ANIMALS

By far distance Pink Floyds best, guirat oriented and progressive album. Wish You Were Here, The Wall, Meddle and Dark Side Of The Moon are stellar, but Animals not not from this world. I must have given this album more spins than I can remember.

Animals actually was the first CD I brought and not owned as a copy on a tape. Over the years I have collected several versions because I didn't dare to play it, the only one got damaged cos of playing it too much or because of the sound improvement. Too bad they never released it on SACD, DVD Audio or on golddisc as they did with several of the other albums. But who knows one day they will release it on SACD.....Then I have to buy my 5th version....not included all thelive versions I have on my harddrive of Animals.

Animals is absolutely Gilmour's moment to shine and shiing is what he does. I think never before, and never after this album he achieved what he did here.........absolutely phenomenal guitarwork....and if you all think the studio version Gilmour was at its peak....not quite, cos the live versions are even better, the extended solo's, the rough edges that are not pollished off.....(not to mention the extended WYWHalbum that they used to play on the same tour, Gilmour was literly on fire in 1977, I cannot make any other judgement as this one.....However it also was that same tour that escalated in Montreal, made Roger splat a fan in the face...and evetually come up with the idea to create an idea that I still surprised about that Fripp didn't do much earlier and that is to build a wall between them and the audience. Listen to the concert of that specific evening.........absolutely stunning....a band that played thier hearts out.

Animals itself.....plays in a way....adressing mankind as had been told many times before.....and another theme that greatly influenced the way I look at the world......Cos lets face it...Most are by far not Machiavellian enough, too weak and to easy to influence to be neither a Dog or a Pig......so that the biggest part of this planet indeed is doomed to be sheep, and sheep alone. Roger however takes every effort to make sure that any serious Floyd fan is repulsing every three of them....So perhaps the world should be re-arranged into Dogs,Pigs, Sheep and dedicated PF fans, that under the wings of Roger becaume way to soceity critical to be forced into any of these roles. To great extend one can defend that Roger already started this project with Dark Side, continued it with WYWH (although with lesser extend), went on with Animals, The Wall and ultimatly with Amused To Death.......As a dedicated fan I know everyone of this albums by heart (ofcourse).

The music......Dogs on top with its many intstrumental passaged (where some members began to develop the habbit of playing cards or have some tea on the stage) that greatly contribute to the depressiveness and dark views that go along with this album. Also.....really cool are the sound effects that lead in every song.....This was so cool in 2006 when Roger played Sheep....while being supported by a full quadrophonic system and the sound of pigs came from everywhere.......Also very nice of Roger was to add Dogs to the setlist of the In The Flesh Tour.....so that many of us had the chance to see this song played live after all...This music eventually is consisting of great guitarworkand great keyboards....cos rich certainly is the second star on this album, his keys are haunting........

Ok, enough said......this album simply belongs in any Prog collection.........but if you do better make sure you have the remastered version.