Pink Floyd lends their capable instrumental efforts to a Barbet Schroeder movie, all while on tour. This is the dedication of a band close to greatness at work, and you can hear it through the often-overlooked Obscured by Clouds release. This should be no surprise to the dedicated Floyd fans. Their work on La Vallée is an album created in the limitations of a busy schedule and, if anything, presents a wildly different sound to what the band went on to do. It is refreshing to hear even the greats task themselves with something that sounds so fundamentally different from what they would be jotted down for in the history books. Obscured by Clouds is that, and we have La Vallée to thank. Their stopwatch system, pausing and timing from a rough cut of the film, leads to some fascinating results.
Decades before the buzz and popularity of modern electronic music, here is Obscured by Clouds. A genuinely masterful work opens this soundtrack, with the title track a chilling and still modern-sounding event. Pink Floyd at their very best, and as it fades out into When You’re In, this intensity crashes through once more. Some of the most recognisable instrumentalists plying their craft on a soundtrack which stands as one of the most underrated efforts from Pink Floyd. Of course, it is. It’s a soundtrack, after all. It was destined to be this oddity for hardened fans. Most of Obscured by Clouds is a chance to hear their instrumental complexities pieced together, the rush of touring and trying to create coming to a head. That is the refreshing crux of this album, the fact it was made at a time when Pink Floyd was at their busiest. The workaholic attitude is something to learn from and, if it can be helped, avoid.
But you cannot argue with the results. Their burnt-out minds still pushing through in this period before The Dark Side of the Moon. Any chance they can get to apply their skills, to hone them before what would be a game-changer album for the band, is taken. Obscured by Clouds has some delightful moments like Childhood’s End which sound as though they inform the tone taken by one of their greatest triumphs. Giddy kicks on Free Four are dependent on the acoustic and rhythm blend, the sudden punch of distortion, like a barge blowing its horn and breaking the peace. Obscured by Clouds is a safe spot of experimentation for the band, where they can ease out of these mellow instrumentals and into a spot of genuine perfection.
Obscured by Clouds still holds up. There is a slack sensibility to it, a sense of daringness not from trying to push for a new sound but from accepting the fundamentals of the soundtrack task at hand. Stay feels like an instrumental push in the right direction, a farewell to the sound which made Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother so invigorating. Obscured by Clouds’ closing track, the spaced-out Absolutely Curtains, is the fine line for Pink Floyd, where they touch on the everyday effectiveness of a slight, tongue-in-cheek development but pair it with an instrumental depth, a daring range, which pushes the band to that next level. This is an important step, a crossover moment for Pink Floyd, and it still shows.
