Pick Your Poison: Monday 7-7-14

Since I’m always passing along the freshest of fresh new music in these Pick Your Poison posts and I’m always reviewing new-ish albums as well, it’s not often that I get to bring up something that’s wholly considered “classic.” I suppose technically this still isn’t one of those times, but it still sort of applies. Specifically, Pink Floyd will be releasing a new album this October. It’s been 20 years since their last one, The Division Bell, came out, and they celebrated with a special anniversary box set released last week. Talk of the new Pink Floyd record began to emerge over the weekend, when David Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson tweeted that it will be called The Endless River and will be based on sessions that were started in 1994. Backup singer Durga McBroom-Hudson, sensing the proverbial cat was now out of the bag, posted a photo on Facebook showing some vocal sessions she did for the record. Apparently it’s been gestating and slowly evolving these last 20 years, and while the final product will reportedly be largely ambient and instrumental, there are still vocals and other pieces being recorded for it right now. These are the miniscule details the band have shared on their website, with promises of more revelations later this summer. To be clear, the main performers on The Endless River will be Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. Roger Waters is currently not involved in any way with this record. So that’s about all we know at this point. It’s enough to spark my interest and get me at least a little bit excited, though obviously the late period Pink Floyd records weren’t much to write home about and this could easily fall into that camp. Like most people, I stick to their classic records from the 70’s. If they’ve got any scrapped recordings from that era that they want to resurrect and add to, that would REALLY snag my interest. Still, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that what we’ll get in October is vintage Floyd. Jumping back into the here and now, let’s look at today’s edition of Pick Your Poison. There’s some quality tracks in this set from Alburn, Basketball Shorts, Francesca Fiore, The Girl With Dark Eyes and VIRGO. In the Soundcloud section after the jump, stream songs from alt-J, Hodgy Beats & Left Brain, Mat Hunsley, and more.