Why 'Cirrus Minor' from 'More' Predicts the Pastoral Mood of 'Meddle'

Fans who dig into the “More” soundtrack often stop at “Cirrus Minor” because it feels like a secret roadmap to Pink Floyd’s 1971 turn toward gentler, more meditative music. The track layers birdsong and a fingerpicked acoustic guitar over a droning organ, creating a calm, open-air atmosphere that barely existed in the band’s earlier freak-out catalog.

That combination of natural field recordings and sparse, fingerstyle playing reappears two years later on “Meddle”—most obviously in “A Pillow of Winds” and the calm interludes inside “Echoes.” The acoustic texture and unhurried pace are almost identical, which makes “Cirrus Minor” sound less like a soundtrack experiment and more like a dry run for the pastoral side of Pink Floyd’s early 70s.

The surprise is that “Cirrus Minor” came from a quick, low-pressure film score session. It shows that even when the band was basically just padding a movie, David Gilmour and Richard Wright were already comfortable with the quiet, nature-inspired sound that would define parts of their best work.