ATOM HEART MOTHER

The first time I ever heard anything from Pink Floyd I was eight and was this album. My dad bough it on a cassette version and eventually play it. Then in those years, among cartoons and school days, I was fascinated by the length of the songs. Radio tunes normally were shorter than three minutes and here we are in front of a twenty minutes monster, an entire side for a single song. And there was also the cover: a cow in pasture. The hell is this? I've had to listen it.

So it's begin with the homonym twenty-something monster. An electric humming followed by strings and noise mixed in an apparently nonsense that fall into a symphonic overture with motors sounds and jazz drums. The entire piece roundabouts over a particular leitmotif, a tragic and heroic march running in ancient ages horses as a crusade quest in search of glory and divination, still the trip evokes over consumption and consumerism adorned in fanfares and war esque rhythms. This leitmotif is developed in different textures, tempo and moods; you can hear electric guitars, mellotrons, wind orchestra, chamber strings, haunting vocals, bass guitars, all of them pushing through the opus until there is no more to add. In fact there is a point on which the regular listener would lost every interest among amorphous computer effects and practically not a single conclusive line. But then, luckily, the machinery comes to an end, the whole monster unfolds itself, the metallic fanfare breaks throughout it returning to its very origin and trades it into an epic conclusion reloaded into an entire new dawn. Is, lacking for better words, a complex symphonic jazz experiment.

Calming the moods, comes 'If', an introspective Waters ballad mostly leaded over the acoustic guitar strings. Smooth, soft and yet thrilling. Summer of love is left behind, but the kindness remains and vibrates with good intentions and hopeful dreams. A wonderful track with such atmosphere and feeling, that is impossible to feel indifferent to it.

'Summer '68' is definitely my favourite song of the album, a jolly dynamic and also kind of melancholic track with a lot of reminiscence from the main track. The piano breaks into happy tune. Shy and timid at first, then monstrous, a loud gigantic evolves with little paints of trumpet and orchestra from the AHM's leitmotif here and there, and returns to the poppy keyboards not daring to calming down a single pace. Claiming attention, energy, burst out and screams louder with metal trumpets and shrieking orchestra. The tempo lows down into an acoustic guitar and piano, Plants a farewell or at least take more air before the final submersion. The jazzy orchestra explodes once more fading with sonorous yells of joy. Bursting out!

Gilmour gives a soft ballad, bucolic tune bathed in tears of mist and evening. 'Fat Old Sun' is completely laid on his guitar, ghostly accompanied by grinding electric string chords and blue drums. Melancholic valediction growing in a sad night that vanish slowly and softly.

A leaking on the sink, the stove, the kitchen comes alive; coffee, butter, marmalade, ingredients turned into mantra verses of a mechanical mind. A bite, and the music emerges as a kaleidoscope of sonorous sensations. Another bite. This trip concludes with 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast', created completely devoted as a sound experiment, they play with the stereo channels revolving the breakfast into the kitchen and emphasizing sensations of cooking, eating, cleaning with a bizarre and romantic 'score' a glad moment to be remembered, yet as simple as breakfast could be, every moment is celebrated and followed in a documentary style. Is so intense you can hear and even smell the eggs fried on the pan. Brilliant. And as the title suggest, an actual psychedelic experience.