UMMAGUMMA

Pink Floyd's very first live album! The live disc includes performances recorded during the summer 1969. Only four tracks here, three of them taken from their first two albums. The set list and performances are excellent, perhaps even better than the studio stuff, and it's a excellent document of PF's early live sound with some really volcanic interpretations of these tunes. If you can't swallow the studio disc, then get Ummagumma for this one. 4/5

Studio:

Don't listen while on crack, Ummagumma's studio album is nothing like their other albums, but rather an experimental curiosity and could be considered as an avant-garde album of sorts. Each member of the band wrote their own solo songs here, but without having a traditional song-structure to them except for on a few songs. It seems the band was still searching for directions at this point and cooked up these eccentric tunes on the spot. The result is, and will always be very mixed for listeners; some look at this one as perfectly doable listening, others hate it with passion.

Looking on this one in it's musical entirety, it's mostly a mix of psychedelic and experimental music, but all of the tracks are very distinct from each other. Guitarist David Gilmour's contribution 'The Narrow Way' is probably the most accessible one, with a weirdly pleasant folky and psychedelic first part before it trips out and get devoured by a sinister riff (one of his best!) in the second part while keep feeding the listener heavy psych ambiances. The influence on Krautrock (Amon Düül II in particular) is evident here. Wright's 'Sysyphus' is a somber, impressionistic avantgarde composition that's surely the most eerie one on this disc, though slightly disjointed. A nice mood piece though, with some unpleasantness lurking ahead. Waters' 'Several Species' is an absurd vocal tape manipulation experiment that sounds just like its title, especially the first few minutes before going into a heavy Scottish accent rant from Waters at the end. Bizarre and fun counterpoint to the calm and folk tingled 'Grantchester Meadows'. Mason's 'Grand Vizier' is another abstract track with tape manipulation of drums and percussion to make some freaky and interesting panning in the speakers, as well as some quirky rhythms. The piece is also book ended with nice flute interludes. An interesting piece, while like the rest of the album hardly a fan favorite. Although somewhat uneven, I find many of the sounds on this disk intriguing and fun, but hard to recommend. 3.5/5

While strange, most of this double set should especially appeal to fans of the early sounds of the band, and the live disc is very strong. NOTE: starting with the first CD release in 1986, all releases of this album have since botched the original track times to the four parts of 'Sysyphus' for some strange reason. The correct times are: I - 4:29, II - 1:45, III - 3:07, IV - 3:38. Makes sense when you're listening.

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