David Gilmour teases a sonic shift for his next album: "The electric guitar I'm currently playing is not as 'rock god' as one might expect"

David Gilmour performing live
(Image credit: Matthew Eisman/Getty Images)

David Gilmour has announced that he hopes to have an album out “in the next year or two”, and teased that it may feature a significant sonic six-string shift from his previous outings.

In a conversation with Rolling Stone, the Pink Floyd electric guitar god – who was joined by his wife and musical partner, Polly Samson – gave preliminary details about the upcoming offering, and revealed it might have arrived sooner had it not been for the national lockdowns.

Said Gilmour, “I’m hoping that I will have an album ready in the next year or two; I’m not that fast. One of the problems, of course, is this lockdown thing.

“We are now both double vaccinated, so things are looking a little bit brighter. But getting other people in to listen, to help, and to play on things has been kind of impossible in the last year,” he continued. “I do look forward to actually playing songs with a bunch of actual musicians at one point.”

When quizzed about the direction of the album, Gilmour confirmed that it will see him reunite with the electric guitar, and feature some stylistically diverse arrangements.

“I will play electric guitar again," he revealed. "But the electric guitar I’m currently playing is not quite as 'rock god' as one might expect. The tricky bit will be how to tie all the various disparate sounds together into a homogeneous whole."

On whether fans can look forward to a tour anytime soon, Gilmour admitted, “I haven’t given that a moment’s thought yet, but we had a lovely time on the last tour we did. 

"At this very moment, playing to a group of 10,000 people in an arena is a nightmare, so I wouldn’t do that.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Gilmour responded to recent allegations from Roger Waters, following a dispute over the release of the band’s Animals remaster liner notes.

“We’ve never had liner notes,” he responded. “There’s a lot of misinformation. I’m not keen on constantly responding to every bit of untruth that I hear about myself and what I’m doing."

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Matt Owen

Matt is a Staff Writer, writing for Guitar World, Guitarist and Total Guitar. He has a Masters in the guitar, a degree in history, and has spent the last 16 years playing everything from blues and jazz to indie and pop. When he’s not combining his passion for writing and music during his day job, Matt records for a number of UK-based bands and songwriters as a session musician.