Pink Floyd “Atom Heart Mother” (1970)

This is a hard Pink Floyd album, even the band admits it was an unwise "concept" idea. Side one, the "Atom Heart Mother Suite" marries orchestration with Floyd's ethereal wisps of other worldliness, but...it didn't quite turn out. The AHM is not quite a convincing mesh of band and orchestra as the band and orchestra play around each other, not together. To me, the issue is AHM really acts more as a traditional score/soundtrack rather than a Floyd contemporary reinvention of soundtrack soundscapes into what should have been a major prog opus, but...it needed more (no pun!!). That said convoluted as it's concept and execution, to my ears, some bits did work out, side two...Summer '68, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast...are all sublime slow burners. It's a record you need to have if you dig seventies era Floyd at all, for experience, it's a sweet struggle to hear the Floyd moving past Gilmour's recreation of the world Syd Barrett invented. –Nipper