For Londoners who missed out on tickets to David Gilmour’s 2024 week-long residency at the Royal Albert Hall, the UK Pink Floyd Experience offers the next best thing: a big band tribute act that spans the Floyd’s many eras with remarkable accuracy. Yes, we get the hits from The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Wall (1979), but we also get a healthy helping of lesser-known tracks from The Division Bell (1994) and others.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about seeing the UK Pink Floyd Experience is how it reminds us that Pink Floyd are, at their core, a blues rock band. In the intimate setting of a local theatre, stripped of arena-tour bells and whistles, we can enjoy the musicians riffing off one another, and improvising new blues guitar solos that springboard off the originals.

Lead singer and guitarist Paul Andrews has the chops on guitar, and is able to capture Roger Waters’ throwaway, semi-shouted vocals with good accuracy (though sometimes lacking the same emotional resonance). Emma Street gets three (count them) applause cues for her remarkable rendition of that inimitable vocal from “Great Gig in the Sky”. Musical director Rick Benbow (keyboards) has done a fantastic job of recreating such dense and varied arrangements among a small ensemble, at times using pre-recorded elements to boost the percussion or effects soundscape.

The real Pink Floyd are known for their elaborate light shows and on-stage spectacle: this is somewhat lacking here. But what we do get is a wholesome, low-key celebration of the band, by a group who seem to really love what they do, and a very appreciative audience of nostalgic rockers.

Book online for tour dates across the UK until July 2025.