THE FRENCH DO ATOM HEART MOTHER

If you're a Pink Floyd fan you'll be interested in this 35 minute video of a bunch of talented French musicians, dancers and choir singers performing the band's 1969 class ic Atom Heart Mother in its entirety. Atom Heart Mother is one of the more obscure and overlooked Floyd albums. It transitioned the band from the psychedelia and pop of Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets to Meddle the album that with One of these Days and Echoes showed the way forward for the Roger Waters-dominated group.

The video is very well put together and features some excellent musicianship and performance. It's a great shame that the Floyd never filmed Atom Heart Mother. It's an unusual piece of music and the band have largely disowned the album, but it definitely deserves its place in the back catalogue as an important work that paved the way to Dark Side of the Moon.

Also of interest is the Abbey Road series of concerts that features the Floyd's David Gilmour performing tracks from his great new album On An Island. The shows kick off next month, being shown on Channel 4's More4 channel in the UK. We might be able to catch it streamed on the website. Check out Live At Abbey Road for info about the series which also features live recordings from the likes of Dave Matthews and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I recently managed to get hold of a copy of some circa 1970 recordings of the Floyd performing Echoes during some John Peel sessions. The recordings are amazing. You'll find them out there in the world of torrents...

Also...any Floyd fan needs to add Brain Damage to their favourites. It's the best source of FLoyd-related news on the web and the redesigned site looks great. Only a couple of weeks till the Roger Waters concert and Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety... I can't wait.