ATOM HEART MOTHER

I first listened to this album while I was still at school and I LOVED it. I borrowed it from the CD shop a few days ago as I hadn't heard it in years. Whilst I wouldn't say I love it now as much as I did 15 years ago, it has some very nice moments.

I like some of the music in the Atom Heart Mother "suite". The cello solo in "Breast Milky" is very nice with an interesting chord progression underpinning it, and I love the section immediately after with the bottleneck guitar and organ blending beautifully to create a very dreamy texture - a classic Pink Floyd sound. The choir section goes on a bit for me with not very much happening, but I quite like the bass line on "Funky Dung" and you can hear the beginnings of David Gilmour's mature guitar style coming through in the solo.

The main thing I don't like about the suite is the bloody brass band which keeps reprising all the way through it. It's a really boring melody, and it just reminds me of fat, drunken gits playing at a local village fete in a Yorkshire mining village (but maybe that's just me).

One more interesting bit is the penultimate chord of the whole piece. Listen to the background chord of choir (especially the bass voices) and brass band - an interesting blend.

As for the rest of the album, the best bit for me is the final part of Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, another very interesting and unusual chord progression. Some of the sound effects in the background are quite funny too, as are some of "Alan's" musings on breakfast and life-on-the-road.

The other songs don't really do it for me, but that's just a personal thing. However, the lyrics to "If" are interesting in that they point the way towards some of the themes of later albums.

Overall, the album is clearly an experiment and doesn't feel like it was thought through very much (unlike "Dark Side" and "The Wall"). The focus is clearly the title-track, with the rest being fillers, each written by a different member of the band (obviously Floyd was much more egalitarian in its approach back then than it later became).

Roger Waters has said that the album was best put in the dustbin and never listened to again. I disagree. Whilst it has its failings, there are enough things in it that are worth hearing more than once.