ATOM HEART MOTHER

ATM has a few magnificent moments, but the album is very unbalanced and frankly is quite boring in a number of places especially the last track, Alan's Pyschedelic Breakfast. The band themselves admitted that during this period they were in a creative limbo and consequently Ron Geesin, Water's friend, was brought into the studio to help write the album's 23 minute instrumental title track. Basically, Geesin added the orchastration to the track, incorporating a violins, a brass section, and choir to the song. ATM does indeed have some beautiful moments, the violin solo which segues into Gilmour's pedal steel solo is especially blissfull. However, the song becomes somewhat repititive towards the end and ATM simply doesn't sustain the passion nor the interest as does the even longer Echoes from Meedle. Even Geesin was unhappy with the final cut and desired to work on it further, but it had to be kept for finicial reasons. Side two begins with If. Opening with some simple yet lovely acoustic guitar, Waters' lyrics are the first of many more to come to pertain to madness,"if i go insane please don't put your wires in my brain" and possibly to Syd Barrett. Altogether a nice song, though it does lack excitment. The next song is by Wright entitled Summer of 68. An underappreciated song, this is probably my favorite track on the album. A reluctant lyricist a best, Wright describes the shallowness of the whole groupie experience and his lyrics though not great are quite good. The best part of the track however is Wrights' masterful piano playing. Fat Old Sun written by Gilmour is nostalgic piece describing his adolensce years in the English countryside. This is definitely Gilmour's most tranquil work to date but the song lacks emotion. Even Dave's guitar solo is surprisingly restrained and uninspiring. The final track, Alan's Pyschedelic Breakfast, is undoubtly the low point of the album. The music is rather mundane and the fact the only sound effects the band could conceive was breakfast munching indicates the band was at a loss for creativity. I tend to be too critical of this album simply because it is several notches below their best work which at this time was still to come. ATM offers some strong matieral and is definitely progressive rock and so if your a Floyd fanatic like myself buy it, but if your just getting into Floyd buy one of their better known albums first.