Disco de Pink Floyd: “Obscured By Clouds (Music from the film The Valley) (Domestic Only)”

1972's Obscured by Clouds is the most unjustly overlooked album in Pink Floyd's catalogue. Its instrumentals, the title track; "When You're In;" "Absolutely Curtains" and especially "Mudmen," are some of the finest wavy, lavalamp psychedelica I have ever heard. "Childhood's End;" "Free Four" (the first song in which Roger Waters, deals with the death of his father in WW2) and "Stay," (sung seamlessly in keyboardist, Richard Wright's dry hum) feature on a new, humanistic approach to the band's songwriting. The clear, trancelike sound and down-to-earth subject matter are fine precursors to the style employed on Floyd's legendary works, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. If you love those albums, Obscured by Clouds is certainly well worth considering.

*** THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE 2011 VERSION ***

30 seconds into this 2011 remaster of Pink Floyd's "Obscured By Clouds" and little will prepare fans for the sonic assault that will hit them - it's incredible. Where has this sound quality been for the last 40 years? But I wish I could say the same of the truly naff and skimpy packaging. Still - to the details first...

Released 3 June 1972 in the UK on Harvest Records SHSP 4020 and 15 June 1972 on Harvest Records ST-11078 in the USA - original UK copies of the vinyl LP came in a round-cornered textured sleeve with a sticker on the front advising that it was "Music From La Vallee". The movie by French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder is about a group of young people seeking a mythical valley in Papua New Guinea which on maps is "...obscured by clouds". This 26 September 2011 version (27 Sep 2011 in the USA) on EMI 50999 028943 2 4 is a straightforward 10-track remaster of that Soundtrack album and comes in a gatefold card sleeve with an 8-page colour inlay inside (total playing time 40:34 minutes).

Mastered by JAMES GUTHRIE and JOEL PLANTE at Das Boot Recording Studios in Tahoe in California in 2011 - the original 1st generation master tapes have been given a thorough going over (Guthrie is a Sound Engineer associated with the band since 1978). In fact - each song feels like these experts have spent a staggering amount of time worrying over every single nuance - because the audio result is truly impressive.

Highlights include the opening track "Obscured By Clouds" (the first of four instrumentals) which fades in with a synth and drum beat - and when it turns on the power at about 23 seconds - the audio is like a punch in the face - clear, warm and swirling around your speakers with amazing presence. "When You're In" is the same though this time with Gilmour's guitar to the fore. "Burning Bridges" sums up the languid feel to so many of the lyric songs - it feels like someone relaxing with a nice bottle of wine in rural France (lyrics above). The acoustic guitars of "Wot's ...Uh The Deal" are gorgeous while the clarity of "Childhood's End" has made me hear instruments I missed before (Gilmour's solo in particular comes at you with an energy it's never had before). "Mudmen" and "Absolutely Curtains" are the other two excellent instrumentals and even the hissy (but lovely) "Stay" hasn't had the air sucked out of it by some no-noise techniques - the two engineers have let it breath. It's all impressive stuff, it really is...

I wish I could say the same for the staggeringly unimaginative packaging. The 'Pink Floyd' logo you see in all the photos advertising these new reissues turns out to be a sticker on the outer shrink-wrap that gets lost the second you unpeel it. The card sleeves are like The Beatles 09/09/09 EMI reissues - glossy and flimsy - so they smudge with finger prints the second you open them and are easy to bend and crease. The CD itself has new generic artwork that's repeated in different colour variations throughout the series - a garish Red and Pink for "Obscured By Clouds", a sort of Turquoise and Pale Green for "Meddle" etc... It has no relevance to the original albums whatsoever (where's the original Harvest label they've used on other reissues or the colourful inner bag?) but also has no protective gauze sleeve so it will scuff on repeated plays.

The front artwork of the original LP is a soft-focus blurred picture of a man in a tree in the rain with the EMI/Harvest logo in the top left hand corner. This new variant drops the logo and has a darker looking picture that to my mind completely looses the aesthetic feel of the original. It just looks wrong somehow. In its favour - when opened the new gatefold shows a beautiful colour still of men on horses being greeted by natives and some other film shots background the lyrics (lead actress Bulle Ogier is on Page 3). But the skimpy booklet is a huge disappointment. Although it has the lyrics (like this is a major improvement), it has no history on the album, pictures of the band etc... The album produced 7" singles in the USA ("Free Four" b/w "Stay") as well as a myriad of European and Worldwide picture sleeves - but again no show. Ok - it does look nice and does the job adequately - but that's all. It's a lazy-assed approach on behalf of EMI and undermines the sterling work done on the sound front. I hate to come across like some nick-picking fan boy here, but it would have been nice to actually 'discover' something on this so-called 'Discovery' version. And there's no outtakes either/no DVD of the film...

To sum up - five-star sound with 3-star presentation - but with an opening salvo price of less than a tenner in most stores - and the truly beautiful sonic upgrade thrown in - the casual listener is advised to dig in, rediscover and enjoy.

Die-hard fans however might want to wait for the Japanese Editions that will inevitably arrive in 2012 on the far superior SHM-CD format (a better make of CD playable on all players). With their faithfully reproduced artwork and audiophile reproduction - they may give your bank manager a cold sweat - but they will absolutely be the ones to get if the best is all you'll accept.

"Obscured By Clouds" seems to have always been the runt of the Floyd litter and I've never understood this - it's a cohesive work and contains some of their most musical compositions. Hopefully this flawed reissue will draw many newcomers in...

I've just listened to "Meddle" too and it's even more astonishing. Onwards and upwards folks...

Recommended.

Wedged between Meddle and Dark Side Of The Moon lies the almost-forgotten Obscured By Clouds. Because this was the Floyd's second outing as composers for a Barbet Schroeder film and not an actual Pink Floyd-intended project, Obscured By Clouds can't really be considered the true follow-up to Meddle. However, despite its "soundtrack status", it is a vital chunk of the Pink Floyd catalog.

The entire album was written and recorded in a two week blitz at the Chateau d'Herouville just outside of Paris. This time around (the recording of More being the first), the band insisted that director Schroeder's influence (interference?) over the sessions be severely limited. This gave them a full two weeks of freedom to treat the state-of-the-art 16 track studio as their own musical laboratory. The results are surprisingly good for such a short amount of time.

A mood is immediately established with the combination of Obscured By Clouds and When You're In, two mesmerizing instrumentals that start things off. The former is heavily synth driven (embellished nicely with Gilmour's trademark slide guitar), while the second (almost an Obscured By Clouds Part II) is propelled more by power chords and Mason's drums. Burning Bridges is a ballad immersed in the beautiful vocal exchanges and harmonies of Dave and Rick and contrasts nicely with The Gold It's In The..., an uptempo rocker that shows the band just having fun. Wot's...Uh The Deal follows, complete with Dave's angelic vocal harmonies and a sensitive piano solo by Rick. Mudmen (one of the highpoints of the album) is an instrumental once again spotlighting both Wright and Gilmour. Rick's languid keyboards paint a dreamy backdrop before Mason's drums usher in Dave's Floating fuzz-toned guitar. The keyboards and guitar intermingle in a glorious fashion, further cementing the dream-like feel. This is followed by Childhood's End, a Gilmour composition, which is arguably the best song on the album. It has a driving rhythm, great vocals, and of course a load of tasty stinging guitar licks. Free Four is next, an upbeat stomp-along song, boasting lyrics that hint at subjects Waters would obsess over in years to come. Unfortunately, though some of the lyrics ARE quite good, they are rendered slightly impotent by the song's bouncy, jovial atmosphere. After a somewhat disjointed Gilmour guitar solo fades out, Stay (another album highlight) starts up. This gorgeous ballad, with a wonderful lilting chorus, is a great showcase for Wright's piano and vocal talents. It also contains some magnificent wah wah guitar by Gilmour, who all but steals the show. With nothing but a toned down Stratocaster and a crybaby, he manipulates the pedal in conjunction with bends and vibrato to give his guitar an extremely expressive, vocal-like quality. Finally, the album closes with Absolutely Curtains, a predominantly synthesizer-based composition colored slightly with percussion. It has a calming but dramatic feel to it, and ends the album quite nicely (though somewhat strangely, as a New Guinea tribal sing-along fades in as the actual song fades out).

Obscured By Clouds may not contain any powerfully sublime moments, but it's floating stark beauty - a harbinger of things to come - is certainly worth the price. Don't let the fact that this is a soundtrack to a dated French film hold you back. Each song is a well-crafted and terrifically executed piece of music capable of standing on its own. Fans of Meddle, Dark Side Of The Moon, and Wish You Were Here will especially love it. This is truly a fantastic album.

Most of the more thoughtful reviews pretty much capture my overall impression of this album...less 'psychedelic', more 'formulistic', 'post Syd recovery', 'pre-DSOTM', no 'space-jams'. Please indulge me here, but I probably pre-date most of the PF viewers (and listeners), having seen PF in 1969 (Saucer Full of Secrets tour), 1970 (Ummagumma tour), 1975? (DSOTM). The first two at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia and the last in Pittsburgh, Pa (Arena). I have to admit fully that I am in the Syd, early Floyd camp...and feel that DSOTM was akin to a commercial sell out. The album's success created a physical barrier between myself and a band I really identified with. I simply lost the ability to enjoy them any longer. The size of the performing venues changed dramatically from intimate halls populated by a mellow, spaced out audience to one in which you were surrounded by 20,000 headbangers on qualudes. At that point, around 1975, I gave up and moved on.

Looking back on the years, I none-the less fully recognize the brilliance of PF through-out its varied history. I enjoy them immensely even today (in my home - far away in space and time from the headbangers). In fact, I am trying to get my 15 year old son to stop listening to pop radio long enough to give them a critical listen.

But back to the album...OBC is certainly not one of PF's finest albums...it always seemd rushed to me and as I said, formulistic. A few gems like Wot's...Mudmen and Stay are worth the price of admission, however the album does not read as a cohesive whole, but more as a soundtrack...hey, it *is* a soundtrack...seemingly made up of discarded relics from PF's unused material bin. It should, none-the-less, be part of any PF fans collection (which is why I just bought it...not having heard it for 30+ years!) if only to capture the moment of Floyd's last year of relative obscurity when they were the ultimate cult band to one which became infused with hyper egos, super stardom, huge stage presentations and listened to by a less discerning world audience. In spite of it all, PF is and was a positively unique and wonderful band, able to capture so much of the cultural pulse of the times through out its very long and brilliant history.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most underrated albums in the history of music.

This is Pink Floyd at their absolute best. This is an album that deserves to be regarded as being on the same level as The Wall, Wish you were here, or Dark Side of the Moon.

For some reason, it's not nearly as famous. Perhaps because it was rush-recorded in a weeks' time, sandwiched in between tours and sessions for Dark Side. A few months in the studio to iron out the rough edges might have been the difference.

But I still say it's right up there.

The album begins with majestically with soaring Gilmour guitar in Obscured by Clouds, which leads into When you're in. The stage is set for what's to come..

And that is Burning Bridges, which contains some of the most beautiful moments Gilmour and Wright were to have together on record, definitely more so than the following years' Time.

Then a fantastic rocker : The Gold it's in the..., followed by the pure magic of Wots...Uh the Deal. Wow. I can't even find the words to describe the atmosphere created in this song. And what about Mudmen, then... I read another review mentioning that this could have been the perfect candidate for an extended jam, a la Shine on...

You couldn't be more right. Put it down to the limited time they had to get this baby done.

Again, I'm at a loss for words when it comes to the brilliance of Childhood's End. Geez, what was Gilmour on during these sessions...the sheer fire and intensity of this song is second to none....I guess it was just the pure adrenaline of being in one the best bands that exist and about to conquer the world at that...Whatever it was, this stuff is just incredible!

Then finally...here he is...Roger! Free Four was his first dabble into the topics of insanity, life and death (most notably the death of his father in WWII - mentioned for the first time here), and rock 'n roll excess, among oh so many other things.

Then we find Richard Wright reaching his personal zenith with the gorgeous Stay. Aaaaaaaah, man. What can I say, you just gotta listen to it. It might not grab you the first time. Give it another listen. And another.

Oh yeah, and the album ends with a track as weird as anything Floyd has ever recorded in Absolutely Curtains. If anyone can tell me where that final singalong clip comes from I'll be eternally grateful.

Happy listening and enjoy the magic!