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Pink Floyd’s long-awaited, much-delayed reissue treatment of Animals comes to fruition on January 22 when the album gets released across a variety of formats through Sony Music, including a Deluxe Box set, various vinyl formats, CD and digital.
The band have shared a 1977 promotional radio edit of Sheep, which has never been commercially available.
The album has something of a convoluted release history, when a planned box set in line with similar releases that have appeared for The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall and The Division Bell, was scrapped over an issue with some of the liner notes. In the end the album was released as Animals 2018 Remix on vinyl, CD, Blu-ray and digital.
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The Deluxe Box Set contains 3 LPs: the original 1977 album, the 2018 Remix (remixed by James Guthrie), and a disc of five rarities that includes an unheard Roger Waters track titled Young Nicholas Jon and previously unreleased early versions of Sheep and Dogs. It also has 5 CDs mirroring the LPs, plus a 2-disc set of the May 9, 1977 Oakland show recorded live at the Oakland Coliseum Arena by a then 19 year old bootlegger, Reinhard Hohlwein, and the 1-disc Blu-ray, which includes all of the above audio with the 2018 Remix being available in 5.1 and Dolby Atmos
It also features a 64-page hardback book comprising new sleeve notes from New York Times best-selling author and life-long Floyd fan Jonathan Lethem, an interview with Reinhard Hohlwein, and an excerpt from Hipgnosis’ Audrey “Po” Powell’s memoir about the making of Animals’ iconic album art.
The 1LP release contains the original 1977 album in orange and sandstone colour variants. The 2LP and 2CD sets contain the original 1977 album plus rarities, as does the digital release, which also features the Oakland show, while the Blu-ray features both mixes, rarities and the live material.
“The mood in music was changing in ’77,” David Gilmour said at the time of the album’s release. “Punk music was hitting everything and I suspect that had a little bit of an influence on the way we were working on the Animals album. I mean it’s quite an aggressive, stripped-back album. It was moving away from the sort of soundscapes that we had on Wish You Were Here. This album is more in your face and more rough and ready. And definitely the lyrics are a lot more aggressive from Roger. We had a lot of fun making it.”
“There were all sorts of differences beginning to surface within the band but in some ways Animals was a remarkably cohesive enterprise,” Nick Mason adds. “The big thing was the development of Britannia Row. Britannia Row was this building we’d bought some few years before in which we’d actually started building our own recording studio. We tried to design the studio in such a way that any of us could operate it and all the trunking was labelled clearly so anyone could plug in a set of headphones without someone else having to do it for us.”
Animals 50 Tracklisting & Formats:
DIGITAL
“Disc 1” – Animals (Original album)
Pigs on the Wing 1
Dogs
Pigs (Three Different Ones)
Sheep
Pigs on the Wing 2
“Disc 2” – Animals (2018 Remix)
Pigs on the Wing 1 – 2018 Remix
Dogs – 2018 Remix
Pigs (Three Different Ones) – 2018 Remix
Sheep – 2018 Remix
Pigs on the Wing 2 – 2018 Remix
“Disc 3” – Rarities
Dogs – Early Version, Rough Mix*
Sheep – Original Radio Edit*
Sheep – Early Version, Rough Mix*
Studio Jam*
Young Nicholas Jon*
“Disc 4” – Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977
Sheep (Live)*
Pigs on the Wing 1 (Live)*
Dogs (Live)*
Pigs on the Wing 2 (Live)*
Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Live)*
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5) (Live)*
Welcome to the Machine (Live)*
Have a Cigar (Live)*
Wish You Were Here (Live)*
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9) (Live)*
Money (Live)*
Us And Them (Live)*
Careful With That Axe, Eugene (Live)*
2 LP
LP1: Animals (Original album)
LP2: Rarities
2 CD
CD1: Animals (Original album)
CD2: Rarities
Blu-Ray
Animals – Original Stereo Mix (1977)
Animals – Remix: Stereo + 5.1 + Atmos (2018)
Rarities (Stereo Mix)
Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977
Deluxe Box Set Includes:
5CD
CD1: Animals (Original album)
CD2: Animals (2018 Remix)
CD3: Rarities
CD4: Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977 Disc 1
CD5: Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977 Disc 2
3LP
LP1: Animals (Original album)
LP2: Animals (2018 Remix)
LP3: Rarities
Blu-Ray
Animals – Original Stereo Mix (1977)
Animals – Remix: Stereo + 5.1 + Atmos (2018)
Rarities (Stereo Mix)
Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977
* never before officially released
