UMMAGUMMA

A game of two halves this double LP. The first LP is a live album with 4 lengthy pieces. These are actually very good psychedelic prog rock, well structured and melodic. What may appear at first to be fairly loose jams, are in fact tightly composed and well thought out pieces. For those who came to Pink Floyd through albums such as "Dark side of the Moon" and "The wall", be aware that the music here bears little relation to the song based numbers which appear on those albums. Even slightly looser tracks such as "On the run" or "Any colour you like" are far more commercial than the spaced out sounds of these pieces originating in the Syd Barrett era (although by the time of this album, he had left the band, Dave Gilmour being well integrated into the line up).

The second LP sees each of the 4 band members being allocated half a side (about 10 minutes) each for a solo outing. This was some years before ELP did a similar thing with their "Works Volume 1" album, but the effect is broadly similar.

All the tracks on disc 2 serve to achieve is to demonstrate that with Pink Floyd, the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. The best thing on the second album is "Several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict" (the title that is, not the track which is a whimsical, meaningless, waste of space!).

Had this been a single LP live album, it would have been excellent, sadly it isn't.

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