BEYOND THE DARKSIDE
Perth Concert Hall
Saturday May 7th, 2011

Words by Shane Pinnegar

Photos by Mandy, Awakening Vixen Photography

As Roger Waters drags his live interpretation of “The Wall” around America and Europe, the likelihood of any reformed Pink Floyd world tour – with or without Waters on board – is so slim as to be non-existent nowadays. And any special on stage appearances are extremely unlikely to be in Perth!

Thus Kevin Hunt’s Beyond The Darkside goes some way to filling a rather enormous gap. Modelled on the enormostadium 1996 world “Pulse” tour, Hunt has cleverly downsized that enormous show’s spectacle in order to accommodate Concert Halls – complete with enough lasers to fill out a high budget sci-fi movie, a smaller version of Floyd’s ground breaking circular video screen, a full band and 3 backing vocalists.

The set-list of tonight’s performance is largely the same as the “Pulse” DVD, the first half starting off with ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ before running through tunes from the band’s nineties albums, made after Waters left the band.

Whilst these tracks would have carried far more relevancy at the time of the 1996 tour, only a few of them have the classic status to stand up proudly next to the recognised iconic songs from albums such as “Dark Side Of The Moon”, “Us And Them” and “The Wall”.

That said, ‘Learning To Fly’, ‘What Do You Want From Me’, ‘Take It Back’, ‘Sorrow’ and ‘Coming Back To Life’ – whilst not as instantly recognisable as ‘Time’ or ‘Money’ – still have the packed audience full of Floyd diehards singing every word and lapping up the magnificent sounds and lights.

A glitch occurred when the Front Of House sound circuit tripped, but the band recovered in seconds, before ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ and Meddle’s ‘One Of These Days’ rounded out the first half with an appearance from 2 giant inflatable pigs – no small feat in the confines of the Concert Hall!

The lights dimmed after intermission and it was immediately apparent that the classics half of the show was always going to engender a more vocal reaction from the nearly full house, and Hunt and company’s immaculate renditions of some of the best rock songs of the past 40 years.

‘Great Gig In The Sky’ allowed the three backing singers to each take a star turn in the spotlight on THAT vocal solo, ‘Time’, ‘Money’ and ‘Us And Them’ sent shivers through the spine, and an encore of ‘Wish You Were Here’ (featuring a montage of Syd Barrett photos on the circular video screen), ‘Comfortably Numb’ and ‘Run Like Hell’ capped off a brilliant night that just might be the closest thing to an actual Pink Floyd gig that we’ll see, short of something on the scale of Waters’s current tour.