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| Ummagumma | 
 enlarge | Artist: Pink Floyd
Label: Capitol
Category: Music
List Price: $23.98
Buy New: $15.18
You Save: $8.80 (37%)
Buy New from $15.18
Avg. Customer Rating:  (188 reviews)
Sales Rank: 4875
Format: Live
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.5 x 5 x 1
MPN: 46404
UPC: 777746404286
EAN: 0077774640428
ASIN: B000002UA5
Release Date: October 25, 1990
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | Astronomy Domine - Pink Floyd, Barrett, Syd | | • | Careful With That Axe, Eugene - Pink Floyd, Waters, Roger | | • | Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun - Pink Floyd, Waters, Roger | | • | A Saucerful of Secrets - Pink Floyd, Waters, Roger |
Disc 2
| • | Sysyphus, Pt. 1 - Pink Floyd, Wright, Richard [1] | | • | Sysyphus, Pt. 2 - Pink Floyd, Wright, Richard [1] | | • | Sysyphus, Pt. 3 - Pink Floyd, Wright, Richard [1] | | • | Sysyphus, Pt. 4 - Pink Floyd, Wright, Richard [1] | | • | Grantchester Meadows - Pink Floyd, Waters, Roger | | • | Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and - Pink Floyd, Waters, Roger | | • | The Narrow Way, Pt. 1 - Pink Floyd, Gilmour, David | | • | The Narrow Way, Pt. 2 - Pink Floyd, Gilmour, David | | • | The Narrow Way, Pt. 3 - Pink Floyd, Gilmour, David | | • | The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, Pt. 1: Entrance - Pink Floyd, Mason, Nick | | • | The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, Pt. 2: Entertainment - Pink Floyd, Mason, Nick | | • | The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, Pt. 3: Exit - Pink Floyd, Mason, Nick |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Released in 1969, Ummagumma represents where the influence of departed founding songwriter Syd Barrett began to fade in favor of the rather less whimsical and pastoral visions of Roger Waters. Ummagumma is a double album, divided into live and studio halves. The live cuts--"Astronomy Domine," "Careful with That Axe, Eugene," "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," and "A Saucerful of Secrets"--established the Floyd's predilection for gloomily atmospheric and faintly preposterous sci-fi bombast that would turn them into such a successful stage act. The kindest that may be said of the studio compositions--by and large interminable avant-prog rambles in search of the lost chord--is that they haven't dated terribly well. --Andrew Mueller
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| Customer Reviews: Read 183 more reviews...
"And By the Way, Which One Is Pink?" December 1, 2008
That line from a much later song could be an unintentional self-review of this album. What you're getting here is the last hurrah of a much earlier permutation of the band. Half of it is a four-cut live set that I think is their first live album, extended with a smattering of solo works. The live disc contains a version of "Astronomy Domine" that is described by another reviewer with some accuracy as too close to the studio version, but you're also getting "Careful With That Axe Eugene", a slash movie without picture. The intro eases in, someone whispers ominously the warning in the song's title, then guitars and voices start shrieking bloody murder. That track has a shorter studio version that never made either of the first two albums and is next to impossible to find even as a rarity. You also get "Set the Controls" and "Saucerful Of Secrets", those first two albums' extended tracks. The studio disc has "Sisyphus", a mellotron/ piano exercise from Rick Wright; Grantchester Meadows, a pensive Syd Barrett folk song which ends in the sound of a fly buzzing around until someone runs down a flight of stairs and swats the thing (how he heard the fly from upstairs is beyond me); "Several Species Od Small Furry Animals", an intersting sequencing of animal sounds on a multi-track tape machine into a zoological drum machine (maybe you could call it "Masontronics" as in Robert Fripp's "Frippertronics"); David Gilmour's "The Narrow Way"; and yet another drum-based analog sampling of drum sounds. The problem with this album is that most Pink Floyd listeners came onboard with "Dark Side Of the Moon" and are mainstream radio fare fans, so they tend to be turned off by all of this "artsy, obscure-sounding crapola", not knowing that this is pretty much what Pink Floyd used to sound like before and slightly after Syd Barrett left.
 Pink Floyd Finding There Feet November 30, 2008
Around this time period Pink Floyd was a psychedelic band but more progressive rock band that had lost there original singer Syd Barrett, and then hired a new singer, David Gilmour and were bassicly at this time trying too become a successful band. There third album, Ummagumma is a double album with live tracks and experimental studio recordings. The live part of the album was recorded live in 1969 and shows Pink Floyd developing jams they would use later in there carrerrs, Careful With That Axe Eugene, and also still using some Syd Barrett material(Astronomy Domine) Then the album part of this is composed in sections each written by members of the band and is quite experimental. This album for anyone who craves early David Gilmour Pink Floyd and people who need every Pink Floyd album ever made
A Classic album from Pink Floyd from before they became so well known October 22, 2008
This is a CLASSIC album from Pink Floyd. I've loved it since it's release.
Not only do you have live tracks of songs from their earliest albums (A Saucerful of Secrets, Astronomy Domine, etc.), but you have a suite of pieces each from Richard Wright (Sysyphus, Parts 1-4), David Gilmour (The Narrow Way, Parts 1-3), and Nick Mason (The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, Parts 1,2, & 3). ...Ans don't miss Roger Waters' 2 pieces: Grantchester Meadows and the inimitable (not that any have tried, to my knowledge) Several Species of Small Furry Aninals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict!
This album covers Floyd's gamut up to the time of its release (1969) and presages their future from that vantage point. A MUST purchase for anyone wanting to know Pink Floyd from all sides.
should have been more popular because it's good September 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The studio album of Ummagumma is VERY underappreciated.
The "Sysyphus" suite is quite ununual the way it begins with a rather dark and intimidating riff that leads into an Emerson, Lake and Palmer piano melody. It's a peaceful and beautiful melody, that stays consistently good for the most part, until it reaches a point where two notes keep rambling back and forth, then the piano playing gets all messy for a minute or so. Not as good as the stuff ELP would do a few years later, but decent enough.
The third part features WEIRD monkey sound effects with jungle-like sounds, and the fourth and final part is absolutely AWESOME because it has an eerie mellotron melody with soft sprinkles of keyboards building slowly, and cautiously, into a loud and intense theme until eventually going back to the intimidating riff that started the whole thing. The fourth part of this suite is really really good though, especially the eerie few minutes that begins the thing, which would work extremely well in a horror film.
"Grantchester Meadows" features nice acoustic guitar (I think?) and closely resembles "Wish You Were Here" in the vocals. I wasn't expecting to hear such a mature song on this album going by all the other reviews. "Several Small Species" is a MAJOR head trip, that's for sure! It's totally unique and needs to be appreciated on that level to fully understand.
"The Narrow Way" is the highlight of the album for me. Part One has EXCELLENT acoustic guitar, melodic and emotionally touching, and the second part features a Black Sabbath-like guitar riff for a few minutes, before the final part comes in, which sounds like something that would fit in PERFECTLY with the Dark Side of the Moon album. I don't understand people who say Meddle shows signs of what Pink Floyd would sound like later, when this song obviously shows what the band would become just a few years later.
"The Grand Vizier's Garden Party" is the only weak point- radical drumming that doesn't go anywhere, and goes on too long. The rest of the album though, is quite fantastic. I don't get the negative reviews for this one I'm afraid.
The live album of Ummagumma (which by the way, sounds like a tasty kind of Halloween snack!) isn't NEARLY as good as people have been telling me. What IS really great however, is the opening song "Astronomy Domine", which has an AWESOME space rock jam in the middle that sounds like it probably influenced several bands such as Hawkwind. The jam just feels so natural, like the vocals needed that jam all along in order to complete a perfect song.
"Careful with that Axe Eugene" is another great song. The slow keyboard melody in the beginning that builds into these soothing vocals that sail and soar to new heights... Pink Floyd was really good at this. The song gets noisy after a while, but in an appealing kind of way, where you don't want it to stop. Great song.
Then the album loses steam super fast. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" was better on Saucerful of Secrets, because it had a Moody Blues-like vibe flowing through it. Here, the song tries to be something more, and just ends up being a boring song. This version of "Saucerful of Secrets" is overrated BIG time. Everyone says it's better than the version from the studio album of the same name, but it's not. The studio version had these rather unique sound effects, muddy production, and a spooky atmosphere to help make it one of the creepiest songs ever. This version is just loud, and repeats the same notes for several minutes. Not good to me. Yes, I know the studio version repeats a lot too, but that version had sound effects that seemed to add more atmosphere to the song, so it was easy to avoid the parts that repeated a lot.
Still, the album gets 5 stars for the studio stuff, which rules.
This Is Why I Used To Like Pink Floyd September 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This album, along with Meddle, are the two best Pink Floyd albums ever, as far as I'm concerned (discounting the Syd Barrett albums, which were in a different category and great in their own right). I don't need to describe the two discs in this set as it's been done over and over again.
What I'll say is I think this is when the band was the most creative, and Roger Waters had the least amount of influence on the outcome. I love it for the true experimentation, the originality, and the sheer psychedelic mood of it all. As I listened to it again after 30 years, it still rings true with me and despite what the band itself has said about it (and not all of it complimentary), I think this showed the band as a truly creative force.
They never did anything after this that comes close, except for Meddle.
If you want to hear what the Floyd sounded like before they went commercial, I highly recommend this album.
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