ARTIST: Pink Floyd
TITLE: Obscured By Clouds
YEAR RELEASED: 1972
CHART ACTION: #46 US, #6 UK
SINGLES: Free Four
OTHER SONGS YOU MAY KNOW: You’re getting into deep deep cut Floyd here
LINEUP: David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Richard Wright
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT: Pink Floyd interrupts some sessions to complete this soundtrack to a French art-house movie. It hangs together pretty well despite it all.
SOME WORDS, PHRASES AND CLAUSES ABOUT THIS RECORD: The director of More, Barbet Schroeder, had asked Pink Floyd to record the soundtrack for his next project. When he was ready for that, the band had moved on to start sessions for what became Dark Side of the Moon, but they stopped work in order to record some tracks for the movie La Vallee.
The result was an album that cohered much better than their other soundtrack work, and was made-up of rather concise songs that worked well for the film, but also was an album that worked as a separate piece (unlike their other soundtracks). While not as sonically adventurous or groundbreaking as their past work and work to come, they did use some new toys like a VCS3 synthesizer
It was a rush job from concept to completion, but only a couple of tracks are filler or just bland, and a few tracks, like the instrumental 1-2 to begin the record and “The Gold It’s in The…”, “Childhood’s End”, and “Wot’s…Uh the Deal?” need more recognition as songs in the upper echelon of their canon.
NOTES & MINUTIAE: “Childhood’s End” is the last song with lyrics by someone other than Roger Waters until the band splintered in the 80’s
IS THERE A DELUXE VERSION: No
GRADE B: It has its charms and it’s good to just put on and chill for the most part.