Animals (album)
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Publication |
January 23, 1977 |
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Format (s) |
CD, LP |
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Title (number) |
5 |
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running time |
41 min 51 sec |
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Studio (s) |
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Animals is the tenth regular album by the English band Pink Floyd . It was recorded at Britannia Row Studios in London and released on January 23, 1977.
content
Roger Waters, bassist and main songwriter of Pink Floyd, divides people into three classes on this socially critical album by making an animal analogy for each (compare George Orwell's Animal Farm ):
The dogs (dogs) are the capitalist- oriented people who are only interested in money, do not care about their fellow human beings and even walk over corpses for profit .
For Waters, the pigs are the “moral apostles” who preach to people every day how to behave properly. It is precisely these people who make the most mistakes and behave particularly immorally.
Finally, the sheep belong to the masses who allow themselves to be exploited by the dogs, who do not question things but allow themselves to be guided by others. The sheep don't have an opinion of their own and just want to be left alone.
The three tracks are embedded in the short intro and extro Pigs on the Wing .
Compared to Animal Farm , the roles at Animals are different; In the Orwell novel, the pigs are the ruling and oppressive class and the dogs are their devoted servants and guardians. The sheep, on the other hand, correspond to those in the original.
Musical design
On this album Pink Floyd sound comparatively rocky and hard. The background choirs and drawn out synthesizer sounds in the background on previous albums are almost completely omitted, the music sounds clear and dynamic. Most of the pieces are dominated by the guitarist David Gilmours, who was also responsible for the composition of Dogs . The rest of the music and all lyrics are mainly from Roger Waters.
The intro and outro pigs on the wing are a bit out of line . Only an acoustic guitar and Waters' vocals can be heard here.
instrumentation
Although synthesizers have a lower status than on Wish You Were Here , they are still present in music. On Dogs, for example, the two-part guitar theme is accompanied in the slower part by the string sounds of the ARP Solina String Ensemble , which also plays a leading role in the keyboard-heavy middle section. The keyboards here take over the unusually jazzy chord progression that also introduces the song. Richard Wright plays a characteristic solo on the Mini Moog over it . The Mini Moog can also be heard in the typical trumpet sound (see Shine On You Crazy Diamond on Wish You Were Here ) in the middle section of Sheep . In terms of recording technology, it has been doubled here to create a two-part sound. The peculiarly vocal guitar sound on Pigs (Three Different Ones) was achieved with a talk box , whereby the guitar sound was fed through a hose to David Gilmour's mouth in order to be modulated with lips, tongue and oral cavity - similar to the jew's harp . A vocoder is used in the middle parts of both dogs and sheep . This is an electronic filter with which the sound properties of the human voice can be analyzed and a different sound can be impressed on it.
Cover
The album cover features a photo of the Battersea Power Station coal-fired power station with a flying pig between the chimneys. To get this picture, the band let a 9 × 4.5 meter large stuffed pig filled with helium rise above the power station. The pig was held by thin cables that should no longer be seen in the later photo. In the event that the pig broke loose, a sniper was hired to shoot the pig if necessary. The band specifically called for this elaborate process, as they did not want to allow cheaper, but poor quality photo montages for the cover. On the first day of the photo shoot, the pig floated perfectly between the chimneys, but the sky was blue and without clouds. Since the album cover should look gloomy, another shoot was scheduled for the next day - in the hope that dark clouds would gather. Since the sniper was too expensive, it was waived on the second day. Ironically, on the second day, the pig broke loose and climbed to an altitude of 18,000 feet. Due to the size of the pig and the uncontrolled flight, the air traffic for London Heathrow had to be rerouted in order not to provoke an accident. The pig later crashed in a sheep pasture and was repaired for a third shoot. In the end, the cover was made as a photo montage that combines the images from the first day with the clouds from the subsequent shoots.
History of the title
The origin of the titles Dogs and Sheep dates back to 1974. Dogs emerged from the title (You) Gotta Be Crazy , and Sheep from the title Raving and Drooling . Both original titles were played live by the group as early as 1974 together with the original version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond . The group had decided against recording the two tracks for the album Wish You Were Here . It was not until 1976 that Roger Waters came up with the concept of categorizing people into animal species, reactivated the titles and changed the texts. The actual idea of this categorization, however, came from the book Animal Farm by George Orwell , in which people, and in particular the various character groups of people, are represented as animals.
The two-part title Pigs on the Wing was originally a uniform in 1976, in which both parts were connected by a solo. After David Gilmour refused to play the solo, Snowy White, new to the band as a tour guitarist, played the solo. On the finished album, however, the piece was split and the solo removed. The original version was initially only released as an 8-track tape and later on the Snowy White album Goldtop .
The band played all tracks on the album on the associated tour, but not after that. When Pink Floyd went on a world tour again around 1988 and 1994 without Roger Waters, the band did not play any songs by Animals . Although the album does not contain a song that has become particularly popular, it is now an underrated masterpiece, especially among music critics.
reception
In June 2015, the renowned trade journal Rolling Stone voted the album at number 13 of the 50 best progressive rock albums of all time .
Track list
- Pigs on the Wing (Part 1) (Waters) - 1:25 min
- Dogs (Waters / Gilmour) - 17:06 min
- Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Waters) - 11:31 min
- Sheep (Waters) - 10:25 min
- Pigs on the Wing (Part 2) (Waters) - 1:28 min
occupation
- Vocals, bass (2), acoustic guitar (1.5), rhythm guitar (3.4) - Roger Waters
- Vocals, guitar, bass (3.4) - David Gilmour
- Keyboards, harmony vocals (2) - Richard Wright
- Drums, percussion - Nick Mason
As a guest musician: Guitar - Snowy White on the piece Pigs on the Wing .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Richard Gehr: 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time - Pink Floyd, 'Animals' (1977). In: Rolling Stone . Wenner Media, June 17, 2015, accessed on September 23, 2015 .