OBSCURED BY CLOUDS

This album is their third soundtrack, and by far the best one. Actually, it doesn't start so well, with Obscured by Clouds and When You're In, two instrumentals that have good guitar and keyboards riffs, but they just don't evolve, like you expect in a progressive song. All we hear is a musical phrase of twenty or thirty seconds repeated note by note for 3 minutes, in each song. It's a good soundtrack to a movie, but not very interesting to listen to. Burning Bridges is a kind song, with a good melody, but not very catchy. With The Gold It's in the... the album really starts to get interesting. It's a rock'n'roll song, with exciting vocals and an amazing guitar solo that recalls Eric Clapton. It's the kind of song you wouldn't expect from Pink Floyd, but they really rock here! Wot's... uh the Deal has one of the best melodies I've ever heard, the and guitar is very agreeable, and the piano and guitar solos are short but very beautiful and well played. This song is a masterpiece. Mudmen is the other masterpiece of the album. It's instrumental, and it has some parts "stolen" from Burning Bridges, they just changed the time from 3 /4 to 4/4 and created very wise instrumental arrangements. All the band members are awesome here, even the bass is very melodic and well played. Rick Wright is good in the piano and in the organ, and makes a good dialogue between them. David Gilmour presents us with an astonishing guitar work, giving more emotion and dramaticity to the solos in burning bridges. After the calm guitar in the middle, he can change the mood of the song to a beautiful angry in a masterful way. Childhood's End has a poor melody, but the arrangement is good, and the instrumental parts too. By this time the band used to play live this song, and the versions, some with 18 minutes are more interesting. Free Four is a typical song by Roger Waters. Great lyrics, but he doesn't sing them very well. The atmosphere is sad and happy at the same time, and David Gilmour plays guitar very well, although he doesn't have enough time to show all he can do here. Stay is a beautiful song, with an unusual guitar sound by Gilmour. It accompanies the voice with catchy melodies, witch is not very common in Floyd. When the guitar solo comes, we see that Gilmour is also a master in this guitar style. The voice melody of this song was composed by Wright, and it's one of his quintessential melodies. It seems to be simple, but it's very complex, and Wright sings it in a style that matches perfectly with it. Absolutely Curtains begins as a progressive epic, but then it turns into an absolutely boring and meaningless song. The film probably needed another song, to a scene, and they didn't have creativity to create anything decent, so they created this song. The last part, when we listen to an African typical song, is even more boring, so I never listen to this song, I play the Stop after the end of Stay.

It is a very irregular album, but as it has some precious songs that any prog lover will like, I rate it with 4 stars, it's excellent in any prog discography.