Audiovisual Spectacle Wows Hala Tivoli (2013)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Sebastijan Videc
Photos: Jerneja Jerak

Venue: Hala Tivoli, Ljubljana
Concert date: November 30, 2013
Attendance: 4,000
Ticket price: €27 in advance

Check the gig listings in late fall and you can’t help but notice the swarm of »tribute« bands playing Ljubljana these days. After Doors Alive and a U2 tribute band, it was Brit Floyd’s turn this time, and Bohemians are already waiting for us this Saturday. Brit Floyd played Ljubljana last November too, and won over the gathered Pink Floyd fans with their show. The sight of a well-packed floor and stands in the small hall of Hala Tivoli this time confirmed the high expectations of a party-thirsty crowd on the night when November hands the baton to the merriest month of the year.

With a band like Pink Floyd, it’s hardly surprising that three decades of activity built up a massive fan base, but a look around the hall confirmed that four generations had come out to see their imitators! From little boys to teenagers, through the most numerous middle generation, all the way to pensioners who’ve probably followed the band since day one.

The concert kicked off at nine sharp, and an animation of marching hammers and the symbols of the wall made it clear we were in for an opening in the spirit of the legendary album The Wall, for which Pink Floyd also made an animated musical film, whose graphics and animations stayed with us for most of the evening. Behind the stage reigned a round screen some seven, maybe eight meters across, with spotlights mounted around its rim that painted multicolored shapes on it with their light show, while most of the time it served for graphic projections; much like Pink Floyd used on their last Pulse tour.

As part of the current P-U-L-S-E 2013 tour, Brit Floyd decided to present five of the most important albums of this psychedelic prog rock outfit. In roughly twenty-minute chunks they ran through The Wall, Wish You Were Here, Dark Side of the Moon, Animals and the last one, Division Bell. The visual treatment of the album changes was a nice touch too: between songs they darkened the stage, and the screen played a first-person video of a guy reaching into an LP collection and dropping the chosen (next-up) record on a turntable, at which point the band launched into a set from that record. Worth mentioning that they’re one of the few bands whose members don’t try to dress up as the members of the band they’re imitating, but they more than make up for that »shortcoming« with their stage design and excellent music, helped this time by an exceptionally well-tuned sound – hats off to the sound crew.

After an hour and ten minutes the band took a twenty-minute break, which seemed odd to many, but given that they play a two-hour-and-forty-five-minute set, the rest is justified. Finding faults with Brit Floyd would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Already by the third song the bassist ran into trouble with his guitar, which a roadie tried to fix on stage mid-show; sadly without success, so the guitar was swapped while the show carried on without a hitch, and Ian Cattel, in the role of Waters (bass and vocals), professionally sang his part despite the hiccup. Unfortunately, a few times in the first half of the show his voice ran out on the higher notes, but that’s probably down to still-cold vocal cords and the fact that since the tour began at the end of September, the Ljubljana gig was already number forty-nine! The guitar duo of Harrison and Darlington worked together brilliantly on Teles and Stratocasters, as well as on 6- and 12-string acoustics, and the latter (who played Gilmour) played the solos on High Hopes and Comfortably Numb on a »lap steel« guitar. Rick Benbow was replaced on keys this time by Tom Ashbrook, who did the job with flying colors. The female trio on backing vocals deserves a mention too, as they played an important role, especially the Black, busty Jacquie Williams with her soul voice, and Ola Bienkowska, who got the vocal interpretation of The Great Gig In the Sky.

Audience participation was pretty feeble, except at the ends of songs, and the band first addressed us only at the end of the first half, with the obligatory »Thank you« and »Good evening.« In the second half the picture changed, and maybe the reason lies in the increased blood alcohol levels and psychoactive substances consumed during the break. During High Hopes you could already hear the crowd singing along on the chorus, and, as expected, it nearly drowned out the band during Wish You Were Here. When the band left the stage after Comfortably Numb, in which Cattel played the doctor who injects Pink with a sedative, the hall, with thunderous applause, shouting and whistling, finally called the Brits back on stage, where they said their goodbyes with one more The Wall classic, Run like Hell.

Almost two decades of Pink Floyd being out of action clearly hasn’t hurt their popularity, as Brit Floyd’s concert this Saturday night proved too. Coming back to Ljubljana and the crowd’s response surely paid off for the band, and gave the fans a trip through time that, sadly, won’t come again. Despite the age of the releases, they’re still lyrically very relevant in today’s world, which may be why Pink Floyd keep their popularity, even though the music is mostly demanding and complex in structure – maybe not so much technically as elementally demanding. The band is slowly wrapping up a good two-month P-U-L-S-E tour, on which they’ll play over fifty concerts, and a few days ago they also announced that they’re heading out on a new US tour as early as March, playing songs from absolutely all the Pink Floyd albums. We can only hope we’ll see each other again this time next year.