Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

In the grand, color-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. And then 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." There's a range of emotion here, from doleful to crazed to humorous (especially the dramatized 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 Amazon.com

Greatest Floyd Album EVER

The review title says it all, I bought this album reluctantly ( cow issues ) but two months later I still keep skipping to it on my Ipod, "Summer of '68" alone is worth the price of the album, buy it already! October 11, 2008

They took a step back, but it has it's moments.

Another strange album from Pink Floyd. Not that it's that bad, by any means, it's just that they still don't know what sound they want. This is Pink Floyd's peak as a progressive band, but Pink Floyd are not known for being progressive now, are they? They're known for being spacey and out there. This isn't that out there. Well, the title track definetly is. Written in collaboration with Ron Geesin, a avantgarde composer. The suite is fairly impressive to be perfectly honest, and it does paint the way for future epics, but it loses momentum after a while. The main theme is terrific, very epic sounding and paves the way for The Wall even. Gilmour contributes more solos on this album, which is fine by me, I love me some Gilmour solos. Breast Milky, the second part, is kinda cheesy but still listenable. But, the middle parts are crap. They don't merge with the earlier parts at all, and for the most part, are noisemaking. Bah, Floyd, no more noise! The second side is ok though. If is a good song, another folky one from Waters. Summer 68 is a bit clumsy sounding, no real direction, but it has a decent melody. Fat Old Sun is my favorite, a nice pleasant song about childhood with a ripping guitar solo from Mr. Gilmour. Yay. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast is boring, 3 completly different parts once again making a big suite with no real substance. Oh well. Yet another mediocre Floyd album. However, it would take another year before things finally gelled. August 27, 2008

The Best Pink Floyd EVER

"Atom Heart Mother", i think is brilliant. It uses things that can't be found on any other Floyd album.
1. Atom Heart Mother: The Best song the album and PF's longest song ever (Not Considering Shine on you crazy Diamond Parts 1 & 2) Its amazing, it barely has any fillers
2. If, isnt that great. Its boring, really. Just Arpegios.
3. Summer of '68, OMG that song is amazing, the 2nd best song on the album horns guitar bass drums keyboard
4.
5. August 2, 2008

wtf

i own it and i like it. this is a damn good recording. reguardless of what the members of pink floyd say about it.
i like it and if they dont like it they can kizzmyazz
just reach for a peach as they said on their album meddle July 16, 2008

Searching for identity

3 1/2

Captures Floyd beginning to merge their psychedelic pathos with more constructed orchestrations, this splendid combination with next year's Meddle feels like a great double-disc (after all, many themes from the bloated Classical homage title track do reappear on the equally extended Echoes). Still, Beatles-channeling and all, Atom Heart is a worthy pre-DS addition. July 11, 2008

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