Sophia Michaels
Pink Floyd will mark the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon with a massive reissue that houses an unreleased 1974 full-album performance of the legendary LP.
The 2CD/2LP/2-Blu-ray The Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary deluxe box set — due out March 24, 2023, a half-century plus 23 days after the original album’s release date — pairs the remastered LP with the live album The Dark Side Of The Moon – Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974, featuring an unreleased Nov. 1974 performance of the album.
The box set also Blu-rays with the album in every permutation of audiophile experiences — Dolby Atmos Mix, 5.1 Surround Mix, Stereo Mixes, etc. — plus a 160-page hardcover book with photos from the era, an additional 76-page songbook, two 7″ replicas of the “Money”/”Any Colour You Like” and “Us and Them”/”Time” singles, and other ephemera from the album’s release.
The deluxe box set is available to preorder now, along with standalone versions of The Dark Side Of The Moon – Live At Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974, and the hardcover 50th-anniversary book.
Prior to the release of The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, Pink Floyd announced and debuted the LP — Number 55 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time — at the London Planetarium. Fifty years later, the band will revive that experience by bringing Dark Side back to planetariums in March with a “full dome experience with stunning visuals of the solar system” (but not The Wizard of Oz).
The band has also launched an animation contest where fans are encouraged to pair the Dark Side songs with their own work, with drummer Nick Mason, Pink Floyd’s creative director Aubrey Powell and the British Film Institute among the judges.
While The Dark Side Of The Moon – Live At Wembley Empire Pool captures the LP live in its fully formed and perfected state, in late 2022, the band quietly uploaded 18 pre-Dark Side concerts on streaming services (to keep its copyright) that showcased the band workshopping the album onstage prior to its recording.
