Us and Them

  • Artist: Pink Floyd
  • Album: Dark Side of the Moon
  • Label: Harvest
  • Year: 1973
  • Producer: Pink Floyd
  • Engineer: Alan Parsons
  • Studio: Abbey Road Studios, London, UK

Notes:

Echo
The title of the song is decorated with repeating, quarter note echoes -- on the words "Us" and "Them," and at similar points in the tune later. It's become an iconic echo in the short history of sound recording.
Unlike most echoes in music, these are very nearly the same level as the lead vocal itself, at first, before repeating while fading to silence, taking almost two bars to do so. In addition, each echo is very nearly the same timbre as the lead vocal, descending gradually into dullness with each repetition, more slowly than is the standard today, or even by the boys a few albums later with the echoes in Comfortably Numb. These "Us" and "Them" echoes hang on like a lead vocal, inviting us to sing along.


Sources

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