{"id":16909,"date":"2019-07-31T05:30:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T09:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16909"},"modified":"2019-05-24T09:47:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T13:47:41","slug":"a-look-back-at-pink-floyds-more-soundtrack-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/31\/a-look-back-at-pink-floyds-more-soundtrack-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back at Pink Floyd’s ‘More’ Soundtrack (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"A very brief instrumental, the unimaginatively named \u201cParty Sequence\u201d features Nick Mason on several overdubbed bongo drums, with wife Lindy trilling along on penny whistle.<\/p>\n

Side Two of the original More<\/i> album opens in grand fashion with \u201cMain Theme.\u201d The gong would become an integral component of Pink Floyd’s live set as well as its studio recordings, and the gong that opens \u201cMain Theme\u201d provides a dramatic introduction to the number. Richard Wright plays a series of dissonant chords and melodic lines on his Farfisa; it is only with this song that the experimental side of Pink Floyd \u2013 so thoroughly explored just months earlier on A Saucerful of Secrets<\/i> \u2013 is displayed on the More<\/i> soundtrack. But here that experimentalism is couched in a format that effectively reconciles Pink Floyd’s ambitious ideas with conventional songcraft. Built mostly around a single chord, the impressionistic \u201cMain Theme\u201d is more songlike than many other Pink Floyd instrumentals of the era. It shows the band channeling its energies into music that could be considered more accessible.<\/p>\n

The opening chords of \u201cIbiza Bar\u201d are nearly identical to \u201cThe Nile Song,\u201d but as the song unfolds, it shows a greater emphasis on melody, and a lead guitar solo from David Gilmour is placed up front in the tune. Even as the vocals come in \u2013 buried deep in the mix here \u2013 Gilmour’s lead playing continues, and remains the song’s most distinctive feature. For once, Waters’ lyric may have a connection with the film; his lyrics speak of an epilogue that reads like a sad song.<\/p>\n

The self-explanatory \u201cMore Blues\u201d is a very brief and airy 12-bar blues instrumental. And while Pink Floyd was never most people’s idea of a blues band, 12-bar instrumentals would become a regular part of the band’s live set in the early 1970s. Curiously, Mason’s drums are mixed significantly louder than David Gilmour’s guitar. Waters’ bass and Richard Wright’s organ are subtle almost to the point of inaudibility.<\/p>\n

Musique concr\u00e8te<\/i> is a kind of experimental music making with beginnings in the 1920s; modern-day listeners might describe it as \u201csoundscapes\u201d or even sound effects. Whether or not the band’s use of it was predicated on familiarity with earlier experiments by composers like Stravinsky, Stockhausen and Var\u00e8se, there are commonalities between the work of those serious composers and Pink Floyd tracks like \u201cQuicksilver.\u201d Like \u201cA Saucerful of Secrets\u201d before it, this lengthy and atmospheric piece from the More<\/i> soundtrack is composed of seemingly random effects amidst more conventional musical sounds from organ, vibraphone and percussion.<\/p>\n

The final two tracks on the More<\/i> soundtrack are examples of writing to specification. Even the titles make that clear: \u201cA Spanish Piece\u201d and \u201cDramatic Theme.\u201d The former is an exceedingly brief Flamenco piece with Gilmour playing nylon string guitar while whispering Spanish phrases. The More<\/i> soundtrack ends with a spare tune based on the film’s \u201cMain Theme,\u201d and prominently features David Gilmour’s slide guitar with layers of reverb and echo.<\/p>\n

Pink Floyd would write and record additional songs for Barbet Schroeder’s More<\/i> film soundtrack, though none would appear on the album. Four of these are included in the 2016 box set The Early Years<\/i>. The verse sections of the short instrumental track \u201cHollywood\u201d are a two-chord vamp based on the opening chords of \u201cCymbaline,\u201d and the chorus \u2013 a few bars \u2013 provides enough variety to qualify \u201cHollywood\u201d as a separate song. David Gilmour plays a simple, appealing melody on his guitar through a wah-wah pedal. At its core, \u201cHollywood\u201d displays the bare bones of what could have been developed into a proper song.<\/p>\n

A \u201cbeat version\u201d of the More<\/i> theme wasn’t used in the film \u2013 nor on its soundtrack \u2013 but does showcase Pink Floyd’s ability \u2013 largely untapped \u2013 to make relatively conventional pop music when the inclination or need arises. Many of the group’s signature sonic qualities \u2013 a simple, throbbing bass line, driving yet straightforward drumming, lengthy and exploratory organ runs, chugging electric rhythm guitar, and shifting musical dynamics \u2013 are all present in the \u201cbeat\u201d version, and are corralled into a catchy tune.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Early Years<\/i> includes an alternate take of More<\/i>‘s \u201cMore Blues.\u201d Unlike the take used on the soundtrack, the alternate version is mixed so that all four instruments \u2013 guitar, bass, drums, organ \u2013 are audible. Still, it’s relatively undistinguished and is notable primarily as an anomaly in the Pink Floyd catalog. \u201cSeabirds\u201d did find its way into the film, but was left off of the soundtrack album. Rather than having a drum beat, \u201cSeabirds\u201d uses the resonating sound of a gong as its percussive device. Wright plays Farfisa organ lines and some subtle vibraphone; eventually David Gilmour adds some slide guitar, used here more for texture than as a vehicle for any sort of melody. Near the track’s end, the gong is struck again, more forcefully, and allowed to ring out completely as the organ lines fade into oblivion.<\/p>\n

Looking back on the More<\/i> album, Nick Mason said, \u201cIt wasn’t a Pink Floyd album, but a group of songs.\u201d The band came away from the experience with generally positive feelings about soundtrack work; Pink Floyd would assist Schroeder again on another film (Obscured by Clouds \/ La Val\u00e9e<\/i>), and would team up \u2013 albeit less successfully \u2013 with another popular filmmaker for a project in 1970.<\/p>\n

The More<\/i> experience had one important benefit for Pink Floyd: it helped break the band in Europe. \u201cThe Continent has just exploded for us now \u2013 particularly France,\u201d Waters told Georgia Straight<\/i>‘s Mike Quigley. \u201cWhat really made it for us in France was the film More<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rolling Stone Record Guide<\/i> awarded More<\/i> merely one star, but in his accompanying review, Bart Testa characterized the record’s music collectively as \u201csuggestive of impressionist sketches\u201d and \u201cfar more sentimental than the film.\u201d Long hard to find on home video, in 2016, Barbet Schroeder’s More<\/i> received release on DVD and Blu-Ray in Pink Floyd’s The Early Years<\/i> box set.<\/p>\n

This essay first appeared in Bill Kopp’s 2018 book, Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to The Dark Side of the Moon<\/i>, published by Rowman & Littlefield. For more information, visit www.reinventingpinkfloyd.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… A very brief instrumental, the unimaginatively named \u201cParty Sequence\u201d features Nick Mason on several overdubbed bongo drums, with wife Lindy trilling along on penny whistle. Side […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,62,65,70],"tags":[1705],"class_list":["post-16909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psych","category-rawk","category-review","category-soundtrack","tag-pink-floyd","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-70-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16909"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16917,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16909\/revisions\/16917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}