Udder nonsense

Half-hearted ‘Mother’: Less worthy of an assessment than a warning, Pink Floyd: Atom Heart Mother—The Ultimate Critical Review is an awkward and unauthorized profile cum documentary. Although it benefits from the participation of Ron Geesin, who worked on Pink Floyd’s experimental “Atom Heart Mother” suite recorded in 1970, the members of the band are not directly involved. (A vintner of sour grapes, Geesin believes he deserves more credit for his work, some thirty-five years after the fact.) Instead there are ancient, barely-visible clips of them performing, interspersed with mediocre cover band interpretations of the music. A poseur curmudgeon calling himself ‘Krusher’ serves as the DVD’s ‘ultimate critic,’ but his abrasive demeanor is ridiculous and had me thinking of Ken Russell in his sweaty Gothic period. Informative chats with a musicologist and producers (typically myopic in their read of the album’s unfairly maligned second side) should’ve been edited down to brief digressions rather than fleshed out to fill for time. Perhaps after seeing the excellent Classic Albums: Pink Floyd—The Dark Side of Moon, our hopes were too high. But under any circumstances, Atom Heart Mother—The Ultimate Critical Review is a droning disappointment, taxing and overlong at seventy-five minutes.

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