Out of Print Gems: Pink Floyd - "Embryo"

A previous post discussed the 8-track exclusive release of a Pink Floyd song from the band's 1977 album Animals. In 1983, as Columbia was releasing The Final Cut (Pink Floyd's last album as a 4-membered group), the band's former label, Capitol Records, put out a compilation called Works to try to cash in on the buzz. Predictably, the album was nothing more than a cash-in composed of seemingly random tracks culled from the pre-Wish You Were Here material that Capitol still owned the rights to. The only major changes made to the first 9 tracks on the 10 song album was the addition of Dark Side sound effects to the beginning of "One of These Days" and a vague remix of "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" made by flattening the quadraphonic mix of those two songs down to stereo. As contemporary advertising demonstrates (see above), Capitol seemed to understand beforehand that Works wouldn't offer any reason to Pink Floyd fans to waste their money, so they included "Embryo," a track recorded in 1968 that until then had only been available on a sampler put out by Capitol subsidiary Harvest Records known as Picnic: A Breath of Fresh Air.

Why the track was never released otherwise is a mystery. Though it conflicts with the "solo songs" aesthetic of the studio album that composed half of 1969's Ummagumma, it's as good as or better than any of those tracks; it also would have been perfectly at home on the excellent rarities compilation Capitol had already released, Relics. Whatever the case, the song itself is a much-truncated version of one of the band's setlist staples for much of the early 70s. It's typical of Roger Waters' tracks of the period: quiet, accompanied by gongs and swirling organs, and featuring an understated vocal (by David Gilmour) with some squeaky, manipulated vocal sounds thrown in for good measure. You can hear the song below or download it here.