Buttkickin' Halloween Songs: "Embryo" - Pink Floyd (1968)

All is love, is all I am
A ball is all I am
I’m so new compared with you
And I am very small

Warm glow, moon bloom
Always need a little more room
Waiting here seems like years
Never seen the light of day…

I try to avoid the obvious Pink Floyd songs here and often fail, but that probably speaks volumes towards how the band’s music strikes such an invasive, pervasive chord with fans.

So here we go again with Embryo, a song that was a live-performance staple in the very early 1970s, but never included on any of the band’s proper studio albums. Nonetheless, fans can find a few live versions in The Early Years 1965-1972 collection, but the 1983 Works compilation features a studio demo recorded in 1968. And that one we are featuring today.

This song is spooky, man.

Ostensibly the subject matter is straightforward enough: it’s an embryo. This intrepid cluster of cells is barely anything at all, but it’s starting to feel the most primitive of emotions, the barest scintilla of consciousness. And slowly but inexorably, it’s growing. Time is glacier, utterly frozen at first, but exponentially melting away in linear fashion.

You could probably interpret the song too many ways. Quite often the cancerous tumor theory gets bandied about. Your mileage may vary. But what makes Embryo worthy of inclusion here are the sparse, moody, haunting arrangements and vocals. Written by Roger Waters and sung by David Gilmour, this is an ominous minor-key exercise in strip-mined existential contemplation. Simple acoustic guitar, organ, piano, and mellotron form the void of the womb, enveloping us in a gossamer veil of an unlit unknown. Over uncountable moments we drift, with barely a form, into the early morning hours just before the sunrise of Existence.

Emblematic of confusion and vulnerability at their most primeval, yet accepted with neither fear nor apprehension, Embryo embodies the bridge from oblivion to existence in tangible musical form. And yet, the song is also a chilling reminder that this bridge inevitably returns for all, the final toll to be paid for the now vanishing gift of existence.

All around I hear strange sounds
Come wow, wow, wowing down
Red the light and dark the night
This love, my life is near

Warm glow, moon bloom
Always need a little more room
Waiting here seems like years
Never seen the light of day…