Released as a double album with the first record composed of four live tracks and the second record serving as the actual full-length, Ummagumma remains an anomalous part of Pink Floyd’s discography for a number of reasons, the least of them being that the album’s creation came as a result of keyboardist Richard Wright’s desire to have each individual member create their own hermetic solo contribution completely removed from the other members. The “let’s all make solo records” trope has proven itself to be the Russian roulette of career moves with the handful of success stories handily overshadowed by the number of well-meaning but no less terrible efforts by integral parts of a better whole.

But Ummagumma isn’t a terrible record at all. If anything the album serves as a transition piece between the pop rock savvy of the band’s prior release More and the full foray into the avant-garde orchestration of what would follow with 1970’s Atom Heart Mother. What’s most impressive with Ummagumma is that while most albums created in the midst of a band reinventing their sound skew toward the unlistenable end of the spectrum, the five songs here are enjoyable in their own right. Beginning with Wright’s four-part keyboard opus “Sysyphus,” Ummagumma immediately portrays an ambitious if slightly disjointed compositional makeup, with each song playing to the obvious strengths of its creator but not fully capitalizing on those strengths as the singular unit of the band working together.

Both “Grantchester Meadows” and “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave and Grooving With A Pict” display the same proclivity for contrast and deceptive tenuousness that Waters would soon shape into one of the band’s most defining characteristics, with the former’s genteel ode to the English countryside working as a kind of mocking introduction to the frenetic electronics and groundbreaking sound manipulations of the latter. Waters’ innate ability of peeling the veneer away from those societal deceptions, exposing the ugliness just below the surface, had already begun to root itself to the band’s narrative thread.

“The Narrow Way” is Gilmour’s three-part exploration of guitar atmospherics and the pliability of multiple overdubs, featuring the vocalist/guitarist’s lyrical debut as well. While still young and likely in the throes of what had already been a relatively successful career as a musician, Gilmour’s distinctive style and refusal to let his instincts take a backseat to superfluity reveal a maturity and sense of timing that even in the song’s missteps provide an early picture for what would eventually develop into a definitive sound both for himself and for Pink Floyd.

Providing an end cap to Ummagumma is Mason’s “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party,” a three-part excursion into all manner of percussion subterfuge. Mason’s oftentimes unfairly overlooked contributions to Pink Floyd are likely as such due to the fact that his style is less bombastic and explosive than that of Bonham or Moon and more subdued and measured, allowing for subtlety and, yet again, a clever sense of space to do its proper work for the tone and mood of the music. The song functions on a level of experimentation simply given the characteristic of the album’s entirety, but it also highlights those traits of understated nuance that give Mason’s drumming its most commanding power.

Ummagumma’s placement in the Pink Floyd catalogue is less an opportunity to deride a rare overall misstep for the band and more a glimpse of how completely integral each individual member was in creating the sound that would define their existence. The album is a striking representation of those most definitive characteristics of a band whose exploration of the furthest reaches of both sound and theme would find them in the unenviably rare position of originality and stardom. Once in a place of congruence, the disjointed elements of Ummagumma would open the door to what would become Pink Floyd’s at once most compelling and hauntingly unnerving creative period.