Roger Waters - Radio K.A.O.S.

In 1987 Roger's estranged bandmate David Gilmour had just clinically pieced together the bloated "Momentary Lapse of Reason" under the name of Pink Floyd. Many people then wished for Roger back as the true creative force behind Floyd, while ignoring the similarly lackluster material that Roger was also producing at the same time. "Radio K.A.O.S" was a bizarre concept album based on an imaginary radio station. The DJ receives regular calls from a boy called Billy who can only speak through a speech synthesiser. Billy eventually informs the listeners that the world is about to be destroyed in nuclear apocalypse.

The songs plod along, with an appropriately radio-friendly 1980's style pop production, and are linked with spoken passages featuring the DJ and Billy. It's got a very dated sound, not a bad thing in itself, but more significantly the tunes mostly aren't very memorable. He does the same trick as on "Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" - saving the best song for the end. This time, "The Tide is Turning" gives the album a good optimistic, lighter-waving conclusion. To give Roger credit, his strength is as a lyricist. While narrating the peculiar tale of Billy, he gets across well some of his pet topics of communication, commercialisation, and obviously, world destruction. Although the music's hardly classic Pink Floyd, it's more listenable and has more relevance than the navel-gazing "Hitchhiking".

May 9, 2004

6 out of 10

see also...

• Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

previous | next