News

The long-awaited remix of Pink Floyd’s 1977 “Animals” album is coming to LP, CD, Blu-Ray and SACD this fall.

Dubbed the “Animals 2018 Remix,” this new version has been in the works for four years; and delayed, in part, by disagreements among the band members, especially Roger Waters and David Gilmour. (See “Roger Waters posts contentious liner notes; announces memoirs” [June 1, 2021])

The deluxe four-disc version, dropping Oct. 7, will consist of one (1) LP on 180-gram black heavyweight vinyl, one (1) CD, one (1) DVD,  one (1) Blu-ray and a 32-page booklet all housed in a hardcover book-style cover.

The Blu-ray, SACD and DVD discs will contain a 5.1 Surround Sound remix by James Guthrie and Joel Plante, the same pair who remixed the new stereo version. Each individual disc will be available as a stand-alone release Sept. 16.

The booklet will feature rarely-seen behind the scenes photographs of the album sleeve shoot, along with live images and memorabilia.

The album artwork has been reimagined for this new release as well. The original, conceived by Waters and designed by Storm Thorgerson, featured a huge inflatable pig floating among the chimneys of the Battersea Power Station. It’s become one of the most recognizable images of all the band’s iconography.

Thorgerson’s one-time partner in Hipgnosis, Aubrey “Po” Powell, took new photographs of Battersea as it appeared during recent renovations. (Listen to our 2015 interview with Powell, who recounts the original “Animals” cover shoot.)

“With the original 1977 album cover being such an iconic piece of stand-alone art, I had the chance to update it, which was a rather daunting task, but Hipgnosis took the opportunity to re-photograph the image to reflect a changing world,” Powell says, “and by using modern digital coloring techniques I kept Pink Floyd’s rather bleak message of moral decay using the Orwellian themes of animals, the pig ‘Algie,’ faithful to the message of the album.”

It’s unclear whether Powell’s team actually floated a dirigible porcine above the plant for this reshoot or opted for digital techniques.

Animals was the tenth studio album by Floyd, originally released in January 1977. It was recorded at the band’s Britannia Row Studios in London during 1976 and early-’77, and was produced by the band. The original release peaked at #2 in the U.K. and #3 in the U.S.

Warner Music will release the album in Europe, while Sony Music will handle the international release.

Pre-order Animals here

Pink Floyd will release a 7-inch vinyl edition and CD single of “Hey Hey Rise Up” on July 15 in Europe.

Initially released digitally in April in support of the people of Ukraine, the track reached #1 in 27 countries.

Both formats will also feature a newly-reworked, previously-unreleased version of “A Great Day for Freedom” taken from the band’s 1994 album, “The Division Bell.”

The lead track sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards; and features vocals by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox.

When the track was first recorded at the end of March, Khlyvnyuk, who left his band’s U.S. tour to return home and fight for his country, was in a hospital bed in Kyiv recovering from a shrapnel injury. Proceeds for the physical release and the ongoing digital proceeds will go to Ukraine humanitarian relief.

Japan will see the release Aug. 3; and the U.S., Canada, Australia and Mexico will see it Oct. 21.

“Hey, Hey, Rise Up!,” the new single by Pink Floyd, is scheduled to be made available for digital purchase and on streaming platforms at 9 p.m. EDT tonight. But the band has already posted the video of track.

Read more about the new song: “Pink Floyd to release single ‘Hey, Hey, Rise Up!'”

Tomorrow Pink Floyd will release its first new track recorded together as a band since 1994’s “The Division Bell.” The group will release the single “Hey, Hey, Rise Up!” at midnight, with proceeds going to Ukrainian humanitarian relief.

David Gilmour and Nick Mason, apparently constituting the legal definition of Pink Floyd, are joined on the track by Guy Pratt on bass, and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards. Vocals are by Andriy Khlyvnyuk, frontman of Ukrainian rock band BoomBox.

Rick Wright’s daughter, Gala, attended the recording session.

Gilmour tells The Guardian, “I rang Nick up and said: ‘Listen, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be really happy if you played on it and I’d also be really happy if you’d agree to us putting it out as Pink Floyd.’ And he was absolutely on for that.”

The project began when Gilmour saw Khlyvnyuk singing the 1914 protest song “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow” on Instagram, and decided to build a song around it.

“Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defense. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.

From left: Nitin Sawhney, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Guy Pratt

Gilmour tells The Guardian, “I thought: That is pretty magical and maybe I can do something with this. I’ve got a big platform that [Pink Floyd] have worked on for all these years. It’s a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation. The frustration of seeing that and thinking ‘what the fuck can I do?’ is sort of unbearable.”

Gilmour’ explains his association with Khlyvnyuk goes back to 2015: “I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned. Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill. They were supposed to do their own set, but their singer Andriy had visa problems, so the rest of the band backed me for my set. We played ‘Wish You Were Here’ for Andriy that night.”

The video for the song was shot by director Mat Whitecross on the same day the track was recorded, March 30. “We recorded the track and video in our barn where we did all our Von Trapped Family live streams during lockdown. It’s the same room that we did the ‘Barn Jams’ with Rick Wright back in 2007,” Gilmour explains. “Janina Pedan made the set in a day and we had Andriy singing on the screen while we played, so the four of us had a vocalist, albeit not one who was physically present with us.”

Artwork for the track features a painting of a sunflower, the national flower of Ukraine, by Cuban artist Yosan Leon. It’s a reference to the woman seen around the world giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers and telling them to carry them in their pockets so when they die, sunflowers will grow.

Read the full Guardian article

Stream the song

Streaming services such as Spotify and Amazon have started offering a dozen Pink Floyd concert recordings from 1971.

The mysterious offerings might be an attempt by the band and its label to claim copyright of the works, as they’re all turning 50 years old this year. The band seems to have made a similar move when it issued six previously-unreleased songs as the EP “1965 — Their First Recordings” in 2015.

“The copyright law in Europe was recently extended from 50 to 70 years for everything recorded in 1963 and beyond,” a Sony representative told Rolling Stone in 2013. “With everything before that, there’s a new ‘Use It or Lose It’ provision. It basically said, ‘If you haven’t used the recordings in the first 50 years, you aren’t going to get any more.’”

A source close to the band tells “Floydian Slip” the recordings are “bootlegs” and might not remain permanently available.

Audio quality of the recordings is sketchy.

The titles include:

• They Came in Peace, Live, Leeds University 1970 Washington University 1971
• Live at Grosser Saal, Musikhalle, Hamburg, West Germany 25 Feb 1971
• Mauerspechte Berlin Sportpalast, Live 5 June 1971
• Live, Lyon 12 June 1971, Tokyo 16 March 1972
• Live in Rome Palaeur 20 June 1971
• Amsterdamse Bos Free Concert 26 June 1971 (Live)
• Live in Montreux 18 & 19 Sept 1971
• KB Hallen, Copenhagen, Live 23 Sept 1971
• KB Hallen, Copenhagen, Vol II, Live 23 Sept 1971
• Over Bradford Pigs on the Groove Bradford University, Live 10 Oct 1971
• Embryo, San Diego, Live 17 Oct 1971
• The Screaming Abdabs Quebec City, Live 10 Nov 1971

Warner Music/Sony Music will reissue Pink Floyd’s 1987 album “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” on Oct. 29.

The updated album is remixed from the original ’87 master tapes by Andy Jackson with David Gilmour, assisted by Damon Iddins, and will be the same as the one found in 2019 “The Later Years: 1987–2019” boxset.

But the standalone version of the album coming next month includes 360 Reality Audio, “a new immersive music experience that closely mimics the omni-directional soundscape of live musical performance for the listener using Sony’s object-based 360 Spatial Sound technologies.”

This ’19 remix restores some original takes by keyboardist Rick Wright, and includes newly-recorded drum tracks by Nick Mason.

“Some years after we had recorded the album, we came to the conclusion that we should update it to make it more timeless, featuring more of the traditional instruments that we liked and that we were more used to playing,” says Gilmour.

“We also looked for and found some previously unused keyboard parts of Rick’s which helped us to come up with a new vibe, a new feeling for the album,” he adds.

Mason offers, “Initially it seemed a bit odd to start re-assembling a record after 35 odd years, but the public’s appetite for alternate views of the same work has undoubtedly increased immeasurably over time.

“I enjoyed re-recording drum tracks with unlimited studio time. ‘Momentary Lapse’ had been recorded under considerable stress and time constraints, and indeed some of the final mixing was done at the same time as rehearsals for the forthcoming tour,” Mason says.

The album will be available as a single CD; a CD +DVD set; a CD + Blu-Ray set; and a 180 gm double-LP set, cut at half-speed at 45 rpm for enhanced sound quality.

A special  version of the video “Learning To Fly” will be available simultaneously with Sony 360RA immersive audio: If you watch the video on YouTube with headphones you experience simulated 360RA sound.

“A Momentary Lapse Of Reason” 360 Reality Audio, Dolby Audio and UHD versions will be available via multiple digital service providers on Oct. 19. Physical formats will drop on Oct. 29.

Pre-order now.