Obscured By Clouds – A week for Schroeder’s La Vallée

A week for Schroeder’s La Vallée

Obscured by Clouds landed in the UK on 3 June 1972 (Harvest), with a US release two weeks later. It is Pink Floyd’s second score for director Barbet Schroeder, after More in 1969. The band booked roughly a week at Strawberry Studios, Château d’Hérouville, north of Paris, while already road-testing material that would become The Dark Side of the Moon. The brief was film first: cues that could sit under dialogue and images from La Vallée, then stand on vinyl as an album.

The tracklist mixes instrumentals and songs. The title cut and When You’re In open with heavy, almost riff-rock weight. Burning Bridges and Mudmen trade Wright’s organ colours against Gilmour’s guitar. The Gold It’s in the… and Childhood’s End push forward drive; Wot’s… Uh the Deal? and Stay slow into ballad pace. Free Four is the clearest single: acoustic strum, Waters on lead vocal, a lyric about time and mortality that already points at Dark Side themes. Absolutely Curtains closes with Mapuga chant recordings from the film shoot.

Hipgnosis blurred a polaroid of the band for the sleeve. The sessions sound fast: shorter pieces than the Abbey Road records, from a working band in a French château with a deadline. Schroeder needed music that could sit in the frame; the Floyd delivered short forms instead of another side-long suite.