PINK FLOYD – ATOM HEART MOTHER LP – Nr MINT UK  PROG

Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother
(Harvest Records  1976  SHVL781)
Matrix No’s: A4/B6 HTM – UK Pressing
EMI ring wording and Logo on labels

Gatefold Sleeve in Nr MINT condition
– some slight wear
Original EMI Inner Bag with no splits but some creasing

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)

Pink Floyd were an English rock band formed in London. They achieved international acclaim with their progressive and psychedelic music. Distinguished by their use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, extended compositions and elaborate live shows, they are one of the most commercially successful and influential groups in the history of popular music.

Pink Floyd were founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals. They gained popularity performing in London’s underground music scene during the late 1960s, and under Barrett’s leadership released two charting singles and a successful debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). Guitarist David Gilmour joined in December 1967; Barrett left in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. Waters became the band’s primary lyricist and conceptual leader, devising the concepts behind their albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983). The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall became two of the best-selling albums of all time.

Following creative tensions, Wright left Pink Floyd in 1979, followed by Waters in 1985. Gilmour and Mason continued as Pink Floyd; Wright rejoined them as a session musician and, later, a band member. The three produced two more albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), and toured until 1994. After nearly two decades of acrimony, Pink Floyd reunited with Waters in 2005 for a performance in London as part of the global awareness event Live 8, but Gilmour and Waters have since stated they have no plans to reunite as a band again. Barrett died in 2006 and Wright in 2008. The final Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River (2014), was recorded without Waters and largely based on unreleased material.

Pink Floyd were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. By 2013, the band had sold more than 250 million records worldwide, including 75 million certified units in the US.

Atom Heart Mother is the fifth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in 1970 by Harvest and EMI Records in the UK and Harvest and Capitol in the US. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, and was the band’s first album to reach #1 in the UK, while it reached #55 in the US chart, eventually going gold there. A remastered CD was released in 1994 in the UK and the US, and again in 2011. Ron Geesin, who had already influenced and collaborated with Roger Waters, made a notable contribution to the album and received a then rare outside songwriting credit.

This was the first Pink Floyd album to be specially mixed for 4-channel quadraphonic sound as well as conventional 2-channel stereo. The SQ quadraphonic mix was released on LP in a matrix format compatible with standard stereo record players. There was also a release of the quadraphonic version in the UK in fully discrete 4-channel form on the “Quad-8” format, a 4-channel variant of the stereo 8-track tape cartridge.

The cover was, like earlier albums, designed by Hipgnosis, and was significant in that it was the first one to not feature the band’s name on the cover, or contain any photographs of the band anywhere. This was a trend that would continue on subsequent covers throughout the 1970s and beyond.

Although commercially and critically successful on release, the band have expressed several negative opinions of the album in more recent years, particularly from Waters and David Gilmour. Nevertheless, it remained popular enough for Gilmour to perform the title track with Geesin in 2008.

Track listing

Personnel

Pink Floyd

(all instrumentation uncredited)

• David Gilmour – guitars, drums on “Fat Old Sun”, vocals on “Fat Old Sun”
• Nick Mason – drums, percussion, tape editing, tape collage, additional engineering on “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”
• Roger Waters – bass guitar, acoustic guitar and vocals on “If”, tape effects, tape collages
• Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals on “Summer ’68”

Additional musicians

• EMI Pops Orchestra – brass and orchestral sections (uncredited)
• John Alldis Choir – vocals
• Alan Stiles – voice on “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” (uncredited)

Production

• Peter Bown – engineering
• Alan Parsons – engineering (miscredited as “Allan Parsons” on the original sleeve)
• Ron Geesin – orchestration and co-composition on “Atom Heart Mother” (uncredited on sleeve)