"the endless river" comprises four pieces, which form a continuous flow of mostly ambient and instrumental music. gilmour told "mojo": "unapologetically, this is for the generation that wants to put its headphones on, lie in a beanbag, or whatever, and get off on a piece of music for an extended period of time. you could say it’s not for the itunes, downloading-individual-tracks generation." mason described the album as a tribute to wright: "i think this record is a good way of recognising a lot of what he does and how his playing was at the heart of the pink floyd sound. listening back to the sessions, it really brought home to me what a special player he was."