Pink Floyd’s legendary Pompeii concert film is getting a well-deserved update that will give fans a chance to enjoy the concert film in a way that once would have been impossible.
Pink Floyd at Pompeii -MCMLXXII will screen worldwide this week beginning April 24 courtesy of Sony Music Vision and Trafalgar Releasing, including a series of showings in the IMAX format. The original 35mm negative -once thought to be lost — was located in what is described as “five dubiously labeled cans within Pink Floyd’s own archives.” The footage was then painstakingly restored by hand, frame by frame. Further, Steven Wilson, who has become known for his work remixing the catalogs of classic progressive artists — and his own career as an artist — handled the process of revisiting and restoring the audio.
In a recent interview with the UCR Podcast, he shared that it was a challenging task. “It was quite a basic recording. There really were only four mono feeds — one drum feed, one bass feed, one guitar feed, one keyboard feed. A lot of what you’re listening to on the original performance is just four channels,” he explains. “Now, they did do some overdubbing later in Paris and of course, there are the vocals occasionally, but they’re not a very vocal-heavy band at this point in their career. It’s mostly instrumental.”
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“So you’re listening essentially most of the time just to four channels, and it’s like, ‘Well, what am I going to do with that in Dolby Atmos and spatial audio? So I did my best,” he continues. “I took the view that it should be a fairly dry up front sound. I spent a lot of time removing things like distortion, tape hiss, level fluctuations, trying to EQ the sounds to sound as golden and as clear as possible without making them sound too modernized or anything like that. So there were a lot of challenges, mostly to do with the the limitations, I think, of the original recording. But you know, the proof will be in the reaction the Floyd fans have to it.”
Wilson Has His Own Special Relationship With the ‘Pompeii’ Film
Over the years, Wilson has remixed classic recordings by Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Jethro Tull and many others. As a fan, he’s always had a lot of appreciation for the unique nature of the Pompeii movie, which French director Adrian Maben envisioned as an “anti-concert” film, a reaction to some of the movies of that time like Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter. “I saw the movie as a kid and loved it. It was a very influential on me,” he shares. “I was very honored to be asked to create the soundtrack to the incredible new print. I mean, when you see it, you will be blown away. I’m sure it’s literally taken Lana Topham [the director of restoration for Pink Floyd] three years to restore this print, and it looks like it could have been filmed yesterday.”
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He had a very specific approach to the work that he did on the Pompeii audio and wanted it to shine alongside the new print, but also be authentic to the event itself. “I was very much of the opinion that the band are playing outside, there would not have been much in the way of ambience,” he explains. “It would have been a very dry, very clear, very upfront sound. So that’s the way I’ve mixed it, very dry and very upfront. I know Floyd fans are very picky, and not everyone’s going to like it, but that’s the way I’ve chosen to do it. It’s very much a reflection of what I always imagined it would have sounded like if you’d been standing there in the desert under the hot sun that day.”
What Has Steven Wilson Been Up To?
Wilson, known for his work, both solo and with groups like Porcupine Tree and Blackfield, released his newest album, The Overview, in March. It’s an engaging journey, paired with a corresponding film, that finds the musician employing both current and vintage technology to create the experience that fans will hear. “I love creating music in 2025 I love it because there have never been more creative ways to create, process and twist sound,” he enthuses. “Some of the plugins that you can get on computers are amazing in terms of being creative and what you can do with them. But I also clearly love the old vintage sounds. You’ll hear Fender Rhodes, you’ll hear Hammond, you’ll hear mellotron, you’ll hear piano and you’ll hear acoustic guitars, all on The Overview.”
“You’ll hear lots of harmony vocals. You’ll hear all of those ‘old fashioned sounds.’ You’ll hear guitar tones that are through amps. You’ll hear guitar tones that are through modeling. You’ll hear guitar tones that have been recorded through modeling and then re-amped through amps,” he continues. “I’m not a purist. I don’t care as long as it sounds cool and it sounds good. And in a way, that means that when we plan the live tour, we kind of have to have the best of both worlds on tour as well. I’m going to have a little keyboard setup on the road, because I’m playing a lot of keyboards on this record and I’m taking two analog keyboards with me too. I’m taking a Moog keyboard and a Prophet keyboard, partly because I just love to be able to open the filters in real time and stuff. I think it is one of the most exciting times we’ve ever had to be making music, in the sense that we have all of these things available to us, the modeling side and the vintage side, and why not use them both? That’s what I’m going to be doing on tour.”
The Overview tour begins May 1 in Stockholm, Sweden and will wrap up its first leg June 13 in Madrid, Spain. The U.S. portion of the outing is set to begin Sept. 9 in San Francisco. The album, made up of only two tracks, is a conceptual effort, which takes its inspiration from the “overview effect” that happens as astronauts are looking back at the Earth from space. Wilson will perform the entire record during the upcoming trek. “It felt pretty necessary with this particular one,” he explains. “I mean, it’s not a particularly long record. It’s the classic vinyl length, 42 minutes long. The show is going to be the best part of two and a half hours, so it’s going to be [about] a third of the evening. But there’s still a lot of space there for me, pardon the pun, to explore the rest of my back catalog,”
Listen to Steven Wilson on the ‘UCR Podcast’
Listen to Steven Wilson’s ‘The Overview’
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Gallery Credit: Ryan Reed
