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.