DESCRIPTION:
Atom Heart Mother was the epic title track of Pink Floyd's fifth studio album, from the fall of 1970. This album to me is an absolute one of a kind masterpiece, I like it much more than the more critically acclaimed earlier Floyd records. It seems that, according to a wiki article on the record, that both Roger and David have not thought as highly of it both recently making statements to the effect that it wasn't up to par with the best Floyd efforts. This is a unique record, even from a band that specialized in unique records! It has always had a very otherworldly vibe going. I've heard it argued that it now sounds dated, but listening to it even today it sounds incredibly fresh and brilliant. I think that "dated" sound was intact when it was released in 1970, it's just always sounded like something recorded from another time.

The "Atom Heart Mother" suite takes up all of side one, and is split into six parts, individually named. Geesin chose the opening section name, "Father's Shout" after Earl "Fatha" Hines, while other names such as "Breast Milky" and "Funky Dung" were inspired by the album cover artwork. The orchestral arrangements feature a full brass section, a cello and the 16-piece John Alldis choir, which take most of the lead melody lines, while Pink Floyd mainly provide the backing tracks; a reverse of the 1960s pop music practice of using orchestration as the background, and putting the rock band in front. Nevertheless, there are several occasions where David Gilmour's electric guitar takes the lead.

The cover art is more Storm Thorgerson brilliance and I've already used this iconic image in numerous of my other Pink Floyd vids...I finally just decided to jump in to the one song where I could really crank the cows to 11!

More on the cover art from Wiki:
***The original album cover, designed by art collective Hipgnosis, shows a cow standing in a pasture with no text nor any other clue as to what might be on the record. This concept was the group's reaction to the psychedelic space rock imagery associated with Pink Floyd at the time of the album's release; the band wanted to explore all sorts of music without being limited to a particular image or style of performance. They thus requested that their new album had "something plain" on the cover, which ended up being the image of a cow. Storm Thorgerson, inspired by Andy Warhol's famous "cow-wallpaper," has said that he simply drove out into a rural area near Potters Bar and photographed the first cow he saw. The cow's owner identified her name as "Lulubelle III". More cows appear on the back cover, again with no text or titles, and on the inside gatefold.***

I'm kinda surprised that I actually finished another epic Floyd vid not so long after finishing the last one ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond I-IX"), since the previous experience of getting something imagined, created, rendered, and uploaded for such an epic track was pretty brutal...and this one was not any easier, especially after I somehow accidentally deleted a big chunk of different effect sequences prior to a test render and was never quite able to reconstruct the sequences, and as it was already such a time consuming process I ended up stretching out existing effects. Just a laborious process of reconciling even a tiny timing adjustment through sometimes the entire timeline and then 25 minutes for a program preview, another adjustment, etc. (not to mention 6 hours to render (usually several necessary to get the timings finalized..not a big deal on a 4-5 minute song!)....gets pretty tiresome, and finally have to end up setting for something not quite right, but close enough.

I had hoped that my next Floyd works would have been for the 3 big tunes from Animals ( I've already done the "little" one "Pigs On The Wing Pts. I & II")....but instead of Dogs, Pigs and Sheep I did Cows! After finishing this one, it came to me that I should try to maintain as many of the same type elements as possible from this vid and carry it over to the other animals....anyway, I'm thinking it might be interesting to try, each would stand on it's own, but could also be viewed in the context of the other three? Well see...wish me luck! ;-) ....(I'll need it!).

Special thanks to:
FootageIsland Channel for the awesome funky cows!
(http://www.youtube.com/user/footageisland)
&
Ken Mayering at hdcolors Channel
(http://www.youtube.com/user/hdcolors)
for more of his amazing kaliedescopes!

Pink Floyd - Time (1973) (2011 Remaster) [1080p HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZY2O906bDo
Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond, 1-9 (1975) (Remaster) [1080p HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgHUBclmpVg