Richard Wright: Wet Dream Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		3.5

Richard Wright: Wet Dream Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 30, 2023

Pink Floyd fans have had some absolutely immense sets with at least some Blu-ray component to wend their way through over the past several years, including Pink Floyd: The Early Years, Pink Floyd: The Later Years, Pink Floyd: The Division Bell, Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon , and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, offerings like Pink Floyd: Delicate Sound of Thunder . The sheer relative brevity of content to get through on Wet Dream may actually be a boon to some, as I can tell you from experience that despite having reviewed several of the above box sets, I'm still getting through all of the non Blu-ray content like the printed material years later. Wet Dream of course isn't a Pink Floyd album, but is instead the first solo effort by once and future member Richard Wright. The legendary feud(s) between Roger Waters and David Gilmour have tended to take the spotlight a lot of the time in the roiling history of the band, but some may know that Wright himself invited umbrage toward the end of his official tenure, and he more or less agreed to simply part ways with the band after he toured with them in support of The Wall (note that the link points to a Spanish release of the film version, since I reviewed it).

Those who keep track of what seem to be innumerable subgenres in music (have you checked out the almost hilarious number of categories in the Grammy Awards?) may know of "shoegaze", which was supposedly characterized not just by a kind of swirling ambience but also by the seemingly dissociative manner of the musicians playing it, who were the antithesis of strutting, preening types like, say, Mick Jagger. While "shoegaze" was often a lot more "confrontational" (for want of a better word) than anything on Wet Dream, I'd argue that this album might be a first step toward that subgenre, which really didn't explode until around a decade after this album's release, at least insofar as Wright tends to offer some multilayered efforts that seem to drift with the Grecian breezes of Lindos, where Wright had a vacation home.

Shoegaze is often also called "dream pop", and there are definitely dreamlike segues in several of the tunes on this effort. A further genre variant, so-called "Chillwave", might be another reasonably suitable referent, and in fact I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a chillwave artist had sampled some of Wright's material. One way or the other, a kind of implied "meditational" aspect that might underlie the very concept of shoegaze is definitely on hand here, with some introspective material that perhaps understandably was met with what might charitably be termed indifference when Wet Dream first came out.

The result here is not particularly commercial, but it offers Wright the opportunity to do things his way, which certainly unavoidably has echoes of Pink Floyd, but also something a bit je ne sais quoi that is quite different from a lot of Pink Floyd's discography. The album offers some great sax playing by Mel Collins, and there's certainly no denying that Wright has a rather distinctive "vocabulary" when it comes to cobbling together changes for any given tune. There's nonetheless an overall kind of sober, even morose, quality to some of the writing here, with an emphasis on minor tonalities and, in some relatively brief moments utilizing Wright's plaintive vocals, a kind of questioning, even metaphysical, quality.

Richard Wright: Wet Dream Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Richard Wright: Wet Dream is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Parlophone and Rhino with AVC encoded 1080p (for the menus) and 1080i (for the videos) transfers. The menus are 1.78:1 and the videos are 1.33:1. While the menu element isn't fantastically exciting, it is calming in a way, with rippling waters and what look like red petals or maybe fish that waft through as any given song is playing. The two videos included are obviously old upscaled home movies and while they offer some charming views of Wright and his family on vacation in Lindos, the video quality is marginal at best. I'm therefore kind of splitting my video score above between these two aspects, with the menus certainly at 5.0 and the home movies more around 1 or 2. I've offered looks at the various menus in screenshots 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 and 10 and a couple of moments from the home movies in screenshots 4, 5 and 6.

Richard Wright: Wet Dream Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Richard Wright: Wet Dream offers a glut of audio options, including Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 for Steven Wilson's 2023 remix, and LPCM 2.0 for the album's original stereo version and for the separate "instrumental only" versions of several songs (see screenshot 8 for a listing of this particular component). Just comparing the original version to Wilson's work offers notable improvements, not just in spaciousness in the surround versions, but also I think added clarity in some of the more densely layered offerings. Wright's multi-keyboards are rather delicately filagreed at times, as are the guitars of Snowy White, and Wilson's remix really nicely separates things, offering a little "breathing room" for listeners, if that mixed metaphor is understandable. Fidelity is excellent on all of the tracks, and dynamic range is surprisingly wide as well. There's a certain kind of "flat", almost compressed, sound to the original stereo mix which is commendably expanded in the remix in what I'd almost call a multidimensional way that really brings some new vigor to the interior lines in particular. I frankly wouldn't say there's a gigantic difference between the Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 iterations, and so those who haven't yet gotten Atmos configurations in their home theater setups shouldn't be dissuaded from this release simply due to that fact.

Richard Wright: Wet Dream Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There's a always a bit of a struggle on some audio Blu-ray releases to determine what exactly should be termed a "supplement", but in this case I'll stick to the non audio content on the disc and some accompanying swag:

• Videos (1080i; 6:05) offer what look like upscaled home movies of Wright and his family on Lindos (and in the water), which play to Waves and Lindos Sailing Regatta.


• Gallery (HD; 3:54) offers some photos of Wright and others on Lindos. These are also reproduced in the foldout insert included in the DigiPack.

The handsomely designed DigiPack has a sleeve on the left side which holds a nice fold out leaflet with photos of Wright and others on Lindos, as well as reproductions of the labels on the master tapes. There are also four postcard sized reproductions of some of the photos.

Richard Wright: Wet Dream Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you deigned to look at the links to Floyd material I posted above, you may still be catching your breath over the prices some of those efforts are fetching these days. Those extreme amounts may keep even dedicated "completists" from having everything, but for those interested in some of the sidebars to the main Floyd discography, Wet Dream is an interesting if kind of understated affair. Steven Wilson's remix is fantastic in any case, and champions of Blu-ray audio should certainly be pleased with the results this disc offers. Recommended.