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Pink Floyd announced on the band’s social media feeds that engineer Brian Humphries died May 30.

According to the posts, Humphries was employed by Island Records and worked with groups such as Free and Traffic before leaving the label to work exclusively for Floyd. His early projects with the band included “Ummagumma” (1969), “Zabriskie Point” (1970) and “More” (1969).

In 1974 he became the band’s front-of-house sound mixer, a duty he performed on tours during ’75 and ’77, as well. He would eventually engineer “Wish You Were Here” (1975) and “Animals” (1977), as well as oversee the group’s Britannia Row Studios in the late 1970s.

This 1975 photo of Humphries was taken by Jill Furmanovsky during the making of “Wish You Were Here” at Abbey Road studios. More of Furmanovsky’s Pink Floyd images can be seen at www.rockarchive.com.

British artist and film maker Ian Emes, perhaps best known for his work with Pink Floyd, died last week at 73.

Emes created the animations that the band played during its performances of “Speak to Me,” “Time” and “On the Run” — all from “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973). He also created a 55-minute film for the band’s “The Endless River” album in 2014; and a film to accompany “Nothing Part 14,” a 7-minute piece recorded by Floyd as part of the making of “Echoes” from “Meddle” (1971), and included in The Early Years: 1965–1972 (2016) boxset.

He also directed a film shown during Roger Waters‘s performance of “The Wall” in Berlin, Germany, in 1990.

Emes’s association with Floyd began in 1972 when keyboardist Rick Wright saw Emes’s animated short “French Windows” on the BBC’s “Old Grey Whistle Test” and contacted the artist. The piece was set to Floyd’s “One of These Days.”

“Pink Floyd called me!” Emes told The Birmingham Post in 2010. “They were my gods and they wanted to see me. I thought I had done something wrong initially. I thought they wanted to tell me off.”

On the contrary, the band commissioned Emes to create the “Dark Side” animations.

Emes also created a film for Linda McCartney‘s “The Oriental Nightfish,” recorded by Wings; a video for Duran Duran‘s 1982 track “The Chauffeur”; and did work for Mike Oldfield.

Joe Pascarell, co-founder, guitarist and vocalist of Pink Floyd tribute band The Machine, has passed away. No age or cause of death was announced.

The band announced his death on social media last Tuesday:

“It is with the most broken of hearts that we announce the passing of our friend, bandmate, and brother, Joe Pascarell,” the post reads. “We’re eternally grateful for the lifetime of friendship and music we’ve shared on-stage and off, and we know he will be with us as The Machine continues on. Shine on, Joe.”

Pascarell founded what’s considered the oldest Floyd tribute group with drummer Tahrah Cohen more than 30 years ago. Among a relatively crowded field of groups devoted to playing the music of Pink Floyd, The Machine stands out as spinning an especially accurate representation.

“They duplicate the sound and hits of Pink Floyd with chilling accuracy,” wrote Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone. “(They) look nothing like Pink Floyd, but that doesn’t matter — they sound exactly like Pink Floyd, and that’s what counts,” Matthew Webber wrote in Spin.

The New York-based group has played venues throughout North America, and has toured as far away as Central America, Europe and Asia.

When the question is asked of us — as it often is by fans of the “Floydian Slip” radio show — who we think is the best Floyd tribute band, our answer for many years continues to be: The Machine.

The group is dedicating its Feb. 5 performance at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass., to Pascarell. They’ll be joined by Adam Minkoff.

Shine on, Joe.

Bhaskar Menon, largely credited with making Pink Floyd a household name in the United States, died March 4 at his home in Beverly Hill, Calif. He was 86.

Menon, a native of Thiruvanthapuram, India, was founding chairman and CEO at EMI Music Worldwide, and served as president and CEO of Capitol Records in Los Angeles at the time Floyd released “The Dark Side of the Moon” in 1973.

“The story in America was a disaster, in that we really hadn’t sold records,” Floyd drummer Nick Mason says. “So they brought in a man called Bhaskar Menon who was absolutely terrific. He decided he was going to make this work, and make the American company sell (‘The Dark Side of the Moon’). And he did.”

Under Menon’s direction, “Dark Side” reached #1 on the Billboard chart and become one of the greatest selling albums of all time. In doing so he helped turn around Capitol’s finances, which were in shambles after the break-up of its biggest-selling act, The Beatles.

While helping steering “Dark Side” to success was perhaps his biggest achievement during the seven years he spent at Capitol, Menon also oversaw successful releases from other bands such as Wings, Steve Miller Band, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt, Helen Reddy and Natalie Cole.

Menon left Capitol in 1978 and the music business altogether in the early-’90s to found International Media Investments, an investment and consulting firm for media businesses.

Film director Alan Parker (center) died today after a lengthy illness. He was 76.

With more than two dozen films to his credit, Pink Floyd fans knew him best for directing 1982’s “Pink Floyd The Wall.”

Parker was nominated for Oscars twice — for “Midnight Express” (1978) and “Mississippi Burning” (1988) — and directed a number of musical films in addition to “The Wall,” including “The Commitments” (1991), “Evita” (1996) and “Fame” (1982).

“When I go to film festivals and they show my films, they always include ‘The Wall,’ and it’s always packed out,” he said in 2016. “So, it always appears wimpy to say I hated making it. I have mellowed a bit and say it was a ‘tortured but highly creative time’ – not to be repeated.”

Parker was one of an artistic trio that formed the film’s creative nucleus, which included animator Gerald Scarfe and Floyd’s Roger Waters.