The sounds are all deeply familiar, but also strangely disorienting, in that they are coming at me in ways and fashions that they never have before. The first ones float in from a variety of keyboard/synthesizers, twinkling like stars into a G minor chord that grows ever more evident, until the mighty Minimoog takes centerstage.
It’s the genius of Richard Wright on full display, on the opening passage of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” and I fully linger there, until David Gilmour’s piercing notes from his Fender Stratocaster hit like lighting as we further delve into this opening track from the 1975 Pink Floyd masterpiece “Wish You Were Here.”
“When you hear music like that, it hits you on a deeper level,” says Christopher Willits, who is accustomed to seeing people have their minds blown as they experience albums — even albums they’ve heard dozens of times before — at the immersive listening environment known as Envelop SF.
Opened in 2017 in the Midway in San Francisco, this nonprofit organization showcases music from a wide variety of great artists — from the Beach Boys and Sza to Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar. (See a full schedule of upcoming events at envelop.us.)
Yet, as you may have already figured out, the platter du jour for this particular occasion is “Wish You Were Here,” Pink Floyd’s ninth studio platter and its profoundly moving follow-up to the massive breakthrough effort “Dark Side of the Moon” from 1973.
Some 30 people are gathered for the early listening event at 7:30 p.m., with another full house expected for the 9:30 p.m. nightcap. They take off their shoes, find spots on the carpet — with or without a cocktail or cup of tea in hand — and take in the Pink Floyd extravaganza in a way that they have never heard it before. Yet, one might say that it’s actually the way that this brilliant work was always intended to be played — soaring out of 32 speakers, completely surrounding the listeners and allowing the artful quadrophonic stereo mix to achieve its highest potential.
“Pink Floyd was making their music and arrangements with space in mind,” Willits says of why this particular Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act works so well in Envelop’s immersive sound environment. “For ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ for instance, they were actually rehearsing the recording to the album in different areas of the rehearsal space — thinking about how the sound was going to be placed later.”
Willits, thankfully, isn’t saying these things while the album is being as played — because, well, that would just be annoying. The conversation I have with Willits occurred before and after this 44 minutes and five seconds of rock ‘n’ roll greatness had made its stand. Yet, I am fully experiencing his point as I continue to listen to Gilmour, Wright, drummer Nick Mason and bassist Roger Waters work their magic on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” eventually finding my own comfort zone as this music ceases to be whole — at least in the sense that I’ve known it all these decades — and seems to break apart into individual pieces and dance about the room.
“That’s just really ahead of their time to be thinking about not just the emotional space of the music, which I think all of us as musicians think about, but also how does that emotional space connect into the actual like physical space that someone’s going to experience?” Willits says of Pink Floyd. “They were visionaries at the time to understand, ‘Oh wow, there’s a format that’s more than just stereo called quadrophonic. We’re actually going to make music that tries to push that format as far as it can go.’ So I think that’s why the music is is so conducive to these experiences because they’re really composing with space — like physical space — in mind.”
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve listened to this album since first falling in love with Floyd in sixth grade. I’ve listened on vinyl, CD, cassette tape, streaming and back to vinyl again. And there might even have been an 8-track tape in the mix somewhere along the way. Yet, I’ve never come close to experiencing this music in the immersive fashion I did at Envelop, where it actually feels like you are not listening to a track — but rather inhabiting it.
Wright’s cold, menacing keyboards on “Welcome to the Machine,” Gilmour’s warm, soothing acoustic guitar work on the “Wish You Were Here” title track, Mason’s rock-solid rhythm on “Have a Cigar” translate like tangible entities in this space, as if — were to to suddenly open your eyes and look to your left — you might see Waters grooving away on the bass. (I actually tried this, but Waters was nowhere to be found — only my trusty buddy Miguel.)
“It’s almost like you’re inside big headphones,” Willits remarks. “I always feel like it’s a microscope on the music. It’s like you hear so many more details. You feel the the sound around you. You feel it more emotionally.”
He’s not kidding. I’ve pretty much stopped getting emotional when I hear the gorgeous title track to “Wish You Were Here,” which is a sad result from having heard it about 487,208 times during my lifetime. But it’s a different story on this night, as the overwhelming magnitude of the sonic experience topples my emotional apathy and I’m absolutely flooded by memories of — and longings for — old friends who I once listened to this song with. Their familiar faces as clear as a day, as I sat in this dark room surrounding by strangers (and Miguel), and, indeed, wished they all were here.
The weird thing was that — as the last moments of the reprise/second half of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” left us, with Wright touching upon the melody of the old Syd Barrett-penned Pink Floyd nugget “See Emily Play” — those strangers in the room with me didn’t feel so, well, strange. It felt like we had truly experienced something — a communal happening — and that had created a bond. Sure, that bond might only last for a few hours, or even minutes. But that doesn’t make it any less real.
“You know there’s a lot of technology that’s involved with Envelop, but when it comes down to it, it’s about empathy,” Willits says. “It’s about being with other people and community — feeling that trust that you have around other human beings.
“You know we’ve had that feedback a lot of times like, ‘After that Envelop event, I felt like so much trust in humanity.’ It’s like this intimate event — everyone’s in the music and everyone’s feeling it.”