Echoes

"Echoes" is 23-minutes long and takes up the entire second side of the Meddle album. The song evolved out of Pink Floyd's live shows. According to Shiloh Noone's Seekers Guide To The Rhythm Of Yesteryear, Pink Floyd introduced a new piece of music at the Crystal Palace Garden party entitled "Return of the Sun of Nothing," said by the band to be a joke about comic books and Godzilla-type movie sequels, which developed into "Echoes" about six months later. The song was a homage to the minimalist composer Terry Riley.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters said that with this song, he was attempting to describe "The potential that human beings have for recognizing each other's humanity and responding to it, with empathy rather than antipathy."

When Pink Floyd started recording the Meddle album, they put down 24 pieces of music with no idea how it would develop, using the working title "Nothing, Parts 1-24." "Echoes" developed out of those pieces.