THE EARLY YEARS 1972 OBFUSC/ATION

Volume 6 of The Early Years collection ('Obfusc/ation') centers on 1972 which saw the release of 'Obscurred By Clouds' which was the soundtrack for 'La Vallee', a movie that was rather obscure in the states. It also saw the release of the movie 'Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii' which features the band in interviews and performing in the ruins of an ancient amphitheater with no audience. The material this time around focuses on both of these releases, but has very little in the way of unreleased material, per se, but offers a lot in new ways to hear the material. It features 2 CDs and 1 DVD/Blu-ray disc.

CD 1

The first CD features the 'Obscured By Clouds' album in its entirety, but, for the first time, the entire album is recreated with the much clearer and cleaner 2016 mix. If you have heard the original album, then you know all of the material on here, it is just a much better mixing of it. The album is much more accessible than anything the band had done up to this point, and the music is excellent, just not outstanding. However, it is usually overlooked in the band's discography probably because it is from a movie and, even though it is good and most of the tracks have vocals and shorter than normal tracks, it doesn't have anything that the layperson will recognize. But, it shouldn't be ignored either. Since it is pretty much just a newer mix of the original, it gets 4 stars, same as the original.

CD 2

This CD contains the audio portion (music only) of the 'Live at Pompeii' video. This is the first time it has been offered on a CD or as an audio only album. That is what makes it unique. Finally, lovers of the performance can hear it without having to watch the movie too. Again, there is no reason to go over this CD track by track, because most of the big fans have already heard it, just not on CD format. A few things to note, however, is that 'Mademoiselle Nobs' is not on this version of the album, which really isn't missed that much anyway since it's basically just an instrumental version of 'Seamus' from the 'Meddle' album (dog howling included). Also, 'Echoes' is not presented in two parts (at the beginning and end of the set), but merged together. Again, this is a 4 star CD.

DVD/Blu-Ray

This disc contains 14 tracks containing music videos, concert performances and other rare snippets. It begins with a section called 'Recording Obscured by Clouds, Chateau d'Herouville, France, recorded between February 23-29 made up of two tracks. The first track is a nicely done video of the recording sessions while 'Wot's'Uh the Deal?' plays. The pictures are timed to the music and often, somehow, reflect the lyrics. The 2nd part is a 'Pop Deux' documentary about recording the album with a Gilmour/Waters interview. The interview is insightful and is a decent length at 7 minutes.

Next is the performance of two tracks at Brighton Dome, UK on June 29. The first is 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' (nine minutes). The rendition is pretty typical, but speeds up really quickly on the instrumental break this time, and the gong that Waters keeps banging on catches on fire. When the music goes more ambient, there are visuals of waves and lava and then it returns to the band again. Then there is a performance at the same venue of 'Careful with That Axe, Eugene' (seven minutes). By the time of this performance, Wright had made his parts more melodic and Waters had dramatized his vocal effects and screams. The camera work is excellent, the production is great and the color and video is clear.

There are 4 tracks from the performances of the Roland Petit Pink Floyd Ballet in France. The first one is entitled 'Actualites Mediterranee' performed in Marselle on November 22. It shows the band and the ballet dancers rehearsing to small snippets of 'One of These Days', 'Careful with That Axe, Eugene' and 'Echoes'. The next clip is called 'JR Nuit ' Les Pink Floyd' and is performed a few days later during an actual performance on November 26 at the same venue and again it shows some snips of the performances. 'JT 20' continues to show more clips, this time at a show in Paris on January 12, 1973. The last one is titled 'Journal de Paris', recorded on the same date and place as the previous, this time with interviews placed among the ballet clips. Seeing these clips will show many viewers sides of Pink Floyd that they haven't seen before, where they were experimenting with different art forms, which makes their music even more versatile and interesting. After this is another news report video of a concert set up at 'Poitiers' on November 29.

The last 5 tracks contains the 'Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii' videos with the 2016 5.1 audio mix as they appear in the movie. These are the same tracks that are on CD 2 of this boxset, but this time with actual footage of the movie. You see the footage from the performances of 'Careful with That Axe, Eugene', 'A Saucerful of Secrects', 'One of These Days', 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun', and 'Echoes' (again with the entire song clipped together and not in separate parts as on the original version of the movie). The footage is amazingly clear and the sound is quite amazing, better than it has ever been. If there is only one in concert performance you ever see of the band in their early years, this should be it, even if there is no audience.

Even though some of the material is a bit iffy in quality, the opportunity to see the band with the ballet, and then the amazingly well-restored footage of Live at Pompeii is worth the ride. Again, this is easily 4 stars.

What's Missing (and what is extra)?

So, in the case of this box set, there is actually something that is included that is missing in the huge, inclusive box set that contains all of the volumes to this series. CD 1 was actually accidentally left out of the box set so that it only contained a CD with 'Live at Pompeii'. That is the one extra advantage of buying the volumes separately.

As far as what is missing that is included in the larger full box set is the entire movie 'La Vallee', the movie that contained the music from the album 'Obscured By Clouds'. Also missing is a live performance of 'Echoes' at Wembley in 1974. There are also 3 video tracks performed at 'The Amsterdam Rock Circus' on May 22 in 1972 which includes 'Atom Heart Mother', 'Careful with That Axe, Eugene' and 'A Saucerful of Secrets' (over 35 minutes for that segment alone).

In Conclusion

It is definitely up to the individual as to whether they should purchase the full box set of all of the volumes (costing somewhere around $500) or just getting the volumes that center on the years that they want to hear. This particular set gets a 4 star rating, but in the case of this boxset, its not for the material that is otherwise not available, but for the improved versions. However, these things are probably only going to be of value to collectors and hard-core fans (unless you don't already own "Obscured By Clouds" or "Live at Pompeii"), so unfortunately, they knocks it all down one star.