Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Flaming LipsOne more robot - sounds like currents era tame impala especially with some of the vocal melody choices. Interesting bass mixing choice, hard panned to right speaker for a bulk of the song. Yoshimi pt 1 - They like the quick pans of various instruments. Heard here early in the acoustic guitars. This is a thing with The Unicorn’s music, which is a reason I had thought to recommend them to Jake. Pt 2 - drum production on this one sounds really great, interesting that it is mostly centered in the mix. Giving space to all the wacky stuff on the outside. Ego - this one gives me currents vibes too. Those cymbal crashes are crunchy and nice. Really subtle low guitar pads wide in the mix make the song sound way bigger. Summertime - it’s interesting, I wouldn’t call him a strong vocalist, you can hear it on this track, but it works for their music. Do You Realize ?? - probably my favorite flaming lips song, also the most common opinion. I think it works best as a snapshot of their sound, particularly on this album. The vocal melodies, the hard panned instruments, a lot of repetition. Really pretty stuff. Gave me an existential crisis the first time I heard it. All we have is now // Approaching Pavonis - Doing this as one thing, because my main take away is the interest of overall album flow and the arc of the album itself. If we look at it like a movie, Yoshimi battling the robots is like the first act action sequence and Do You Realize is like the true climax. These two tracks are the falling action into a slight reprise to leave with some energy. As standalone songs their both fine, but in the scope of the album they serve their purpose well. Overall - It’s a cool album. It came out in 2002 but feels older, which I’m sure is their intent. Yoshimi pt 1 and Do You Realize?? are, to me, the stand out tracks with the rest serving more to tell the story of the album. So it’s definitely better as a “listen in one sitting” kind of thing. Some of the songs get slightly repetitive, but not in a way that hurts the experience too much. You can hear a lot of little production things that are interesting, I’m wondering if everyone else will pick up on those, I have the luxury of professional studio monitors. I looked into it, the same producer on this also worked with Tame Impala, as well as a lot of other bigger indie acts. Interesting to hear that sound here earlier and how it developed over the years.