THE FLAMING LIPS Vinilo y CD

Review: The Flaming Lips are among the greatest musical enigmas of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. If you've not seen the exceptional and insightful documentary, The Fearless Freaks, then we highly recommend doing so. The film charts the outfit from their early days as what might be described a white noise and industrial troupe, through to their crossover into mainstream success via one of the most unique indie-pop sounds we have ever encountered. Suffice to say, then, watching them live is an inimitable experience, an evening of surreal inflatables plucked straight from psychedelic somewhere and frantic strobe-lit guitar cacophonies. While this recording of their whole-of-record rendition of landmark LP Yoshimi doesn't really touch upon anything that came before said album, it does capture what makes their performances so incredible.

Review: As is the modern way with all major album birthday milestones, this one now gets a special 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition which means it comes on limited edition pink vinyl. It is a record that collects together four fab fan favourites. The major one is the 24-minute epic 'Psychedelic Hypnotist Daydream (demo)' which takes up all of the a-side and is a truly immerse and heady sonic trip. It is one of the group's most epic ever tunes and also included are 'Duck Dodgers Theme (Duck Dodgers Demo: With Wayne Scratch Vocal),' 'I Know I've Got To Make That Dream The Real Thing (Demo),' and last but not least the lovely melancholy of 'Do You Realize?? (Instrumental).'

Review: The Flaming Lips are up there with the greatest enigmas in modern music. Anyone who has seen the excellent documentary, The Fearless Freaks, will understand that long before we had Yoshimi going up against pink robots with candy-coloured inflatables, the Oklahoma-born outfit were noise with a capital N, something their live shows nod to in cacophonous, strobe-lit meltdowns juxtaposing the niceties.

Fight Test is plucked from the sweeter end of the oeuvre, dropping as an EP around 12 months after the landmark Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album landed, with the third single from that record leading the seven tracks here. A startlingly bold collection, including the epic overture 'Do You Realise' and the comedic, or at least slightly tongue-in-cheek faux country of 'Thank You Jack White (For The Fiber-optic Jesus You Gave Me)', its thoroughly smile inducing and only adds to the mystery surrounding the band.

Review: Following the release of The Soft Companion in 1999, the Flaming Lips' management team hastily put together a promo CD featuring out-takes, radio edits and alternate versions recorded during the same sessions. Those ultra-limited, hard to find promo CDs have since become in-demand items amongst the band's legion of fans, hence this first ever "official" release on rather fetching silver vinyl. It boasts various "early mixes" and demos by the band themselves, numerous B-sides and a handful of cuts that ended up as bonus cuts on international releases of the wildly popular album.