release date: Oct. 25, 1969
format: 2 cd
[album rate: 2 / 5]
producer: Pink Floyd, Norman Smith
label: Harvest Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: "Grantchester Meadows" - "The Narrow Way (Part 1)"
4th studio album by Pink Floyd released four months after the band's soundtrack album More to a movie by Barbet Schroeder (dealing with youth and heroin addiction). The album was released as a double lp (sold at the price of one normal album) with disc 1 as the recording of four live tracks, and with disc 2 featuring five new studio recordings. I recall this album from my brother's lp collection and an album he played frequently in the 1970s. The studio cd contains tracks composed exclusively by all four band members starting off with "Sysyphus (Part 1-4)" by Richard Wright - four pieces of highly experimental instrumental music (touching on modern classical), followed by two tracks by Roger Waters, "Grantchester Meadows", the finest track on the album in a blend of folk pop and psychedelic baroque pop, and the track "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict", which again is a highly experimental track of sounds and noises. followed by "The Narrow Way (Part 1-3)" (of different styles of instrumental and mostly harmonic music) written by David Gilmour, and ending with three experimental pieces "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party (Part 1-3)" by Nick Mason.
Well, my guess is that the album's popularity at the time of release had to do with the band's mix of highly experimental rock combined with chunks of more ordinary music, putting the band at the edge of creativity as avant-garde of pop / rock and as European counterparts to Frank Zappa. Today, I only find it somewhat amusing but generally of little musical interest.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, The Daily Telegraph 3 / 5 stars ]
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, The Daily Telegraph 3 / 5 stars ]
