Pulse is a live recording of popular (excuse the understatement!) Pink Floyd tracks that the band performed on its tour to promote its 1994 album Division Bell. The superb selection of tracks makes this an ideal introduction to Pink Floyd. So how does Pulse fare as a ’Live’ album? Here goes. Highlights of the album This album is comprised of two casettes/CDs with 24 tracks in all. I cannot evaluate each and every song due to the word limit (plus, it would get pretty boring anyway!). I don’t see the point of listing all the tracks with the track length. You can check it out in the music store or get the discography on the web. So I will briefly describe what the album contains. Casette 1 has a cross-section of Pink Floyd through the ages. The casette opens with Shine you crazy diamond. This is followed by Astronomy domine from the Syd Barret era. This is followed by five songs from Division Bell, two songs from Momentary Lapse of reason, two hot favourites from The Wall - Hey you and Another brick in the wall Part-2 and the menacing One of these days from Meddle. Casette 2 has the band’s first-ever live performance of the entire Dark Side Of The Moon album. This is followed by three Pink Floyd classics - Wish you were here, Comfortably numb and Run like hell to close the album. What I like about this album: The band has reproduced all the songs faithfully and recorded them meticulously. So the poor sound quality, distracting audience noise and goof-ups normally associated with live performances are thankfully absent from this album. By listening to it, you would think this was actually a studio recording, but for the audience’s cheers between tracks(during tracks, audience noise is muted by the recording equipment). The flipside of this is that you cannot expect the band to majorly rework the songs. Gilmour and Wright improvise and extend their solos, but that’s it. So, if you’re new to Pink Floyd, this is perfect. If you’re a long-time Floyd fan, this may not be a highly essential buy(though not one you would regret). Gilmour and Wright take their mastery over guitar and keyboard respectively to new heights. Especially Gilmour’s solos in Money, Sorrow, Comfortably numb and Another Brick In The Wall Part-2 have some great extensions and improvisations without disturbing the song. Let’s not forget Nick Mason holding it all together at the drums, this time with Dick Wallis to back him. Dick Parry is scintillating in his saxophone solos in Shine you crazy diamond, Money and Us and them. As always, the backing vocalists give dollops of support to Gilmour as the lead vocalist. What I don’t like about this album OK, that may be too strong a word, but it makes for uniformity!! Gilmour does his best as lead vocalist, but obviously, his voice is not what it was in the 70s. That doesn’t mean he’s bad by any means. Infact, his renditions are damn good. But it’s very difficult not to compare this with the original thing. Hey you proves that even Gods are fallible as Gilmour struggles with the climactic line Hey you, don’t tell me there’s no hope at all. The backing vocalists step in at full throttle to save him before you cringe. In some of the other songs, too, he tends to sound a tad tired. All this is not intended to discourage you. I am just comparing his performance in the studio versions with this. He makes up for this(if there is anything to make up for) with brilliant vocal improvisations in Money and a soul-stirring rendition of Coming back to life. There is a little something on the album cover which may irk long-time Floyd fans. It says: Pink Floyd are: David Gilmour Richard Wright Nick Mason This would be enough to incense pro-Waters fans. But much as it looks strange on the cover without Waters on it, it can’t be helped as that’s the outcome of a bitter legal battle after which Roger Waters was no longer officially part of Pink Floyd. Though the band reunited for the Live8 concert, officially nothing’s changed, so that’s how Pulse will look for a long time, maybe forever. Conclusion To say you would not regret buying this album is a preposterous understatement. The question doesn’t even arise: this is an excellent buy and a great way to get started on Pink Floyd.