Roger Waters - Amused to Death / 45RPM 4LPs Analogue Productions

"Amused To Death" is an album over 20 years old that couldn't be more current. Roger Waters' portrait of a society that has become a slave to TV screens was released in 2015 in a remastered version and with new artwork.

Responsible for the reworking of the original tapes is James Guthrie, who also mixed the initial release and has worked with Waters since the Pink Floyd album "The Wall". Since "Amused To Death" was recorded over a period

of nearly five years and on three different formats, collecting the master tapes was no easy feat. Guthrie traveled to London - and found hundreds of them, with different takes of the same songs in different formats. So the Herculean

task was to first rebuild the album, then tackle the real work - remastering the 5.1 surround and stereo mixes.But the effort was worth it. "Amused To Death" is a conceptually and musically enormously strong album, for which Waters

and his co-producer Patrick Leonard have also united outstanding musicians. Exceptional guitarist Jeff Beck is involved in eight songs, Don Henley sings on "Watching TV", Rita Coolidge on "Amused to Death" and soul singer P.P.

Arnold on "Perfect Sense Part I / Part II". The album also reunited Waters with composer Michael Kamen, who contributed orchestral arrangements on "Too Much Rope" and "What God Wants, Part III."The cover artwork for the 2015

release was handled by Sean Evans, creative director of 'The Wall Live' tour 2010-2013, and instead of a gorilla, the new version features a young boy sitting in front of a giant television screen. Waters himself comments, 'The way we

educate young people, I'm afraid we're encouraging our society to amuse itself to death much more than ever before. What if we took the money we use to build guns and used it for education? What if children were encouraged to

prepare not for a life as consumers and producers, but to become adults who think about things without bias and who are interested in human rights? Can you imagine what our world would look like then?'"Amused To Death" is an album

that deserves close listening - for its sound as much as for its content. It's takes a look at an entertainment-obsessed society and touches on issues that have only grown more complex and urgent over the past two decades. Today, television

is just one option in an endless supply of distractions available to us anytime, anywhere. But with eyes fixed on screens, we can quickly lose sight of the crises and injustices of the real world.

Title

1. The Ballad of Bill Hubbard

2. What God Wants, Part I

3. Perfect Sense, Part I

4. Perfect Sense, Part II

5. The Bravery of Being Out of Range

6. Late Home Tonight, Part I

7. Late Home Tonight, Part II

8. Too Much Rope

9. What God Wants, Part II

10. What God Wants, Part III

11. Watching TV (featuring Don Henley)

12. Three Wishes

13. It's A Miracle

14. Amused To Death (feat. Rita Coolidge)