Customer Reviews

Animalisms

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There appears to be lots of confusion regarding the contents of this cd, so let's unravel the mess once and for all: The Animals' first Decca LP, released in the U.K. in 1966, was titled "Animalisms" (note the letter "s" at the end). Several months later a modified version of the LP called "Animalization" was released in the U.S., which dropped several tracks and added Don't Bring Me Down, See See Rider and Inside Looking Out. To add to the confusion, an LP of completely different material entitled "Animalism" (no "s" on the end) was also released in America in 1966 (but not the U.K.). This reissue on the excellent German label Repertoire contains all of the songs found on Animalisms and Animalization plus a handful of bonus tracks but none of the material from Animalism (look for the vinyl if you can find it). Contrary to the assertion of one reviewer, the sound quality on this release is generally excellent given the quality of the original recordings. I hope this information was useful. Buy it and enjoy!

I pre-ordered this CD under the title "Animalism" which was billed as a remastered version of the 1966 original. I was disapointed when I received the "Animalisms" version. I owned the original "Animalism" back when it was first released and loved it. It has long since been worn out and lost from my collection. This compilation has left out "Smoke Stack Lightning", "Hey Gyp", "Hit The Road Jack", and maybe others I can't recall. Although this disc does have some great Animals material, I find the quality of the remastering poor at best. It sounds like a basement recording, too much echo and no definition of Chas Chandler's base. Bonus tracks seem to be tossed in as compensation for lack of audio quality. This disc is OK if you have no other alternatives. I'm still hoping for a release of the REAL Animalism set.

I (unfortunately) gave away my original copy of the Animals album "Animalization" years ago and missed it ever since. I was overjoyed to locate a copy of this CD, which contains all the material found on Animalization and more. Unfortunately, these songs bear little resemblance to the songs on the album. This remix has all the Animalization material smothered in some heavy, syrupy reverb that is quite annoying. Play your favorite album in a cave and listen to it from 500 feet away- you'll get an idea of how these songs sound. It's not the same.

Having worn out my vinyl copy of Animalisms, the Animals third album, the first beeing "The Animals" and the second "Animals Tracks, I bought the cd on the Repertoire label and it easily qualifies as the worst remastering job I've heard so far.
The original punchy sound with excellent bass and good high
definition is degraded to a muddy sound that sound like beeing re-recorded in a bathman PLUS that someone put some strange extra ECHO on the tracks. A complete failure ! Repertoire should fire the engineer and give it another try- thank God I have the original on tape - in stereo !

This is a compilation of the entire US "Animalization" LP and most of the follow-up "Animalism" LP from 1966 with a few additional tracks from the same sessions. This material is not as easy to find on CD as their 1964-65 material, which is unfortunate, since it comprises some of the best and hardest blues-oriented rock of the decade. The sound is great and there is an accompanying booklet with historical information and track-by-track commentary by the group.

This CD is greatly improved over the Decca Years CD which I reviewed before. It does not suffer as much from high end distortion as the Decca years. The echo on some of the tracks is still there, but is alot more tolerable than the over-loaded Decca Years. Get this. The mono single mixes are well worth it.

I used to listen to the album Animalization in high school until the needle wore through to the other side. It was my favorite Animals album. The only song I like better was the single House of the Rising Sun which for most of one year, I'd play once before heading off to school. I'm sure it drove my Mom crazy to hear that at 6:30 in the morning.

Well, over the years one of my two boxes of old 33-1/3 albums dissappeared. Too many moves and/or divorces. Since Animalization doesn't appear to be available on CD, I purchased the UK-version, Animalisms. I was not disappointed. The bonus tracks are okay. The one song that's truly filler is "Clapping." It literally is ..... just clapping. That song didn't make to to my iPod.

5 stars for content....no stars for audio quality. Does anybody remember all that extra reverb on the original records? Can someone from "whoever owns the former MGM Animals catalog" entourage please explain why the original MGM E series masters are not being released onto CD? I have (9) so-called "re-masters" from various labels and I have come to the conclusion that I will never be able to obtain clean monophonic CD releases of the pre-"Winds of Change" MGM material. There are good "sound quality" tracks here and there, but you have to buy a lot of repeat material. Acquiring truly mint copies of the original vinyl is expensive (MGM didn't seem to set very high standards for pressing vinyl either).

This material is exceptional and deserves far better treatment than basement ProTools hacks cranking this stuff out of their basement.

I hadn't listened to the album "Animalization" since I left my vinyl record collection behind in New York when I moved west in the early 1980s. I looked for it on CD a few times but couldn't find it. Then I read a review of this album which said it contains all of the songs from Animalization so I ordered it. The quality of the reproductions is as good as the originals. Obviously it's not a modern album so the sound isn't perfect. But for my tastes it's better than most of the music being produced today. I love this album! After I received the CD I ripped all of the songs to 192 kbps WMA format then modified the song information for each file in order to recreate the original Animalization. The extra songs aren't important to me but it was worth it just to be able to listen to Animalization from beginning to end in its original form. This is my favorite album of its era. It's the only one I will listen to from beginning to end as it is. I still listen to Beatles, Santana, CCR, Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, and John Mayall, but none of them ever produced an album I like as much as this one. Eric Burdon did his best singing on this album and the keyboards are incredible.

This review concerns the sound quality. I read the reviews before deciding to buy this version of Animalisms 2009 through Amazon UK. Having bought Animalism 2006 [Original recording remastered][Original recording reissued]a few weeks ago I can say for certain the difference is huge, as both albums have a track called "'outcast", I used as my benchmark.I found my self being totally disappointed after the excellent remastering of Animalism. How any label can put out such a low quality mastering in this day and age is beyond me. Being Repertoire makes it more so!