Atom Heart Mother

In tribute to the passing of Rick Wright, an original member of Pink Floyd and revolutionary keyboardist, I have been inspired to talk about what I think is a very underappreciated album. When people think of Pink Floyd they think of Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Wish You Were Here. Yet, Atom Heart Mother is an album has been overlooked Floydian history. The album is a mesh of classical avant-garde and progressive rock, making it particularly innovative, even for Pink Floyd.

The first track, "Atom Heart Mother,"is 23 minutes of every sound you can imagine. Starting with a strangely paced brass section, after about a minute and a half, the band enters with a sonic boom. Guitarist David Gilmour's powerful chords give a smooth feel to the song, contrasting with the horns that progressively sound darker and darker. Then enters strange noises of panicking horses, motorcycles rumbling, and bombs dropping. The next few minutes are filled with carefully orchestrated guitar, violin, keyboards, drums, and bass that all come together perfectly. The next part of the song is filled with somber singers who bring high drama and tension to the song. Various guitar, bass, organ, and vocal solos fill the song until the 18th minute. This is when Floyd takes the song to a whole new level. They somehow mix everything that happened in the prior 18 minutes and culminate it all into one big climax. This song is fantastic and undoubtedly the pinnacle of the album.

After that 23 minute marathon, the album turns to more conventional song structures. "If" is a somber and mellow track written by Roger Waters. The song is vintage Waters, talking about vulnerability, loneliness, and as always insanity. 

The next track, "Summer '68" written by Rick Wright, has an upbeat feel and is about as close as Pink Floyd gets to sounding like any other band. 

"Fat Old Sun" is the last conventional song on the album, written by David Gilmour. The song is light and easy going, Gilmour sings about lazy sunny days and finishes the song with a melodic guitar solo.

The final song is probably the strangest, even more so than the opening track, called "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast". The songs starts out with some guy rambling incoherently for about a minute. Then a sort of cheerful piano enters and leads for a few minuets. Then the music stops, and you hear somebody preparing breakfast and still talking too softly to understand. Next a guitar enters playing very richly and smoothly while you can still hear this guy prepare breakfast. The rest of the song is various mixtures of harmonious parts until the album comes to a very soothing close. 

I have never heard another album like this and probably never will. It's so out of the box and 

flawlessly composed that every time I listen to it, I appreciate it more and more. 

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