Product 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.

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: #1497 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

Customer Reviews

Days of future past
This is one of my favourite Pink Floyd albums, still sounding as good as it did in the long summer of 1970 when it was released. It captures the positive and experimental aspects of the sixties Floyd before they found fame and fortune with Dark Side Of The Moon and became increasingly gloomy and angst driven. The first track is their longest single suite with added brass, cello and choir orchestrated by Ron Geesin. This is followed by three songs, 'If' is an acoustic number by Waters,'Summer 68' is a funky tune by Wright and 'Fat Old Sun' has a great guitar solo at the end by Gilmour. The album finishes with a long soundscape full of Floydian sound effects in 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast' which makes for ideal listening on headphones with cereals popping and bacon sizzling in glorious stereo.

A-moo-zing
I've always found this album very funny. You can't really tell if they were taking the michael or indulging in true hippy experimentalism. The title track is a meandering mess, but with a powerful and moving recurring theme. 'If' is a lovely song in its own right, and worth the price of the album in my view. Incidentally they did a live version of the title track in the early 70's which I have on a tape from a long forgotten John Peel show (from somewhere strange like the Bath & West show). It is a note perfect replica of the album version, which suggests that someone must have written down the score.
I was a big PF fan as a teenager (aren't all middle class boys) before I left them for the delights of The Smiths, The Birthday Party etc. This album, though, is worth a re-visit every now and then, if nothing else to remind myself how avant-garde I thought I was back then. And its surprisingly listenable even now. Ah, nostalgia.

Under-rated and leaning to a future
"Atom Heart Mother", is a undeservedly bashed record in their canon. The title track is an ambitious, epic instrumental with orchestra that is a precursor to the bands signature tune "Echoes". Side two is generally formless, compiled of just a number of frankly average songs and a couple of standouts in the shape of "If" and "Fat Old Sun". Overall, the production is strong but the songs are lacking.