The Australian Pink Floyd

Is the ultimate accolade for a tribute band that they are better than the real thing? Is that possible?

Nick Mason, Pink Floyd’s original drummer has said as much and the feverish expectation of a sold out Brighton Centre audience with its reverential greeting of the six dark-clad figures taking to the stage would lead you to suggest that this outrageous idea just might be true.

This elaborate and rather pleasant deception is helped on by the nature of the original. Anyone who saw the Floyd back in the 1970s was used to their idols lurking in shadowy half light, unrecognisable, and one of many things the APF’s spectacular lightshow can do is ‘shadowy half light’ –  it can also burn out your retinas – thereby concealing the precise identity of those stationary figures from the opening bars and transferring you back into an alternative universe.

Of course all this would be a total waste of time if the songs were not mastered, which they are, every phrase carefully sculptured and every chord precisely weighted. For the worshippers and the converts no song introductions are required, each opus nailed. It’s all there, awesome slow fades, moments of subtle delicacy and bone-crunching force, the nerve jangling Stratocaster and wonderfully secure drumming.

The difference from the 1970s, is that back then we didn’t know what was coming, we do now.

Brighton Centre, 20 March 2012

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