Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

Man of Honour
Joined
24 Sep 2005
Posts
37,259
I bought this yesterday knowing little about it and have listened through it at least 6 times.

I think it's very, very good, especially the meandering epic title track which comes back to that 'wild west' style main theme every so often (~1.01 in the clip below). Very experimental and with no particular direction, but no section of it outstays its welcome, which is a problem I find with many of the longer Pink Floyd tracks such as Dogs, Echoes and Shine on you Crazy Diamond. I'm shocked that this album isn't more popular or well known. The only 'bad' song is the frankly bizarre ending - Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, which is an instrumental played to the sound of somebody making breakfast....!

I am thus surprised to see that it is critically panned by so many! I'm certainly placing it above Wish You Were Here, Animals and Meddle at this point in time, although I may tire of it soon. What do you guys think?

Here's the start of the title track (the bit from 2.29 is awesome IMO):

 
Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again!

- Roger Waters
Click to expand...

'I wouldn't dream of performing anything that embarrassed me. If somebody said to me now: "Right...here's a million pounds, go out and play 'Atom Heart Mother'", I'd say: "You must be ****ing joking...I'm not playing that rubbish!". 'Cos then I really would be embarrassed.'

- Roger Waters
Click to expand...

What do you think of your early records like Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma today?

I think both are pretty horrible. Well, the live disc of Ummagumma might be all right, but even that isn't recorded well.

- David Gilmour
Click to expand...

I agree. :p
 
The beginning of that youtube link sounds like something from the original star trek series. :)

I'm a fan of Pink Floyd too, but i've never really liked this particular album.
 
I don't like pre-Meddle Floyd or post-Waters Floyd.

I've had Ummagumma -> Final Cut on CD for several years, and listened to the rest online.
 
I disagree with roger and david, I think AHM is awesome, I think I prefer it over The Wall and definitely over The Final Cut.

But then that's because I love long instrumentals...


In my eyes what I like from top to bottom:

WYWH ( Shine on You Crazy Diamond > * )
Meddle ( the whole album is awesome, but echoes is a masterpiece)
AHM ( First and last tracks are genius)
DSOTM ( I loved it at first, but it gets boring more quickly than AHM and Meddle, while I have only listened DSOTM about 100 times, I've listened to AHM and Meddle about twice as much)
Division Bell ( aside from some ''in my eyes'' fillers I love it)
AMLOR ( I like it very much, but I don't like bits the tracks the dogs of war, A new machine p1&2 and Yet another movie round and round, some bits of those tracks are good, and some are annoying me)
Animals
The Wall ( I like comfy numb, another brick in the wall, hey you, and 2 otehr tracks, aside that it became boring quite quickly)
Ummagumma live ( I love the live version of A saucerful of Secrets, with the organ at the end)
Piper At the gates of dawn ( I think ''bike'' is great :p).
...
...
The Final Cut.


Not listed (...) albums I haven't listened to enough or don't know too well but I'm pretty sure I don't like The Final Cut.
 
Last edited:
I probably listened to it around 1972, I didn't like it then and I'm not going to pretend to like it now.
It's garbage and I don't need Pink Floyd members to tell me that either.
I also don't buy into this 'Syd Barret is a God' crap either since we're on about Floyd.
 
Atom heart mother suite is in my two favourite Floyd tracks.

The other being Echoes.


Can't get enough of either and have spent weeks of my life listening to both :D


edit: I strongly disagree with you Nitefly when you say the song lacks direction, it's a progressive masterpiece in my opinion. I also think that apart from the Breakfast, the album is a wonderful progressive, experimental concept album and certainly does have a direction.

An extremely underrated album. Which is sad because the Syd is god people are misguided: I can't stand the early pink floyd with him on it.

This album and Meddle are truly wonderful, and their prog masterpiece tracks on them are a real insight into the genre and the amazing musical ability of each member of the band.
 
Last edited:
I like pink floyd allot, but i don't really rate this album. There are far better PF albums available.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom