Pink Floyd - Animals 2018 Remix.

Pink Floyd
Animals - 2018 Remix
(Pink Floyd Music)
9/10
By Paul Davies

Far removed from the prog pomp Pink Floyd furrowed on their previous two albums, the music on Animals instead revealed the bleak circumstances of a band grinding towards an autocracy. Animals can be viewed as an open sonic sore on the grand body of Pink Floyd’s work, and it's all pretty much played out in the stark grooves on this audio antithesis to their recorded output up to this disintegrating point in a career less ordinary. This is the sound of turmoil and stark anger projected through the allegorical Orwellian tropes of Animal Farm. To be blunt, it darkly mirrored the goings on within the band as Roger Waters weaponised his vitriol and seething anger in song as his relationship with the rest of the band fractured. Yet, there remains, for posterity, some sublime and haunting music that still divides their febrile fan base.

Plus ca change, quibbles continue between Waters and Gilmour - apparently over liner notes - which has held up the release of this 2018 remix until now. The clarity of this ‘new’ mix shines a deep and probing light into the musical crevices hidden within the original release and, in doing so, uncovers a bleaker, harrowing portrait of the musical dynamics at play that this heavyweight 180g vinyl release dramatically benefits from. Aided by being recorded at the group’s newly built Britannia Row Studios, there’s a sparse DIY no-frills feel to the rendering of the tracks that might not have been achieved at the more meticulously equipped Abbey Road, where they recorded their previous world chart-dominating albums. Due to tax reasons, parts of the follow-up album The Wall were recorded here before the studio was put on ice. Animals is the bête noir album lurking in a dark corner of Pink Floyd’s discography positively enhanced by the hidden perspectives revealed in this remix. This forensic remix is for Pink Floyd fans who want it darker.