Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother will be released as a special 2-disc package in a 7-inch gatefold sleeve, containing the Atom Heart Mother album on CD and a Blu-ray disc featuring footage of Atom Heart Mother (Suite) performed at Hakone Aphrodite Festival, Japan in August 1971 – originally released as part of The Early Years box set. The film has been upgraded from a recently discovered original tape of the time. It also includes a behind the scenes mini documentary. It will be released on Friday 8th December and is now available to pre-order. See the links below.
Originally only released in Japan in 2021, the set contains some unique memorabilia – a special photo book containing many rare, never-seen-before photos, reproductions of the pamphlet, the poster, the concert ticket, and the flier distributed at the event.
The only Pink Floyd footage at Hakone Aphrodite that exists is that of the 16-minute-long suite Atom Heart Mother. The details including whereabouts of the master film and how it was shot had been a mystery for a long time. However, after fifty years, the original 16mm film of this video was discovered in a fan’s garage. The meticulous processes of digitizing, restoring and remastering was undertaken and finally this enhanced video will be released outside of Japan.
Over 50 years ago, Japan’s first international outdoor rock festival “Hakone Aphrodite” was held at a specially built venue beside Hakone Ashinoko Lake on August 6th and 7th, 1971. Pink Floyd’s first-ever concert in Japan was as headliner for the festival. Aspiring to be the Japanese Woodstock, The “Hakone Aphrodite” invited many international artists and became the first rock festival experience for many Japanese fans.
The set contains not only the original live footage (with audio taken from the gig at Hakone Aphrodite), but also behind-the-scenes footage of the band, travelling between the airport, the hotel, the press conference, the bullet train, the show set-up, and, of course, beautiful Japanese scenery.
At the time of the historic concert, Pink Floyd had just released Atom Heart Mother (in October 1970), and were yet to release Meddle (released in November 1971). Pink Floyd appeared as the final act of the festival, and alongside Atom Heart Mother, they performed another five songs including Careful With That Axe, Eugene, A Saucerful Of Secrets, and Echoes from then-unreleased album Meddle. Sadly, official footage of these has not resurfaced. The band’s mystical and fantastic show, enhanced by nature’s unwitting stage effects of fog emerging from the lake when they played, was talked about for years to come. For the show, Pink Floyd used huge PA systems not yet commonly used in Japan back then, and it is widely believed that this show greatly influenced Japanese audio and stage production after that.
