according to Mason, "an interesting phenomenon occurred, which was that Pratt's playing tended to change the mood of the music we had created on our own".^[10] Without the legal problems experienced during production of their 1987 album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Gilmour was at ease; if he felt the band were "getting somewhere", he would record them on a two-track DAT recorder.^[11][12] At one point Gilmour surreptitiously recorded Wright playing, capturing material which formed the basis for three pieces of music.^[13]

After about two weeks the band had around 65 pieces of music. With engineer Andy Jackson back on the team, and Bob Ezrin as co-producer, production moved to Gilmour's houseboat and recording studio, Astoria. The band listened to and voted on each track, and whittled the material down to about 27 pieces of music. Eliminating some tracks, and merging others, they arrived at about eleven songs. Song selection was based upon a system of points, whereby all three members would award marks out of ten to each candidate song, a system skewed somewhat by Wright's decision to award his songs ten points each, and the other songs no points.^[14] Wright was not contractually a full member of the band, a situation which upset him. Wright reflected: "It came very close to a point where I wasn't going to do the album, because I didn't feel that what we'd agreed was fair."^[15] Wright received his first songwriting credits on any Pink Floyd album since 1975's Wish You Were Here.^[16]

“Wearing the Inside Out”

“Wearing the Inside Out”首次包含了理查德·赖特自1973年专辑“月之暗面”以来为平克·弗洛伊德的声乐贡献。

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Gilmour's fiancée, Polly Samson, also received songwriting credits. Initially, her role was limited to providing encouragement for her husband, but she later helped Gilmour write "High Hopes" (a song about Gilmour's childhood and early life in Cambridge). Her role expanded to co-writing a further six songs, something which did not sit well with Ezrin. In an interview for Mojo magazine Gilmour admitted that Samson's contributions had "ruffled the management's [feathers]", but Ezrin later reflected that her presence was inspirational for Gilmour, and that she "pulled the whole album together".^[17] She also helped Gilmour, who, following his divorce, had developed a cocaine addiction.^[1]

Keyboard player Jon Carin and drummer/percussionist Gary Wallis were brought in to complete the band before recording began. Five backing vocalists were also hired, including Sam Brown, and Momentary Lapse tour singer Durga McBroom. The band then moved to Olympic Studios, recorded most of the 'winning' tracks over the space of a week. After a summer break, they returned to Astoria to record more backing tracks. Ezrin worked on the various drum sounds, and previous collaborator and orchestral composer Michael Kamen provided the album's string arrangements which were recorded at Abbey Road Studio Two by Steve McLaughlin.^[18] Dick Parry played saxophone on his first Pink Floyd album for almost 20 years, on "Wearing the Inside Out", and Chris Thomas was booked to undertake the final mix.^[19] Between September and December recording and mixing sessions were held at Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, and the Creek Recording Studios in London. In September, the band performed at a celebrity charity concert at Cowdray House, in Midhurst.^[20] The album was mastered at the Mastering Lab in Los Angeles, by Doug Sax and James Guthrie.^{[nb 2]}

Jackson edited unused material from the Division Bell sessions, described by Mason as ambient music, into an hour-long composition tentatively titled The Big Spliff,^[21] but Pink Floyd decided not to release it.^[10] Some of The Big Spliff was used to create the band's final album, The Endless River (2014).^[22]

器乐谱写[编辑]

With the aid of Gilmour's guitar technician, Phil Taylor, Carin located some of Pink Floyd's older keyboards from the warehouse in which they had been stored, including a Farfisa organ. Some of the sounds sampled from these instruments were used on the tracks "Take It Back", and "Marooned".^[23] Carin was joined on keyboards by Ezrin. Durga McBroom supplied backing vocals alongside Sam Brown, Carol Kenyan, Jackie Sheridan, and Rebecca Leigh-White.^[24]

Gilmour used several styles on the album. "What Do You Want from Me" is influenced by Chicago blues, and "Poles Apart" contains folksy overtones. Gilmour's improvised guitar solos on "Marooned" used a DigiTech Whammy pedal to pitch-shift the guitar notes over a full octave. On "Take It Back", he used an EBow, an electronic device which simulates the sound of a bow on the strings, on a Gibson J-200 guitar through a Zoom effects unit.^[25]

包装和标题[编辑]

To avoid competing against other album releases (as had happened with A Momentary Lapse) Pink Floyd set a deadline of April 1994, at which point they would begin a new tour. By January of that year however, the band still had not decided on a title for the album. The list of names being considered included Pow Wow and Down to Earth. At a dinner one night, writer Douglas Adams, spurred on by the promise of a payment to his favourite charity, the Environmental Investigation Agency, suggested "the division bell" (used in the lyrics for "High Hopes"), and the name stuck.^[27][28]

Longtime Floyd collaborator Storm Thorgerson provided the album artwork. He erected two large metal heads, each the height of a double-decker bus, in a field near Ely. The sculptures were positioned close together, and photographed in profile, to give the illusion that not only were they either facing or talking to each other, they also presented the viewer with a third face. Thorgerson mentioned the "third absent face" was a reference to Syd Barrett. The sculptures were devised by Keith Breeden, and constructed by John Robertson. Ely Cathedral is visible on the horizon.^[29][30] The pictures were shot in cold February for optimal lighting conditions.^[27] Since 2001, the sculptures are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.^[31] An alternate version of the cover photo, featuring two 7.5-米（25-英尺） stone sculptures by Aden Hynes^{[nb 3]}, was featured on the compact cassette release and the tour brochure.^[32]

The album was released in the UK and US on CD, vinyl, cassette and mini-disc, each with its own format and label-specific design. The artwork inside the CD liner notes revolves around a similar theme, with the image of the two heads formed by various other objects, such as newspapers ("A Great Day for Freedom"), coloured glass ("Poles Apart"), and boxing gloves ("Lost for Words"). Pages two and three portray a picture from the Chilean Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The CD tray itself had the name of Pink Floyd printed in Braille on the left front side.

发行和评价[编辑]

专业评分

评论得分
来源	评分
AllMusic	[33]
PopMatters	[34]
Robert Christgau	[35]
Rolling Stone	[36]
Uncut	[37]

On 10 January 1994 a press reception to announce The Division Bell and world tour was held at a former US Naval Air Station in North Carolina, in the US. A purpose-built Skyship 600 airship, manufactured in the UK, toured the US until it returned to Weeksville, and was destroyed by a thunderstorm on 27 June. Pieces of the aircraft were sold as souvenirs. The band held another reception, in the UK, on 21 March. This time they used an A60 airship, translucent, and painted to look like a fish, which took journalists on a tour of London. The airship, which was lit internally so it glowed in the night sky, was also flown in northern Europe.^[38]

The Division Bell was released in the UK by EMI Records on 28 March 1994,^{[nb 4]} and in the US on 4 April,^{[nb 5][38]} and went straight to #1 in both countries.^[40] The Division Bell was certified silver and gold in the UK on 1 April 1994, platinum a month later and 2x platinum on 1 October. In the US, it was certified gold and double platinum on 6 June 1994, and triple platinum on 29 January 1999.^[41]

In the United States the album debuted at number one in the Billboard 200 during the week of April 23, 1994 selling more than 460,000 units, at the time it was the 12th largest single-week total since Billboard began using SoundScan data in May 1991 and also became the fifth-largest first-week sales sum back then.^[42] The next week it stayed at the top of the chart selling a little less than half its first-week total, it moved 226,000 units during its second week on chart.^[43] The next week sales slid by 30% from last week's sum selling 157,000 units, despite this sales decrease the album stayed at number one.^[44] The following week, on May 14, 1994 The Division Bell remained at number one on the Billboard 200 and sales declined by 17%.^[45] On its fifth week on chart it fell off to the fourth place on the chart. It was present on the Billboard 200 for 53 weeks.^[46] It was certified three times platinum by the RIAA on January 29, 1999 for shipments of three million units.^[41]

Despite decent sales, The Division Bell received mixed reviews. Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly gave it a "D", writing that "avarice is the only conceivable explanation for this glib, vacuous cipher of an album, which is notable primarily for its stomach-turning merger of progressive-rock pomposity and New Age noodling".^[47] Rolling Stone's Tom Graves criticised Gilmour's performance, stating that his guitar solos had "settled into rambling, indistinct asides that are as forgettable as they used to be indelible ... only on 'What Do You Want from Me' does Gilmour sound like he cares".^[36] Nevertheless, the album was nominated in the 1995 Brit awards for the "Best Album by a British Artist",^[48] but lost to Blur's Parklife. In March the same year the band was awarded with a Grammy for the "Best Rock Instrumental Performance" on "Marooned".^[49]

In Uncut's 2011 Pink Floyd: The Ultimate Music Guide, Graeme Thomson wrote that The Division Bell "might just be the dark horse of the Floyd canon. The opening triptych of songs is a hugely impressive return to something very close to the eternal essence of Pink Floyd, and much of the rest retains a quiet power and a meditative quality that betrays a genuine sense of unity."^[51]

Uncut reviewed the album once again in 2014 to celebrate the 20th anniversary reissue, and in their review praised the album for its production, citing that the album sounded much "more like a classic Pink Floyd album than 1983's The Final Cut" and throughout the album noted the empathy and connection between Wright and Gilmour, stating that these moments were "at the album's musical heart".^[37]

The album was re-issued again with the Pink Floyd Records label on 26 August 2016.

巡演[编辑]

Two days after the album's release, the band's Division Bell Tour began at Joe Robbie Stadium, in suburban Miami. The set list began with 1967's "Astronomy Domine", before moving to tracks from 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and The Division Bell. Songs from Wish You Were Here and The Dark Side of the Moon featured, as well as The Wall. Backing musicians included Sam Brown, Jon Carin, Claudia Fontaine, Durga McBroom, Dick Parry, Guy Pratt, Tim Renwick, and Gary Wallis. The tour continued in the US through April, May and mid-June, before moving to Canada, and then returning to the US in July. As the tour reached Europe in late July, Waters was invited to join the band, but he declined, and later expressed his annoyance that some Floyd songs were being performed again in large venues. On the first night of the UK leg of the tour on 12 October, a 1,200 capacity stand collapsed, but with no serious injuries; the performance was rescheduled.^[52][53]

During the tour an anonymous person named Publius posted a message on an internet newsgroup, inviting fans to solve a riddle supposedly concealed in the new album. The message was verified during a show in East Rutherford, where white lights in front of the stage spelled out "Enigma Publius". During a televised concert at Earls Court in October 1994, the word "enigma" was projected in large letters on to the backdrop of the stage. Mason later acknowledged that the Publius Enigma did exist, but it had been instigated by the record company rather than the band. As of 2014, the puzzle remains unsolved.^[54]

The tour ended at Earls Court on 29 October 1994, and was the group's final concert performance until Live 8. Estimates placed the total number of tickets sold at over 5.3 million, and gross income at about $100 million.^[55] A live album of the tour, named Pulse, and a concert video, also named Pulse, (which was shot on 20 October 1994) were released in June 1995.^[56]