippets.
The complete documentary, with Pink Floyd’s soundtrack, can be found on DVD, but the soundtrack can also be found on the bootleg rarities CD box set A Tree Full of Secrets. I still don’t understand why the full soundtrack was never officially released in any form. However, it’s still a great soundtrack.
The Crazy Mind of Tré Roland 