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| Album
Information |
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| Released:
June 3 (UK), 15 (US) 1972 |
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| Recorded:
February 23 - 29 1972 |
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| Genre:
Instrumental rock |
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| Length:
40:30 |
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| Label:
Harvest, EMI (UK) |
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| Harvest/Capitol,
Capitol (U.S.) |
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| Producer:
Pink Floyd |
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Album Art |
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Background
Obscured by Clouds is a rock album by Pink Floyd
based on their soundtrack for the French film
La Vallée, by Barbet Schroeder. The LP
was released in the UK on June 3, 1972 on Harvest/EMI
and then in the U.S. on June 15, 1972 on Harvest/Capitol.
The album reached #6 on the UK album charts and
#46 on the U.S. album charts (where it was certified
Gold by the RIAA in March, 1994). In 1986, the
album was released on CD. A digitally remastered
CD was released in March 1996 in the UK and August
1996 in the U.S.
At this point in their career, the band was not
new to scoring movies. They had already scored
the films More and Zabriskie Point in 1969 and
1970 respectively. So when the band went into
score the movie, they had a lot more experience
and therefore produced a much finer product. The
soundtrack works perfectly as a standalone album.
The band was already working on Dark Side of the
Moon during this period, but production was interrupted
when the band travelled to France to score the
movie. Nick Mason refers to the project:
"After the success of More, we had agreed
to do another sound track for Barbet Schroeder.
His new film was called La Valleé and we
travelled over to France to record the music in
the last week of February... We did the recording
with the same method we had employed for More,
following a rough cut of the film, using stopwatches
for specific cues and creating interlinking musical
moods that would be cross-faded to suit the final
version... The recording time was extremely tight.
We only had two weeks to record the soundtrack
with a short amount of time afterwords to turn
it into an album."
While recording the music, the band was free to
use "Standard rock song construction"
to their advantage, and was such the case for
"Obscured by Clouds." The title track
featured an early use of electronic drums, or
"electric bongos" as Mason calls them.
Rick Wright foreshadows what is to come later
with his use of moog synthesizers on this album.
A droning moog note begins the album in pure Floyd
style. This song was often used to open their
live shows in the following years. The band also
used themes to their advantage. The melody played
in Wright's "Burning Bridges" is echoed
later in "Mudmen" with David Gilmour's
reconstruction of the song. Gilmour seemed to
be the band's driving force behind this project.
His lead guitar work is very prominent throughout
the album, particularly on "The Gold It's
in the..." which he sings himself. The song
"Childhood's End" was credited only
to Gilmour without his usual help from Roger Waters
in the lyrical department, however Waters contributed
the lyrics to all other songs. It is said to have
been inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the
same name, though this is not borne out by the
lyrics.
Roger Waters only wrote one song by himself, "Free
Four," but his minimal songwriting did not
go un-noticed. "Free Four" was the first
Pink Floyd song to get significant airplay in
the U.S., and the first to deal directly with
the death of Eric Fletcher Waters, Roger Waters'
father.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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