Most bands are happy with being homogenous. Making average songs in the average structure of verse chorus verse. But the Flaming Lips are not one of those bands. For years, they have always tried to push the boundaries of what’s normal. Never happy with sounding like everyone else. Sometimes the result is amazing (Yoshimi)…other times you get Zaireeka.
Now don’t get me wrong…Zaireeka is a pretty amazing album. But in 12 years…I’ve only listened to it twice. Why? Because it’s extremely difficult to listen to. Zaireeka is actually four CDs…which are all to be played at the exact same time on four different CD players. The theory is that every time you listen…you will never get the same listening experience since you will never be able to push “play” on all four players at the same time. The objective was to create an album where every time you listened…the experience was different. The problem is (especially today) nobody owns four CD players. Before it was difficult to get four friends to bring together their CD players…now it’s just plain impossible.
Here are the four channels for the third song from Zaireeka. I’ve compressed the file as well…to show that even though the listening experience was a bit bizarre…the music itself was still pretty good.
Zaireeks Track 3 – Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair
1. Channel 1
2. Channel 2
3. Channel 3
4. Channel 4
Buy The Flaming Lips new album…Embryonic (with bonus tracks)…now!