Pink Floyd is one of those bands that can get deep into your soul. In their earliest days they had songs of a carefree nature and songs of internal exploration. As they matured, so did their themes. They never seemed to fail to touch upon what makes us human, the hopes, the turmoil. Never fearful to go to dark places of our psyche but always yearn for redemption of some sort.
Animals is a curious album and perhaps their darkest work. Loosely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, it paints mankind as animals of various sorts: predatory, greedy and hopelessly naïve.
Pink Floyd had just built their studio, Britannia Row, in Islington. They had little material to work with, a few leftovers from the Wish You Were Here sessions. You’ve Got To Be Crazy (which became Dogs) and Raving And Drooling (which became Sheep). A new song, Pigs On The Wing, was divided into two parts to bookend the album. The idea of bookending a project with some sort of theme song seems to have being with their film, Pink Floyd At Pompeii, where Echoes was also divided and bookended the film. This carried over in a less obvious fashion on Dark Side of the Moon with the heartbeat sound. Again on Wish You Were Here where Shine On You Crazy Diamond opened and closed the Album.
Engineer, James Guthrie, had first worked with Pink Floyd during sessions for The Wall and has continued working with them throughout many reissues of their albums. The reissue project for Animals had been a little more stormy than usual but I won’t dwell on that here. Suffice to say that it took nearly 5 years before it hit market.
Although I grew up in a time when there was quadrophonic music releases, it wasn’t until later that I started taking notice of the immersive quality of music created in 5.1 surround sound. The acclaimed Dark Side of the Moon in 5.1 surround sound was my introduction to this, although I had also experienced holophonic releases such as The Final Cut and The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking.
Some reviewers see the 2018 Remix of Animals as subtle, modern re-imagining of this classic album. The original release was very dark and dull in sound. The ‘psalm’ section of Sheep is so distorted it’s practically incomprehensible.
As dark as the original release may be in sound, the new remix is cold in its clarity. This also manifests in many sounds and musical phrases that were practically buried in the original mix. Even on Sheep, the once distorted psalm is now clear and cleverly surrounded by the once hazy sound.
The surround version is an amazing experience to try but even so, listening to the new mix is an equal revelation. Cold and stark just like our world today.