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List Price: $12.98 | | Label: EMI Europe Generic
Salesrank: 56036
Released: January 1, 2008 |
| Our Price: $8.72 |
| Used Price: $6.64 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Atom Heart Mother Track Listing:
1. Atom Heart Mother: Father's Shout/Breast Milky/Mother Fore/Funky Dung
2. If
3. Summer '68
4. Fat Old Sun
5. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast: Rise and Shine/Sunny Side Up/Morning ...
Editorial Review:
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
Atom Heart Mother Reviews:
Pink Floyd set the controls for progressive rock 
2009-12-08 - At the very end of the 1960s, after two fantastic debut albums, Pink Floyd went through a period of musique concrete noodling and sonic collages that held very little appeal for me. With 1970s ATOM HEART MOTHER, the band returned to form, and they clearly changed direction from psychadelic rock to progressive.
This new focus is evident right from the start. The "Atom Heart Mother Suite" suite is 25 minutes long, includes a brass orchestra and chorus, and is broken in to a series of distinct sections which treat its theme different. Though the names of the suite's various movement suggest a livestock story, the work is really an abstract one -- the choir sings only wordless vocalizations. While not as consistently gripping as the later suites "Echoes" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", this is nonetheless a lot of fun.
The next several tracks were written by different individual members of the band. "Summer '68" by Richard Wright is a reminiscence of a sexual encounter with a groupie, it is memorable for its "Hey Jude"-like refrain and use of brass instruments and is perhaps the group has come to pure pop. The other two songs are in a gentle, almost pastoral mood. Roger Water's "If" is an idiosyncratic song about love. "Fat Old Sun", written and sung by David Gilmour, is one of that guitarist's finest compositions and is the tune from this album that I always come away humming.
The weakest point of ATOM HEART MOTHER is the closing track, "Alan's Psychadelic Breakfast", which consists mainly of some tame instrumental riffing over a man first muttering about what he wants to eat in the morning, and then the sounds of bacon frying and cereal being poured into a bowl. Only for a brief period towards the end of this 13-minute track do we finally reach any kind of compelling music.
In later years the band has been pretty hard on ATOM HEART MOTHER, seeing it as an immature effort. Nonetheless, for me this was the first worthy album they released after A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS, and for fans of Pink Floyd, especially their music of the 1970s, this shouldn't be neglected as it all too often is.
Proof is in the eating 
2009-11-06 - I have long wanted to acquire AHM as I have most Pink Floyd though until recently only about half of pre-DSOTM Pink Floyd. I read all the very mixed reviews and decided I'd probably like it, so plunged in. I've got to say I'm disappointed. Maybe its wrong to say there's anything wrong with this recording per se. The challenge I have is that I have a great deal of music to choose from, and by now own almost all Pink Floyd (bar I think, More, and oddly enough the first one).
I therefore have two choices to make: first I have to decided I'm in the mood for Pink Floyd, and secondly, I have to decided which. I've listened to AHM once only, and while I know it's wrong to make a decision on such short acquaintance I honestly don't think I'll be selecting it again in a hurry. I'd have to decided I'd rather listen to this than any of the others in their amazing portfolio - and the reality is all the others are better (some far better and some slightly better). So what chance does it have to see the light of day? It's a little tedious, and the chamber music doesn't appeal to me. It's the sort of thing I might occasionally put on to justify having bought it in the first place, but doesn't warrant intensive listening.
But who knows? It may be one of those recordings that rewards persistence. Only time will tell - if it ever makes it back onto my player.
The Floyd
2009-10-22 - You need to be a total fan to get it. Great arrangements for such a young group.
Another good album 
2009-09-20 - one of the best instrumentals albums from pink floyd other than meddle whcih had echos.
This album sounds progressive an a little bit psychedelic an if your aware of the Ozric Tentacles band? This album right here sounds a little like Ozric Tentacles.
Only album's that i dislike from pink floyd is the final cut, an the divison bell whcih their nothing specail.
Everything has a time and a place...
2009-06-13 - In the summer of 1991 my girlfriend and I were tasked with housesitting a friend's victorian just off Haight Ashbury. Since the house record collection had nothing but Van Morrison, we needed something to mix things up, so I went down to a little hole-in-the-wall record store on 24th and picked up copies of The Door's "The Soft Parade" and Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother."
Between deliveries from Escape From New York Pizza (and other random indulgences), we were pretty surprised by what we were hearing. The opening orchestral track, a lumbering, majestic creation still finding its feet like a dishevelled organ grinder finally coming to after a vicious bender, was ambitious, grandiose, and, at times, plodding.... but ultimately rewarding, as if it were the result of certain substances secreted into the punchbowl before an unsuspecting orchestra took the stage.
I liked it then, I like it now. No matter that members of Pink Floyd have bashed this album from time to time; artists often distance themselves from youthful indiscretions, but Atom Heart Mother is a great album, and that includes the bookend-like suites that begin and end the performance. It's more like a tootsi-pop; you have to suck on the hard stuff a while to reach the chewy center.
And what a center it is. Roger Water's "If," a touching acoustic arpeggio to mental instability, is clearly a precursor to later songs like "Wish You Were Here. The pleading rejoinder, "And if I go insane... would you please let me join in with the game," is scary stuff, but ultimately ironic, especially considering that Waters was at the forefront of ousting Syd as the leader of Pink Floyd.
But quibbling aside, the true majesty of AHM lies in Wright and Gilmour's contributions. "Summer of '68" is perhaps the finest thing Wright ever commited to vinyl. The swirling orchestrations echo the title track (and clue us in to the chief creative force on this record) but it's the lyrics that really stand out for me. After a whirlwind romance, the speaker feigns indifference as he prepares to leave, only to turn and ask how his lover feels about him. The complexity of the situation, rendered in such simple terms, never ceases to amaze me, and the chorus is perhaps one of the finest psychedelic interludes ever recorded.
Then there's "Fat Old Sun," the kind of song you wish could go on for another twenty minutes, (and for those of you with any knowledge of Swinging Pig Records and their amazing bootlegs, such dreams are possible). An ode to mortality and a simple love song to boot, there is something deceptively simple about "Fat Old Sun." When I first heard it, it seemed little more than filler to me, but here, twenty years later, it's perhaps the most moving track on the record.
A friend of mine once tried to summarize Pink Floyd in one word: loss. The potential for loss, the reality of it, and the attendant fears that seem to loom over everything we create, engage, or love in our lives. "Fat Old Sun" is, to me at least, preventitive medicine for such lament. It's a song of heightened awareness, one that avoids lamentation by living acutely in the moment. And Gilmour's soloing only serves to echo those sentiments strongly.
And finally there's "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast." I don't know why people bash this song. It's fun, playful, and experiemntal, all of which suggests a cereal commercial gone wrong... or very right. The piano melody that weaves in and out of this song is, again, one of Rick Wright's joyful creations, and it's just plain fun.
"Marmalade... everybody likes marmalade."
