Top-class Pink Floyd tribute at Black Box

BY PAUL HYLAND

Breathe – The Pink Floyd Experience comes to Galway’s Black Box this Saturday, on the back of sell-out concerts in Dolan’s of Limerick and the Cork Opera House.

The eight-piece Breathe consists of two guitarists, one bassist, a drummer, a keyboard player, a saxophone player and two female vocalists. Their performance is accompanied by what’s described as ‘a killer lights show’.

Breathe are still very much in their infancy, having started to play together just two years ago. Drummer Graham Carey explained how they got together.

“All the musicians were professional anyway. One night I was just chatting with some of the guys and I said I’d love to start a Pink Floyd cover band. And that was it. We decided to put on a show in the Sugar Club. We did one show and it went really well. Two years later we’re still doing them.”

Graham is self-professed Pink Floyd ‘geek’. When he starts rattling off different albums the London band produced and the different musicians they had over the years, it’s really impressive. Then when he begins listing all the various years in which those musicians made this or that Pink Floyd album, you realise this is an obsession!

And he expects the same obsession from audiences at gigs all over Ireland. But does this expectation put extra pressure on the band?

“You do feel some pressure, because people have a real emotional attachment to Pink Floyd. We work really hard and some of the guys even use some of the same equipment as Pink Floyd did. That helps recreate the original sound.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.