Next to that, Wright's Summer Of 68 is a very (overly?) ambitious project with the orchestral fanfare taking it over the top, but at least it has dynamics and almost rocks. Waters' If track is already pointing at his future obsession of alienation from society behind his acoustic guitar strumming gentle but ambiguous stuff, especially in the light of their future. This last aspect sort of breaks the side's unity, but it's not a big deal.

The flipside is completely different with the three songwriters grabbing one song each, thus almost recreating the Ummagumma pattern, but this time obviously the other members looked into what the others were doing, each singing their own song. While the dissonant musique concrete passage Mind Your Throats may be an interesting piece on its own, it is always a tough intervention on anotherwise marvellous and melodic piece like AHM, but one does learn to appreciate it with repeated listenings.

Floyd's group intervention in Funky Dung is coming as a just-in-time breath of fresh air, Gilmour's outstanding solo piercing your armour of indifference while Wright's Farsifa organ is underlining the group's tightness.

This epic suite has many aerial and celestial moments, when the brass section had a field day taking the track into bombasticland and most notably the choirs, which take on a Kobaian overtone at the end of their second intervention. Geesin is the one who also found the final name of the epic, legend has it from a tabloid article about an atomic-powered pace-maker for a pregnant mother. Apparently, something was missing and Geesin was called up (they had met a while before at the Technicolour Dream extravaganza) for his classical training, which lead directly to the awesome cello-filled Breast Milky. The birth of this epic was not an easy one, the group starting on a Gilmour idea following the More soundtrack and brainstorming led it to become a suite, which was then tested live, bearing the name of The Amazing Pudding (a few recordings exist or this work-in-progress). If you're not sure about Geesin's role in the AHM track, listen to his collab with Roger Waters's The Body, and it'll all become clear, even if musically there is no resemblance between the two albums. Purple had failed as would Caravan later (although un-rehearsed), Procol only doing a readaptation of their better stuff, The Nice failing miserably on Ars Longa (etc.) but Floyd managed it well enough, but had to resort to outside help in the name of Ron Geesin. On the A-side, Floyd tried more successfully what many failed to do before them: integrating classical music and the symphonic orchestra and choirs into the rock fusion. No doubt Hypgnosis' cow un-tagged pastoral artwork helped out (it was a fad that Crimson and Zep tried before they did), but that doesn't explain much, especially with the sore studio experience of Ummagumma. Despite the album's flaws and it not always ageing well, I rank in the last category of fans, even if I wonder sometimes how this album became so successful.

Alan Parsons / engineer Releases informationĬD EMI United Kingdom ‎- CDEMD 1072 (1994, Europe) Remastered by Doug Sax with James GuthrieĬD EMI ‎- 50999 028940 2 7 (2011, Europe) Remastered by James Guthrie with Joel PlanteĪHM is a very controversial album, decried by many as boring and pretentious (this usually the Barrett unconditionals pissing on Floyd's successful convalescence of their Syd-loss), almost disowned even by some Floyd members and hailed as the first giant step to the group's ascension to perfection ? it was after their first chart topping album.

Haflidi Hallgrimsson / cello (uncredited) Philip Jones Brass Ensemble / brass (1,3) Roger Waters / bass & vocals & acoustic guitar (2), tape, Fx Richard Wright / keyboards (Hammond M102), vocals (3) David Gilmour / guitars, bass, drums & vocals (4)

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