Overview
At this point in their career, the band were not new to scoring movies. They had already scored the films The Committee in 1968 and More and some of Zabriskie Point in 1969. Consequently, Barbet Schroeder contacted the band in order to make another soundtrack, which they had agreed to do after More had become a success. The band had already started working on The Dark Side of the Moon at this point, having done some basic recording and performed the piece live several times during this period, but work was interrupted when the band travelled to France on two separate trips, either side of a Japanese tour, to write and record music for the film. The album was then mixed from 4–6 April at Morgan Sound Studios in London.
As they had done on More, the band saw a rough cut of the film, and noted down certain timings for cues with a stopwatch. From this, they created a number of pieces that they felt could be cross-faded at various points in the final cut of the film. They weren't too worried about creating complete songs, feeling that any musical piece would be workable without the need for any solos, but nevertheless, under pressure to produce enough material, they managed to create a whole series of well-structured songs. Mason recalls that the sessions were very hurried, and the band spent most of the time in Paris locked away in the studio.
"Free Four" was the first Pink Floyd song to get significant airplay in the US, and the second (after "Corporal Clegg" from A Saucerful of Secrets) to deal with the death of Eric Fletcher Waters, Roger Waters' father. "Childhood's End" was the last song Pink Floyd released to have lyrics written by Gilmour while Waters was still in the band. "Absolutely Curtains", the closing instrumental on the album, ends with a recording of the Mapuga tribe, as seen in the film.
During the first recording session in February, the French television station ORTF filmed a short segment of the band recording the album, including interviews with Waters and Gilmour. In a snippet of interview footage that appeared in the 1974 theatrical version (later released on VHS and Laserdisc) and subsequent "Director's Cut DVD" versions of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, Roger Waters stated that early UK pressings of the album contained excessive sibilance (a loud high-frequency sound most apparent on "s", "sh", and "t" sounds which often causes distortion). As Waters says in the film during a conversation with George Martin, the sibilant distortion was caused by "a bad cut", meaning it came from a poor quality tape-to-disk transfer during mastering. The sibilance problem was corrected in later pressings.
Obscured by Clouds was the second Pink Floyd album to feature the VCS 3 synthesiser as stated by EMS Archives. Mason also plays electronic drums on this track.
After recording had finished, the band fell out with the film company, prompting them to release the soundtrack album as Obscured by Clouds, rather than La Vallée. In response, the film was retitled La Vallée (Obscured by Clouds) on its release.
Read more about this topic: Obscured By Clouds