Ummagumma (1969)
Ummagumma is a 1969 alternative rock album by Pink Floyd.
Pink Floyd split this 1969 double album cleanly down the middle. One disc is the band live in Birmingham and Manchester, stretching Astronomy Domine and A Saucerful of Secrets into long, hypnotic space-rock jams. The other hands each member a solo half-side to fill however he likes, from Roger Waters's field-recorded oddities to Richard Wright's four-part suite. The result is transitional and experimental, a snapshot of four musicians testing what they could do before Meddle and Dark Side pulled them into focus. The Hipgnosis cover, with its endless picture-within-a-picture, became almost as famous as the music.
Quick answers
What is Ummagumma about?
Pink Floyd split this 1969 double album cleanly down the middle. One disc is the band live in Birmingham and Manchester, stretching Astronomy Domine and A Saucerful of Secrets into long, hypnotic space-rock jams. The other hands each member a solo half-side to fill however he likes, from Roger Waters's field-recorded oddities to Richard Wright's four-part suite. The result is transitional and experimental, a snapshot of four musicians testing what they could do before Meddle and Dark Side pulled them into focus. The Hipgnosis cover, with its endless picture-within-a-picture, became almost as famous as the music.
When was Ummagumma released?
Ummagumma was released in 1969.
Who made Ummagumma?
Ummagumma is by Pink Floyd.
Similar albums
Explore Ummagumma guides
A few thoughts on Ummagumma
The live disc's cosmic drift points to In the Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson's 1969 landmark from the same experimental moment. For visuals that match the trippy Hipgnosis sleeve, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey shares the album's slow, star-bound patience, and Tangerine Dream's Phaedra extends its electronic astronomy.
Rock bands treating the studio as an instrument
Ummagumma hands each Pink Floyd member a solo half-side to experiment freely, tape loops and all. These albums push the same spirit, artists using the studio itself as a workshop, layering sound into something stranger and more constructed than a band could ever play live in one take.
Pink Floyd from psychedelic jams to stadium concept records
Ummagumma's live disc stretches early Floyd into long hypnotic space-rock before the band found its focus. These records and films trace the rest of that arc, the concept suites and concert spectacles they grew into, plus kindred rock cinema built on the same restless imagination.