Atom Heart Mother

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

The fifth studio album from Pink Floyd, recorded in 1970 at the famous Abbey Road Studios. The new Discovery version presents the original studio album, digitally remastered by James Guthrie and reissued with newly designed Digipak and a new 12 page booklet designed by Storm Thorgerson.

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