Pink Floyd Solo work and more: 1995–present
 This period was one of musical experimentation for the band. Gilmour, Waters and Wright each contributed material that had its own voice and sound, giving this material less consistency than the Barrett-dominated early years or the more polished, collaborative sound of later years. As Barrett had been the lead singer during his era, Gilmour, Waters and Wright now split both songwriting and lead vocal duties. Waters mostly wrote low-key, jazzy melodies with dominant bass lines and complex, symbolic lyrics, Gilmour focused on guitar-driven blues jams, and Wright preferred melodic psychedelic keyboard-heavy numbers. Unlike Waters, Gilmour and Wright preferred tracks that had simple lyrics or that were purely instrumental. Some of the band's most experimental music is from this period, such as A Saucerful of Secrets, consisting largely of noises, feedback, percussions, oscillators and tape loops, and Careful with That Axe, Eugene (which went by a number of other names as well), a very Waters-driven song with a bass and keyboard-heavy jam culminating in crashing drums and Waters' primal screams.
Whilst Barrett had written the bulk of the first album, only one composition by him, Jugband Blues, appeared on the second Floyd album. Barrett also played on the songs Remember A Day (recorded during the sessions for Piper) and Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. A Saucerful of Secrets was released in June 1968, reaching #9 in the UK and becoming the only Pink Floyd album not to chart in the U.S. Somewhat uneven due to Barrett's departure, the album still contained much of his psychedelic sound combined with the more experimental music that would be fully showcased on Ummagumma. Its centrepiece, the 12-minute title track, hinted at the epic, lengthy songs to come, but the album was poorly received by critics at the time, although critics today tend to be kinder to the album in the context of their body of work. Future Pink Floyd albums would expand upon the idea of long, sprawling compositions, offering more focused songwriting with each subsequent release.
Pink Floyd were then recruited by director Barbet Schroeder to produce a soundtrack for his film, More, which was premiered in May 1969. The music was released as a Floyd album in its own right, Music From the Film More, in July 1969; the album achieved another #9 finish in the UK, and peaked at #153 in the U.S. Critics tend to find the collection of the film's music patchy and uneven. The band would use this and future soundtrack recording sessions to produce work that may not have fit into the idea of what would appear on a proper Pink Floyd LP; many of the tracks on More (as fans usually call it) were acoustic folk songs. Two of these songs, Green Is the Colour and Cymbaline, became fixtures in the band's live sets for a time and were a part of their live The Man/The Journey suite, as can be heard in the many available bootleg recordings from this period. Cymbaline was also the first Pink Floyd song to deal with Roger Waters' cynical attitude toward the music industry explicitly. The rest of the album consisted of avant-garde incidental pieces from the score (some of which were also part of The Man/The Journey) with a few heavier rock songs thrown in, such as The Nile Song.
The next record, the double album Ummagumma, was a mix of live recordings and unchecked studio experimentation by the band members, with each member recording half a side of a vinyl record as a solo project (Mason's first wife makes an uncredited contribution as a flautist). Though the album was realised as solo outings and a live set, it was originally intended as a purely avant-garde mixture of sounds from found instruments. The subsequent difficulties in recording and lack of group organization led to the shelving of the project. The title is Cambridge slang for sexual intercourse and reflects the attitude of the band at the time, as frustrations in the studio followed them throughout these sessions. The band was wildly experimental on the studio disc, which featured Waters' pure folk Grantchester Meadows, an atonal & jarring piano piece (Sysyphus), meandering progressive rock textures (The Narrow Way) and large percussion solos (The Grand Vizier's Garden Party). Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict is a five-minute song composed entirely of Roger Water's voice played at varied speeds, resulting in a noise resembling rodents and birds. Large portions of the studio disc were previously played in their live The Man/The Journey concept piece. The live disc featured acclaimed performances of some of their most popular psychedelic-era compositions and caused critics to receive the album more positively than the previous two albums. The album was Pink Floyd's most popular release yet, hitting UK #5 and making the U.S. charts at #74.
1970's Atom Heart Mother, the band's first recording with an orchestra, was a collaboration with avant-garde composer Ron Geesin. One side of the album consisted of the title piece, a 23-minute long rock-orchestral suite. The second side featured one song from each of the band's then-current vocalists (Roger Waters' folk-rock If, David Gilmour's bluesy Fat Old Sun and Rick Wright's nostalgic Summer '68). Another lengthy piece, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, was a sound collage of a man cooking and eating breakfast and his thoughts on the matter, linked with instrumentals. The use of noises, incidental sound effects and voice samples would thereafter be an important part of the band's sound. While Atom Heart Mother was considered a huge step back for the band at the time and is still considered one of its most inaccessible albums, it had the best chart performance for the band up to that time, reaching #1 in the UK and #55 in the U.S. It has since been described by Gilmour as a load of rubbish and Waters has said he wouldn't mind if it were thrown in the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again. The album was another transitional piece for the group, hinting at future musical territory such as Echoes in its ambitious title track. The popularity of the album allowed Pink Floyd to embark on its first full U.S. tour.
Before releasing its next original album, the band released a compilation album, Relics, which contained several early singles and B-sides, along with one original song (Waters' jazzy Biding My Time, part of The Man/The Journey recorded during the Ummagumma sessions). They also contributed to the soundtrack of Zabriskie Point, though many of their contributions were eventually discarded by director Michelangelo Antonioni.
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