Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
Pink Floyd.
The next album after “Meddle” was this one, released in 1972, by which time I was earning a lot of money babysitting for a lady who worked as a night nurse, who actually paid me for sleeping! I was therefore able to buy it as soon as it was released. I have always loved the LP to bits, with the exception of one section right at the end of it, which as a teenager I found profoundly irritating. I am now much more forgiving of it, though it still doesn’t seem quite to fit with all the rest.
The album is correctly subtitled “Music From La Vallee”, a film I acquired on DVD last year, 2018:
The film is indeed largely in French, and starts with the heroine coveting some Birds of Paradise feathers. However, she soon becomes involved in an adulterous relationship with an explorer who entrances her with his talk of a hidden valley that was reputed to be utopia, but which had never been mapped because it was always obscured by clouds; hence the title.
Like its predecessor, the LP cover is very thin on words. It is also unique, in having curiously curved corners. this is its front:
There had not been a PF LP like this since the last film score they did, for “More” [see above], in that there are no long tracks, but rather a collection of short ones.
The record opens with the title track, “Obscured By Clouds”, a truly classic PF instrumental, with a thudding repetitive bass and drums foundation, filled out with swirling organ, and intermittent bursts of soaring Gilmour guitar. Track two is also an instrumental, called “When You’re In”, but it is shorter and much more laid back and dreamy.
