PINK FLOYD

         Obscured By Clouds

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                                       USA - HARVEST - ST11078

SCARCE .... FINAL COLLECTION COPY

STILL IN ORIGINAL FACTORY CELLOPHANE  

WITH CUSTOM STICKER ON OUTSIDE OF THE CELLOPHANE

Original 1972  first pressing ... getting hard to find in condition exactly like first issued (with special sticker!) and in cellophane!

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Obscured By Clouds bridges the gap between Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon and is one of the most underrated albums by Pink Floyd. Forget the fact that this was a film soundtrack: it stands completely on its own. It is, in fact, the last non-concept album that PINK FLOYD would produce until A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Therefore, what the listener ought to focus upon is the power of the music within:

The theme of missing out on something and finding that from mystical sources is a perfect one for Pink Floyd – much more so than the less straightforward plot of ‘More’ where ‘Obscured By Clouds’ is a close cousin to ‘Wish You Were Here’ with its themes of travel, alienation and despondency (and especially the album covers of ‘people who aren’t there’ – on this album it’s more than just the valley that’s obscured). Although none of the lyrics used in the Floyd’s songs seem to having to do literally with the film, they are more or less all linked to this theme in some way. For only the second time on a Floyd album Roger Waters writes most of them too – in fact all but Gilmour’s song. ‘Burning Bridges’ is an Echoes-like pop symphony in miniature (whose melody is re-used in ‘Mudmen’) full of haiku-like metaphors for someone breaking out of their earthly bonds. ‘The Gold It’s In The...’ does at least start out following the film (and the possibility of a sudden gold rush), but Waters is in too much of a hurry to spoil the non-ending of the film and gets in a lyric about the joy and excitement of travelling to new places. ‘Wots...Uh, The Deal’ is an unusually ungrammatical title for a very poetic and curious song, one that pits the earthly necessity of having to earn enough money to pay for the spiritual things you discover. ‘Childhood’s End’ is a more paranoid song about losing your way in life and getting turned into a different person as an adult than the one you hoped to be when you were young. ‘Free Four’ is arguably the first autobiographical Roger Waters song, with the first mention of the death of his father in World War II (a conscientious objector forced to fight against his wishes and killed at the battle Anzio and gloomy references to the futile pointlessness of life when we’re all going to die some day anyway. Finally ‘Stay’ is an unusual story-song about the difference between a night before when the narrator falls in love with a groupie and she means everything to him and the morning after when he can’t even remember her name. Even this song is about identity, though, of ‘being there but not there’, of literally being ‘obscured by clouds’. Considering that the band only had two weeks to work on this project they nailed the key themes of the film pretty well and all the songs seem to fit together, somehow, much more so than on ‘More’ or even on a ‘proper’ non-soundtrack album like ‘Meddle’.

One problem facing the Floyd, at the time, was that they’d already started work on ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ when they agreed to do the film and had indeed been playing the suite on the road for several months. The amazing thing is that ‘Obscured By Clouds’ manages to touch on almost all the themes of its better known twin (love, travel, money, religion, madness - of a sort) without stepping on the toes of any of the other songs. Indeed, it might be working on this album in such a sudden, uninhibited burst that helped shape Waters’ creative energy into what he really wanted to say. If there’s one song from the two albums that share their DNA, though, it’s ‘Time’ – the song full of ticking clocks reminding us to start living our lives instead of drifting through them because we only have a short time to be here (hence the French couple going out on their trek in the first place). One of the ‘Obscured’ songs – ‘Childhood’s End’ – even recycles the same clock-ticking drum pattern just to reiterate that point.

Musicians for Obscured By Clouds :

- David Gilmour / guitars, vocals
- Nick Mason / drums
- Roger Waters / bass, vocals
- Richard Wright / keyboards

Obscured By Clouds (3:05)
When You're In (2:31)
Burning Bridges (3:30)
Gold It's In The... (3:08)
Wot's... Uh The Deal (5:09)
Mudmen (4:18)
Childhood's End (4:33)
Free Four (4:16)
Stay (4:07)
Absolutely Curtains (5:51)

CONDITION: The cover: is rated: MINT in factory cellophane with custom designed sticker on outer shrink wrap! Really hard to find THIS clean. Having no writing, no split seams,no delete marks ... a scarce collection copy from 44 years ago ...

The vinyl: all shiny on both sides, rated:  M- so plays without audio problems, excellent sound sonics ...no groove wear ... clean Harvest labels