The Flaming Lips

If, in 1999, The Soft Bulletin found the Flaming Lips decisively moving away from their previous identity as acid-damaged rockers and segueing into a more genteel sort of psychedelia, 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was where the band fully set their controls for the heart of the sun.

The tenth studio album by the American band. Features the singles 'Do You Realize??', 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1', 'Fight Test' and 'Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell'. This expansive 20th anniversary deluxe edition features 100 tracks on the 6 CD box set of which over 50 are previously unreleased. The 6 CD box also includes the two EPs released during the original album cycle and two live concerts from Boston in 2002 and London in 2003.

Deliciously strange and eccentric, the Flaming Lips are one of these bands from the 80s alternative rock scene that have survived remarkably well.

Warner Bros. Music will issue a Flaming Lips greatest hits in June. Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 will include singles, B-sides, outtakes and previously unreleased tracks, with audio remastered from the original tape source by Dave Fridmann.

Originally released in 1997 as a 4-CD box set, the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka is the ultimate communal listening experience.

Zaireeka is the 1997 album by Oklahoma alternative combo The Flaming Lips. Zaireeka is a 4CD set but only has eight songs as a whole. The original process of this was you would need four CD players to play each song as they were meant to be heard. Each CD features a portion of the song from the multi-track but each track sounds different from one another. By playing them at the same time, it creates a unique sonic adventure, perhaps in surround sound. You can play all four at once or in any sequence, in any and all positions/locations. This unique project was released on 28 October, 1997.

Christmas on Mars might be the Flaming Lips' bona fide sci-fi epic, but Embryonic is the musical equivalent of the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey: transformative chaos that results in a new start. From The Soft Bulletin onward, the Lips seemed focused on tidying the loose ends of their earlier work, almost to the point of constraining themselves. Their wilder side is unleashed on Embryonic's 18 tracks, and the band sounds more off-the-cuff than it has in years – some tracks are barely longer than snippets, others are rangy epics, and it all holds together so organically that listeners might wonder just how much these songs were edited. Musically, Embryonic is the least polite the Flaming Lips have been in nearly two decades, mixing in-the-red drums, blobby, dubby bass, squelchy wah-wah guitars, and sparkling keyboards into a swirl of sounds that are strangely liquid and abrasive at the same time.

The album is comprised of thirteen new cinematic tracks, produced by longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann and The Lips. Among them, “God and the Policeman” featuring backing vocals from country superstar Kasey Musgraves. American Head takes on a welcome temporal shift that occupies a similar space to that of The Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and just may be their most beautiful and consistent work to date.

The Flaming Lips have a flair for making other artists’ music their own. Their versions of T. Rex’s “Ballrooms of Mars,” Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” and Madonna’s “Borderline,” a song they recorded with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, who also appear on the literally titled The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon, all show what they took from those artists and what they gave back.

The Soft Bulletin is one of the Flaming Lips most popular and best-selling albums.