- #Flaming lips soft bulletin about atomic war archive
- #Flaming lips soft bulletin about atomic war series
Having said that he's the maverick leader, the songwriter, the creative genius, so notwithstanding these shortcomings, The Flaming Lips would not exist without him.Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips answers your questions in An Audience With… in this month’s new issue of Uncut, out now. No surprise then that some of the instrumentals are the most pleasing tracks with The Observer for example worthy of Kid A era Radiohead. I wonder whether he has ever considered just singing in a lower register like Lou Reed, Nick Cave, or the Geddy Lee of latter years? A difficult song like A Spoonful Weighs A Ton is an example - such a vocal performance on X-factor would ensue an early red buzzer. sometimes, but his singing sounds so much on the edge of breaking down most the time especially on the high notes it makes for an uneasy listen. Granted the instrumentation is excellent, the lyrics are good, and the melodies lovely (especially on regular set opener Race For The Prize, Waitin' For a Superman, What Is The Light? and Suddenly Everything Has Changed), but can Coyne carry them.? It's a wonder they've survived so long and Wayne Coyne is such a confident front man. It's hard to hear past it actually and I do wonder what sort of band they may have been with a better singer. that voice: High, weak and reedy but without the emotion of Neil Young. It's an ambitious project and does sound a bit like everyone is playing different tunes sometimes and. There are some epic string drenched songs with multiple parts / some pleasant acoustic guitar fronted sing-a-longs / interesting electronic effects / thumping drums perhaps veering off into out of context funky drummer territory in places / and some fluttery synths which match Coyne's fluttery voice. It sounds like a recipe for chaos and understandably concert flyers would warn: "we are sceptical about the entertainment value," but herein was the genesis of the Z aireeka idea.Īt roughly the same time as Zaireeka the band recorded the more conventional The Soft Bulletin album which (as the only Flaming Lips album I own) does gain a place in the magazine this week.Īlthough it was already their 9th album it represented a leap forward in quality to what had come before and for many fans was their masterpiece. Concert goers or "volunteers" would convene at a space and "lend" the band their car or boom-box cassette decks and would orchestrate the simultaneous mass playing of pre-recorded tapes to provide an immersive surround sound experience.
#Flaming lips soft bulletin about atomic war series
The band convened a series of interactive concerts or events dubbed parking-lot and boom-box experiments. We will need you and your car, and your tape deck, and your co-operation for about 2 hours.īut in 1996 the ever creative Coyne decided to try something different. Coyne kept his regular job in a restaurant for many years after the The Flaming Lips' formation. The Flaming Lips Man Festival, Wales, 2010įair enough, they started out like many high school bands without any pretensions and band members picked from friends and family dependent on whether they possessed any equipment (let alone if they could play it at all). This isn't news to me as they've always struck me as a high profile band without much substance, relying hugely on their original stage performances which involve amazing props, animal costumes, confetti guns, lazers, blow up balls and balloons (the arena carnage the morning after a headlining gig at Green Man Festival back in 2010 was something to see). In fact the reviewer had not actually heard the 4 parts in unison admitting he'd "never know because I don't have the proper amount of stereo equipment" concluding that the product was "completely useless".
#Flaming lips soft bulletin about atomic war archive
The zero Pitchfork review (since deleted although there is an archive link below) was based on the impracticality of the concept rather than the music. It sounds similar to some avant garde experiments going on in the minimalist classical world by composers like Cage, Reich and Riley. As it was rare for different players to run at exactly the same speed or even for the operators to start the process at exactly the right moment interesting phasing and echo effects would ensue, and no two "performances" would be exactly the same. Infamously given a rating of 0.0 by Pitchfork (the follow up Soft Bulletin scored 10.0 from the same reviewer!) the album comes on 4 CDs each containing a quarter of the whole! Wtf? The concept was that four friends would have listening parties where they would each bring their CD player and play one of their CDs in synchronicity with the other 3 thus hearing the whole as it was intended. So what about Zaireeka? Well I haven't heard it and as you will read shortly I'm not likely to either.