How 'Meddle' and 'Echoes' Forged Pink Floyd’s Post-Syd Identity

Pink Floyd spent two albums after Syd Barrett’s departure feeling around in the dark. Meddle was the first time they sounded like a band that knew what it wanted to be. The entire second side is given over to “Echoes,” a 23-minute piece that isn’t a solo freakout or a song suite—it’s a single, breathing composition that builds from a single piano note into a clattering, seagull-like jam and then dissolves back into silence. That structure became the blueprint for Dark Side of the Moon.

The sessions were messy. They worked in fits at Abbey Road and AIR Studios, often jamming aimlessly until something clicked. The famous “ping” that opens “Echoes” came from David Gilmour hitting a grand piano string while the sound ran through a Binson Echorec—a happy accident they kept because it sounded like a depth charge. The middle section, with those weird vocal swoops, was actually Gilmour and Rick Wright playing their guitars and keyboards through a rotating Leslie speaker, not any kind of synthesizer. They were learning to make technology serve atmosphere, not just noise.

“Echoes” gave them a new identity: epic but cohesive, improvisational but tightly