(Buying the albums sampled on “Picnic”).
Track 3 on Side 1 is “Druid One”, a short piece coming in at 3.43, with the tabla introducing it with a driving, urgent beat. It is pleasant enough, and has a fairly distinct melody, which continues the sense of urgency. This was a druid in a hurry.
Track 4 is “Stone Circle”, another short track coming in at 3.25. This uses a plodding percussion and plucked violin, with many oboe trills. It is, curiously, evocative of a stone circle, and bears some similarity to “Earth” on the second LP.
Side 2 opens with the second longest track on the record, the splendid “Egyptian Book of the Dead”, which is 8.50 minutes long. Like many Pink Floyd LPs of the 1970s, it opens with something akin to silence, followed by about a minute of murmuring cello and violin, with the oboe dotting a few notes here and there. Then in comes the tabla, and the magic begins. Much use is made of the droning effect of the cello, rumbling away in the background. This is one of the sparsest tunes on the record, which accentuates the consistent beat of the tabla in a wonderful way. There are also some magnificently extravagant intervals in the violin playing. The cumulative effect of all this is again a reasonable portrayal of the title.
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