Intentional or not, the live “Ummagumma” succeeds as a conceptual piece, with a continuity interrupted but not compromised by some brief audience applause. (We’ve somehow gone from Kubrick to Leone.) The number has four parts and has been described by Waters as a chronicle of a battle. An elegiac passage segues into something out of a spaghetti western, starring the guitarist’s anthemic wordless vocals. Remarkable.ĭrummer Nick Mason gets the era’s obligatory drum solo spot in the 13-minute instrumental “A Saucerful of Secrets.” The thumping ultimately elevated by the audio freakouts of Gilmour and Wright. Tribal drums and Arabic instrumental accents. Keyboardist Wright takes over midsong, his sci-fi effects whirling up sonic solar winds. A horror film, wordless and Bible black.ĭespite the title, Waters’ “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” doesn’t qualify as space rock - the lyrics refer mostly to Earthly plant life and were lifted from ancient Chinese poetry - yet the song’s whispered singing and timpani drumming evoke Stanley Kubrick’s extraterrestrial chill. Repeated listening doesn’t lessen the impact of Waters’ shrieking middle section, which mercifully slows to several minutes of what the impressionistic mind could see as post-carnage twitching and gurgling. Gilmour serves as henchman, a butcher working six steel strings. Three minutes of creepy foreplay erupts into the screaming of an ax murderer’s prey.
“Careful With That Axe, Eugene” amplifies the spooky vibe, with Richard Wright’s electric organ work bringing to mind a funeral Hammer Film soundtrack. Gilmour takes over on high-end vocals while replicating much of Barrett’s original guitar playing, but adds some of the slide for which he’ll later become famed. Like most of Barrett’s work, it’s borderline catchy - dance music for the demented. The 8:33 live version is less frantic than the studio original, but more menacing. “Stars can frighten,” Barrett warned in the first verse of “Astronomy Domine.” His ex-bandmates carried on with the sci-fi paranoia, true to the time of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Space rock began here, many say. The Brit pop touches of the band’s first incarnation had been discarded in favor of whisper-to-a-scream dynamics and muscular hard rock, heavy on the bass and drums. Guitarist David Gilmour had been fully integrated but had yet to step into his fluid signature sound. The shows caught Pink Floyd almost exactly a year after the loss of Barrett, a genius and acid casualty. All four are, arguably, definitive versions, surpassing their studio originals. The live tracks were recorded in Birmingham, England, on April 27, 1969, and in Manchester on May 2. None of the CD versions, unfortunately, added a live “Interstellar Overdrive,” which had been in the works for the original double LP but was dumped when the second record was dedicated to the studio tracks. They are Syd Barrett’s “Astronomy Domine” from the first album Roger Waters’ B-side “Careful with That Axe, Eugene” Waters’ “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” from the second album, “A Saucerful of Secrets” and the song “A Saucerful of Secrets.” The “Ummagumma” live disc consists of four spellbinding tracks, easily thought of as a piece if not a song cycle: A record to be played once a decade, if that. Consider that one the “Ummagumma” bonus CD, odds & sods for hardcore fans. “Ummagumma” could have been the greatest live psychedelic music album of them all, and perhaps it still is, by default.īut before that discussion we must dispense with disc 1’s sad-sack sibling, a studio vanity project that gave each member of the quartet half an album side to flail about.
Pink floyd ummagumma songs full#
Hear in it what you will, but English psychedelic music peaked here, courtesy of the sonic beast that was Pink Floyd circa 1969 - captured live and in full throat on disc 1 of “Ummagumma,” the band’s polarizing third album. Dragons, and dust from the bones of kings and traitors.
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