Track Listing

1. Atom Heart Mother
2. If
3. Summer '68
4. Fat Old Sun
5. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4671 in Music
• Released on: 1994-10-10
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
In the grand, colour-bending tradition of psychedelic experimentalism, Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother takes as its title an inscrutable phrase and under the title launches a similarly inscrutable--or at least dense--musical concatenation. The title suite features French-horn-led brass melodies riffed on by David Gilmour's guitar and the rhythm section, all of which veers into choral passages that recall György Ligeti's vocal works and then almost atonal pulses of keyboards that mask reams of audio snippets swirling underneath. There's some moody folk from Roger Waters, an almost Kinks-ish rambler from Richard Wright, then more moody folk (this time from Gilmour) on "Fat Old Sun" and, to close, the spirited melodic runaround of "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast". Pink Floyd offers a range of emotion here, from doleful to crazed to humorous (especially the dramatised comments on macrobiotics in the closer). Atom Heart Mother was a spotlight ahead for Pink Floyd, showing the extensions of form the band would engage in so successfully on Dark Side of the Moon just a few short years later. --Andrew Bartlett

CD Description
When rock operas by the Kinks and the Who were relatively new and Deep Purple was working with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Pink Floyd entered the '70's with ATOM HEART MOTHER, a symphonic endeavor whose centrepieces are two long compositions divided up into movements. Starting out as a chord sequence written by David Gilmour, the title track became a sprawling masterpiece co-written and arranged by Scottish composer Ron Geesin. Throughout 20 minutes of movements titled"Breast Milky", "Funky Dung", and "Mind Your Throat Please", grandiose brass sections bubble over, otherworldly choruses strike a chord of impending doom and individual Floyd contributions pop up amid all the orchestration.
The other sprawling piece, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast", starts out with the sounds of someone puttering about in his home and occasionally muttering to himself, broken up by either the swirling keyboards of Richard Wright or the dulcet tones of David Gilmour's acoustic guitar. The remaining three tracks are Roger Waters' folkie ballad "If", the baroque psychedelic pop of Wright's "Summer '68", and Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun". ATOM HEART MOTHER is one of the band's more overtly experimental and challenging works; yet it remains a secret favourite of die-hard fans.

Customer Reviews

Overshadowed by 'the big guns' but a true gem...
If you were to ask anyone to name a Pink Floyd LP their immediate reaction would no doubt be Dark Side of The Moon or The Wall (- two very superb LPs). However, I can't remember the last time I heard anyone mention this LP, which is a shame...but in that respect it makes Atom Heart Mother a true gem; something that is overshadowed in many ways yet shines through, in my opinion, perhaps more than many other acclaimed Pink Floyd work.

The title track is a 25-minute opus of avant garde rock...from stirring strings, to grunting engines...marching brass...Gilmour throwing in some slide guitar and, at the other end of the spectrum, some pounding drums from Nick Mason. This really is an epic track but, again, overshadowed by, say, Shine on you Crazy Diamond or Echoes. That's not to say that Atom Heart Mother doesn't hold its own - it's certainly my favourite epic Floyd track. At the core of the album are three very delightful songs - the touching "If", Gilmour's idyllic "Fat Old Sun" (great solo at the end...), and Wright's "Summer '68", which contains some great uplifting piano work and melancholic brass!

I must admit that I'm not overly keen on the ending of this LP; it's perhaps a little too 'quirky', yet still very, very Floydian. It's a sort of mish-mash of still-life sounds and synths and crazy guitars. I found that it lingered perhaps a little too long and is a bit of harsh comedown considering the three tracks before it.

Overall, apart from Meddle, I'd say that this is a great starting point for anyone who wants to get into Pink Floyd. I'd almost go as far to say that this is my favourite offering that they've done and is nigh on flawless.

The Floyd's Legendary COW Album...!
For me this is the first truly great Pink Floyd album. Admittedly, it lacks the intelligence, cohesion and structure of the later, more polished endeavours such as Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and Animals, though it does more than make up for this in elements of style, originality and charm.

The album is structured into two parts. Part one is taken up by the 23-minute long orchestral piece Atom Heart Mother, which in true classical fashion is broken down into a number of distinctive movements that allow for further instrumentation to be introduced. Here we have the familiar Pink Floyd instrumental line up of bass guitar, lead guitar, organ and drum-kit happily jamming away behind a sonic wall of operatic backing vocals, sound-effects, string arrangements and more importantly, a full salvation-army brass band.

Part two of the album works in a similar way to their over-indulgent previous release Ummagumma, in that it includes three solo compositions from Waters, Gilmour and Wright, before climaxing with what amounts to little more than an audio-collage. The three songs by the divided members are all very strong, with Waters and Gilmour experimenting with sub-Dylan folk sounds, unlike Wright, who turns in an admirable attempt at Sgt Pepper-era Beatles pop.

These first four songs are all excellent in their own right, though the baffling textures and false starts of the previously noted closing number (the wonderfully titled Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast) often overwhelms the album’s gentle intimacy. That said... this is still a great work. It misses out on classic status by a very narrow margin, but still deserves attention from the more serious musical devotees.

Underrated
When I first heard this album I wasn't particularly impressed - I wasn't listening very much. Most of Pink Floyd's material has the ability to really capture your attention (Comfortably Numb, for example.) But it's really grown on me since, especially Wright's Summer '68, which is a quality song. Atom Heart Mother (the song) is good but isn't on the level of other bloody long tracks such as Echoes and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. It receives unfair criticism (in my eyes, at least) but it was a very experimental period for the band, and they worked seperately on individual tracks.

Track two, If, is a good song but reminds me more of the Kinks than Pink Floyd - it's a nice little ballad, but hardly groundbreaking. Fat Old Sun is the crappest ever name for a song, but it's another nice little ballad. But just what on earth Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast is about is quite frankly beyond me. It's out of this world (not amazing, just bizarre taken to a new level.) A strange finale to an strange album

I would definitely recommend this album to anyone. It will have it's moments for most people, but I think all-round it is underrated, and certainly draws a lot of unfair critcism, not least from the band itself.

Ciao.