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Obscured By Clouds was recorded for the French film La Vallée as a break from recording a little album you may have heard of (it has a big prism on the cover). Like the bombastically orchestral Atom Heart Mother, a good part of the album sounds nothing like what Pink Floyd had done before or since. Based on a minimal but heavy drone and electronic drums that give the song a unique krautrock tone, the opening instrumental title track is one that seems to stand completely apart, despite the prominent use of VCS 3 synthesizer (which Richard Wright had just purchased and would become an integral part of the band's sound), and the characteristic David Gilmour slide guitar work. Being a soundtrack album there three more instrumentals, the rocky but monotonous "When You're In", "Mudmen" (more on that later), and the closing track "Absolutely Curtains." The last, a spacey organ piece similar to "Saucerful Of Secrets," is actually the most Floyd-sounding track on the album; too bad Nick Mason's Atom Heart Mother tom build concludes with a clumsy climax that seems rushed and out-of-sync.
Elsewhere a good part of the album is country/folky; "Burning Bridges" is pleasingly mellow but seems to meander through random-sounding key changes, and the generically folky "Wots... Uh The Deal?" could be anybody with an acoustic guitar and drums, from Crosby Still Nash to Dan Fogelberg. Superficially, Wright's "Stay" sounds like any 70's lite-rock but sung badly; it starts laughably "Stay! And help me to end the day And if you don't mind We'll break a bottle of wine," though in the second verse we get a better idea what's up here: "Surprised To find you by my side Rack my brain And try to remember your name To find The words to tell you good-bye," not so lovey-dovey now, hardy har. The slow instrumental "Mudmen" isn't exactly the same as "Burning Bridges" but it's really close, the only difference being that the very similar rhythmic figures are 3 beats vs. 4 beats long, respectively; it does feature the Gilmour-iest guitar solo on the album, predicting how he would sound very soon on the next album. "Childhood's End" also obviously foreshadows the next album, in this case slow rocker "Time" or "Have A Cigar" from the next one; interestingly Gilmour's lyrics (instead of Roger Waters for a change) are no less bleak than any Waters would usually give us: "There'll be war, there'll be peace, But everything one day will cease, etc."
The guys crank up just for fun, sounding more like Free or Humble Pie than Floyd on "The Gold It's in the...," apparently not thinking too hard about how each chorus ends stumbling into a mess. And predicting Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," Waters juxtaposes some Debbie Downer lines over the jaunty tune of "Free Four"****, with each line punctuated by a comically booming fart of VCS 3. I've seen the album as a whole described as fun one, but unfortunately the tight recording schedule and the made-to-order origin of the album didn't seem to give the band enough time to turn an okay album into a good one.
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