STEREOPHILE
Let’s face it — January 1977’s Animals has always been considered to be somewhat of a dark horse in the Pink Floyd recorded canon. Yet here in Year 45 of Animals, the album is finally getting a rightly deserved re-evaluation, thanks to Animals 2018 Remix (Pink Floyd Records/Sony Music), which was just released on LP, CD, and BD on September 16. (You can read all about the release-specific specs and nitty-gritties in our prior News report here.
Founding drummer Nick Mason agrees the time is now to re-absorb Animals. “I think it’s almost like the early Syd Barrett stuff,” he observes, referencing Floyd’s visionary founding guitarist/vocalist who exited the group in 1968. “A lot of people are unfamiliar with Animals. Everyone knows [March 1973’s] Dark Side [of the Moon] and [November 1979’s] The Wall, and then perhaps [September 1975’s] Wish You Were Here. In a way, Animals is one of our ‘undiscovered’ albums. So, hopefully, this release might really interest people to hear what we did when.”
To be sure, this Animals update has certainly been a long time coming. Having interviewed Mason numerous times over the years, I did at least get the sense the album was on an inevitable re-release trajectory. In June 2011, Mason first confirmed with me that “Roger [Waters, founding bassist/vocalist] has had in mind that he’d like to do a proper remix of Animals. And that’s interesting, because that was the least technically recorded album we’ve done. I have nothing ...
