Pink Floyd have announced a unique event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their iconic eighth album, ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, with a special listening party in Western Australia soundtracking the upcoming total solar eclipse.
The “once-in-a-lifetime” event will be held on Thursday April 20 at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Marine Park (Nyinggulu) in Exmouth, a resort town on the tip of Australia’s northwest cape. That morning, a shadow of the moon will brush over Western Australia while it passes the sun; a press release boasts that Nyinggulu “The town will be the best land-based place on Earth” to witness the phenomenon.
The event itself will be overseen by Pink Floyd’s longtime creative consultant, Aubrey Powell (who is also the cofounder of art collective Hipgnosis, which designed many of the band’s timeless album covers).
In the aforementioned press release, she said: “Since its release 50 years ago, ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ has been embraced by multiple generations across the world because it examines universal themes of greed, mortality, the dark and light sides of the human psyche and, of course, our place in the cosmos.
“I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to commemorate its release than with this rare and beautiful phenomenon that visually symbolises so much of what the album explores”.
Particularly notable is that the event will timed so that the moment of total eclipse is synced up to the closing lines of ‘Eclipse’, when Roger Waters sings, “But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” Tickets will not be made available to the public, with access only made available to eight winners of a competition (who will also earn the collective designation of the ‘Astronomy Domine 8’ a nod to the band’s ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ track).
To enter the competition – more details for which can be found here – fans will need to submit a 30-second video explaining why they deserve to attend the event. Entries will be closed at 11:59pm this coming Friday (April 7).
Those unsuccessful in the competition will be able to recreate the experience for themselves; to sync Water’s final lyric to the moment of total solar eclipse, Western Australians should hit play on ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ at exactly 54 seconds past 10:16am.
Meanwhile, Waters – who has long feuded with his former bandmates in Pink Floyd – recently announced a full rerecording of ‘Dark Side’ minted entirely by himself. Drummer Nick Mason reacted to the effort earlier this week, hailing it as “absolutely brilliant”.