I can’t stop listening to this stunning song.

David Gilmour – possibly the most stylish guitarist of all time, and the other brilliant creative mind behind Pink Floyd – is about to realease a new album.

I picked up the single from iTunes music store – On an Island.

It’s a dreamy, ethereal piece that sounds, more than anything else, like Obscured by Clouds-era Pink Floyd, that then breaks into some of the most brilliant, classic Gilmour guitar playing I’ve ever heard. It’s one of those songs that almost sounds like a clinic in how to do it, the way I felt listing to Sonny Rollins play a fifteen minute sax solo when I saw him live a few years back. Like you could sit and listen and learn everything you need to know about how to play a perfect solo. It also features stunning backup vocals by David Crosby and Graham Nash, who may be geezers but wow can they still sing.

I was a huge Pink Floyd fan – and still am. But my favortite Pink Floyd isn’t the stuff that sold a bazillion records. I don’t really like Dark Side of the Moon, nor do I much like The Wall. They have great songs on them but they’re not what I consider Pink Floyd’s creative, artistic peaks.

My favorite albums were some of the less massively successful ones; Animals, Meddle, Obscured by Clouds. I tried hard to love the Syd Barret era Floyd, but as brilliant as Barret was, those albums lacked Gilmour’s guitar, and to my ear, that was such a huge component of Pink Floyd’s sound that they never quite stuck with me. They’re great, but I don’t love them.

I stopped listening to Pink Floyd after The Wall. They’d said what they had to say. Waters was spinning off into ego-land and the band had taken on that commercial juggernaut sound, were turning into one of those dinosaur acts that need to stop a while. But I still listen to the old albums, have them all on CD and vinyl. And I love them.

This song has something – something of that old, classic Pink Floyd, something of Gilmour’s first solo album (which I loved when it came out, and wish I could get now, though it’s not yet back in print); and yet it sounds current, not like he simply went back and said I can do that again.. It sounds like that because that sound is David Gilmour.

God I hope the rest of the album – due out next week – is this good.