Oklahoma oddballs the
Flaming Lips have a lot to give their fans this year. Perhaps true to the Lips history of freaks-for-all ... just don't expect any of it to come in the traditional CD-release format.
In recent days several announcements have been made:
1. "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots." The musical. "It'll be a big chunk of Flaming Lips music, probably about 30 songs," frontman Wayne Coyne told
NME magazine in a recent interview.
It will be directed by
Des McAnuff (The Who's on-Broadway version of "Tommy") on the project, confirms Spin online.
"It's a big deal," he told NME magazine. "It's hokey and wonderful and poignant and powerful. It's really become a perfect combination of my fantastical robot-world vision and (McAnuff's) little, internal, humanistic version of what that music is. I really believe it could work - and luckily I don't have to do much!" Coyne said.
2. New tunes via gummi skull. You read that right. Edible aural pleasure. The skull comes with an embedded USB drive.
3. Music via guitar effects pedal.
4. Unique record pressings, including the recent, limited-edition 12-inch colored vinyl EP with
Neon Indian. They were hand-delivered to indie record sellers all over the globe. ... Look for collaborations with
Deerhoof and
Ariel Pink by year's end.
5. Other methods of music delivery: Coyne also told
Consequence of Sound online that he'd like to release music via “a salt box,” “a little spinning stroboscope thing” and old-school flexi-discs stuck to cereal box backs and as an insert in MAD magazine (flexi-disc, vinyl, original floppy disc, zip disk).
And, of course, expect music digitally.
