ZABRISKIE POINT (OST)

Fans of post-Barrett/pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd will appreciate the four "new" tracks found on disc two of this expanded version of the Antonioni film soundtrack. Many of those fans already have the original soundtrack, and it's a tough decision whether or not to shell out the bucks for this expensive package. On one hand, the other four tracks on disc two are dreadful guitar improvisations by Jerry Garcia (I like his solo work, as well as his work with the Grateful Dead, but this stuff is drivel). On the other hand, all four Floyd tracks are fairly long, so it's quite a bit of new material. Most of it is pretty good, too. As far as disc one, the Floyd tracks make it worth having. All told, it's about an LP's worth of Pink Floyd, so think of the price as, say, about what you'd pay for an import. I bought mine at a record convention, so I saved a few bucks.

Floyd plays seven songs on this soundtrack. I haven't seen the movie and I will only review the Floyd tracks here.

"Heart Beat, Pig Meat " is remininsent of the Ummagumma" studio album and quite crappy.

"Crumbling Land" is a bit psychedelic and is reminiscent of the Barrett era. It is mostly acoustic. Although it is not a great track, it is not bad at all and could easily be featured on "The Piper...".

With "Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up" it is a completely different story. It is actually another title for "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" one of my all time fave. This song will never be featured on a classic studio album (only as a single). You can also find a version on the compilation "Relics". It is of course, the Floyd in its pure psychedelic grandeur. The highlight here.

"Country Song" is a mellow ballad with an accousitc and naïve introduction but a quite good chorus with some electric guitar sounds and turns out to be a good track.

"Unknown Song" is an accoustic psychedelic improv which is interesting in the sense that most of their psyche work was quite electric. This gives another dimension. But don't get me wrong : this is not a great track.

"Love Scene-Version 6" is a pure blues track. Quite unexpected for Floyd and also very, very dispensible. "Love Scene-Version 4" is a smooth piano-jazz track. Maybe that those two work better watching the movie, because as such they are really not worth anything.

In total, we get a bit over thirty four minutes of the Floyd's music of which fourteen are acceptable to very good.

We are far from the masterpiece here, believe me. For die-hard fans only. Two stars.

Ah this thing. The film is terrible art house trash. Yes I saw it years ago and had no idea what the heck was going on. I remember the end of the film because a house is demolished in super slow motion to some very creepy music. The music sparked my interest as I was always intrigued by psychedelic music. Having watched the end credits I discovered the music was by Pink Floyd and that really had me intrigued as I had only heard more mainstream music from them such as The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon. I began to realise why the band had the reputation they had.

Admittedly the album is quite a disaster as there is not enough Pink Floyd to warrant purchase, and there is far too much throwaway material for soundtrack buffs. The Kaleidoscope are quite a good psych band but I could have done without Patti Page. Overall this is an icon from the distant past and to be honest it has nothing of interest apart from the three Pink Floyd tracks especially the last one. Disc 2 looks good but I only heard the vinyl. Collectors only need apply.

Even though the movie is considered by somebody a cult, I have tried several times to get into it but I've never found it interesting enough. The famous last scene with the explosion underlined by Careful With That Axe (here entitled "Come on #º51 It's Your Turn") is the only think that I remember of it.

The story of this album is quite bad: the director Antonioni appreciated the two works made by Floyd with Barbet Schoereder (More and Obscrued By Clouds)....and who wouldn't? But he quickly went into conflicts with the band, and we now something about the temper of Roger Waters. In the end Pink Floyd left him seven quite incomplete tracks and the director had to fill the movie with Grateful Dead and a bunch of artists from the SouthWest USA psychedelic scene.

This is the only album including official releases of "Point Me At The Sky" and "Crumbling Land" and unfortunately this is the only good reason that I see to have it (and why I actually bought it).

They're just a couple of uninspired songs with a country-rock flavor, specially the second, that might have been one of the reasons of the broken relationship. Antonioni hired Pink Floyd but was looking for something like Steppenwolf.

In the end it's Grateful Dead who have provided the most interesting effort while a country classic like Tennessee Waltz sounds extraneous to the story, even if I love this song in Eva Cassidy's version.

An album for Floyd's completists that I don't rate 1 star only because of Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia.

If the soundtrack of this legendary movie is relatively uninteresting for the average or casual proghead (unless he's in search for some rarities from the groups concerned), the movie itself is an astonishing time piece from director Antonioni, as much so as his other legendary movie Blow Up (with the Yardbirds' appearance).

Some may not enjoy the movie because of its loose storyline, but it's fairly typical of the spirit of the times. Indeed, the plot ir relatively patchy, but it holds a few avant-garde topics, namely the human expansion and environemental concerns. The end of the movie is particularly poignant with the scene of that modern mansion exploding under an early form of Floyd's Careful With That Axe, Eugene. Even 40 years later, that scene still sends chills down my spine. Aside that finale for the rest of the music's plece in the movie, it's a lot less noticeable, partly due to the difference between the soundtrack presenting the entire "songs" when the movie featured only bits and extracts. To be honest, for the proghead, it's ostly the Floyd tracks that matter. The second disc is somehow interesting because of the Love Scene's several trials, both from Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Floyd's runs. In some ways, it's kind of too bad Floyd lost that "bid" as well, but history won't be remade. If the Dead/Garcia pieces and the Kaleidscope (US group) songs are relevant pure psychedelia, the Floyd pieces are even more relevant. They're sonically somewhere in between the More Soundtrack and Ummagumma's live disc.

Zabriskie Point is like a few other movies depicting the later-60's era, such as easy Rider, Blow Up, The Trip, Model Shop (from French director Jacques Demy, with the involvment of the group Spirit), and a few more, often taking place in California(or London) All essential pieces of an psychedelic era gone by. Sorry if this reads more like a review of the movie rather than the soundtrack, but this new "expanded" reissue is not really more interesting than the original vinyl version that I'd borrowed from a frend in the mid-70's. I understand an extensive and luxurious boxset was released a few years ago, with even more unreleased material, but one might wonder why, since the movie was not included in it. If the soundtrack gets three stars for me, the movie gets nearly five in my book, hence the average I made.

This is the album that determines if you are a true Pink Floyd fan or not. If you didn't know about this album before, then you still have a little more to learn about PF. If you did know, about it, then you probably know that the main album has 2 otherwise unavailable PF tracks on it plus 1 renamed track. But, not only that, if you get the 1997 re-release, you get a bonus disc with 4 more tracks that were previously unavailable that were written for the movie, but unused because of some issues between the band and the director. That is enough for the true PF fan to already know about and the PF music lovers to get excited about.

So, overall, is it worth it to search this out? Well, if you love the music the PF produced in the era between the departure of Barrett and "Atom Heart Mother" then this is definitely worth your while to check it out. The main feeling of the entire album (which also has some instrumentals by Jerry Garcia and other songs by other bands) is a very folky/psychedelic feeling. The songs for the most part are decent and enjoyable, but other than only a few of the PF tracks, there is not much progressive rock to talk about here. I only want to talk about the PF tracks here because I feel that is why most people on this site would want to check this album out.

"Heart Beat, Pig Meat" is the first PF track (and 1st album track). It is mostly psychedelic sounding but consists of an interesting percussion pattern with some ambient electronics flowing in and out and also a lot of what sounds like old soundtrack music clips from old movies thrown in here and there throughout the track. The next PF track is #4 on the album and it's called "Crumbling Land" This is a decent track with harmonic vocals that almost sound like what you would hear from a folk band like CSN&Y, so it fits into the feeling of the album. However, the ending gets somewhat spacey just so that you are reminded who this really is. The last track on the main album is also the last PF track and it's called "Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up". This is really not an original track in that it is very much like "Careful With That Axe, Eugene", so yes, it's psychedelic.

On the bonus disc, you get another vocal track called "Country Song" which sounds very similar to the music from "More", very mellow at first with a electric guitar joining in on the last part of the track. Nice track, but nothing really outstanding. Then you get "Unknown Song" which is a mellow full band instrumental, mostly acoustic sounding. "Love Scene Number 6" is a very nice blues instrumental which is a welcome change of pace for PF and then the disc closes with "Love Scene Number 4" which is simply Rick White on piano, nice and relaxing, but again nothing really outstanding here.

As far as the rest of the album, if you like folk rock with a little psychedelia mixed in, it's a pleasant listen. On the bonus disc, the other 4 tracks are Jerry Garcia pretty much noodling around on an acoustic guitar, so nothing too exciting there.

There was another track that was later released on a PF box set called "Fingal's Cave" which is a mellow psychedelic track. There were also two other tracks that were not released on any album that I am aware of called "Oenone" (on "The Tree Full of Secrets" bootleg and another psychedelic track) and "The Violent Sequence" (on the "Violence in Birmingham" bootleg and is a beautiful piano piece, much nicer than "Love Scene Number 4" and why it hasn't been released on a proper album, I don't know).

So, I guess it all depends on how curious you are and how big of a fan you are as to whether you want to look into locating this album. I can't consider it anything that is groundbreaking but it is pleasant like I said before, so give it a 3 star rating.