Zaireeka

I remember listening to this with some friends in college - 4 CD boomboxes and all. Gotta admire the creative ambition, but I honestly remember the dance party where we played Daft Punk afterwards more.

After doing the full 1001+ original list and now 500+ user picks, this is easily the most pretentious and inaccessible album I’ve come across, and I fucking love it. Having Sonos made it pretty easy to set up as intended, but I can totally see why it flopped back in 1997. With the effort put in though, the payoff is unreal. I honestly can’t remember the last time a first listen put such a big smile on my face, the drums on March of the Rotten Vegetables are just ridiculous. I gave The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi 4 stars, but on sheer uniqueness and ambition (and the fact it probably only fully works now, 30 years later, with multi-room speakers), this has to be a 5. That said, if you just throw it on normally and listen to the 4 albums back to back, you’ll probably think it’s a 1/2 album at best.

Zaireeka is an experimental album by indie rock band The Flaming Lips. The idea is to use 4 record- or cd players to play the 4 tracks of each song at the same time or in time-shift variations. As you can imagine most people don't have the equipment to do this. One solution for this is to get assistance of friends to create a shared experience. I searched for and found a version that provides the four tracks mixed together. This made it a lot easier to listen to the musical result. I think the idea is weird and fun. Too bad that the music itself is not up to the standards that you could expect from the band that has made so much great music. Most of the songs are sort of soundscapes that are quite boring. So I guess, it's an "Okay, I'll Admit That I Really Don't Understand"

Off the bat, I appreciate the audacity of adding this record to the list and I hope that people take the time to try and listen as intended. I’m not optimistic they will, but I have hope that they do. In fact, it’s probably a bit easier now than it used to be, with the proliferation of Bluetooth speakers. You could probably tell 4 friends to bring a Bluetooth speaker, their phones and get set up to listen to this album pretty easily. I know I’ve got a least two Bluetooth speakers laying around the house I could loan ya. There are also mix-downs of the 4 discs into fully formed tracks you can listen to easily, but I’d recommend trying to have the 4 source experience first - You need to hear “March of the Rotting Vegetables” in its octophonic(?) glory. A few weeks ago, I was listening to The Best Show and the topic of that week’s episode, in part, was the best albums of the 90’s. The Flaming Lips came up and Tom Scharpling, the host of the show, said something that I’ve thought a lot about, but could never really put as succinctly as he did. When talking about the transition of the band from the early/mid 90’s to the Soft Bulletin/Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots era of the band, he seemingly lamented that “They had to stop being The Flaming Lips, in order to be The Flaming Lips” - meaning that they had to abandon the crazy guitar based insanity of the first half of their career in order to become the band that everyone knows today. Zaireeka is the nexus point, or maybe Year Zero, for that change where they stopped being The Flaming Lips and became The Flaming Lips. There are flashes of both bands here: the wildly experimental psych rock band and the more polished, orchestral Flaming Lips. Like Tom, I have a real soft spot for the early iteration(s) of the band, with Clouds Taste Metallic as one of my favorite records of all time. It doesn’t get the same accolades as the Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi, but I think it’s a masterpiece, on par with the Soft Bulletin in many ways and, frankly, a better record than Yoshimi - it’s a somewhat overlooked classic, if you will. In fact, in my review of The Soft Bulletin on this site, I called the three album run of Clouds Taste Metallic, Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin, “the band’s high water mark, which they have not topped”. These three records are masterpieces, all for vastly different reasons, but the progression of the three makes perfect sense when viewed as a band starting, going through and completing a metamorphosis. As the mid-way point of that cycle, Zaireeka is challenging, experimental, strange and unnerving. It’s possibly the most experimental album ever put out by a major label, at least conceptually. …but it works. “Riding to Work in the Year 2025” for my money, is easily one of the best songs The Flaming Lips ever recorded. “35,000 feet of Despair” is harrowing and overwhelming both lyrically and musically. There are moments where the music doesn’t make sense, but also makes perfect sense, like on “The Train Runs Over the Camel, but is Derailed By the Gnat”. When all the disparate parts of that song come together in the second half, it is a thing of beauty. Yes, Zaireeka gets experimental and some of the songs might try your patience, but when you look at it as a whole, the sheer ambition of putting together an album like this and making it challenging, but also accessible is 5 star-worthy in my book.

I listened to this first without reading the instructions. Ooops! The 3+ hours of odd sounding tracks had me a bit perplexed, although well done if somewhat incomplete feeling. After a while I figured out I was listened to four disks all with the same named songs… then read about the album and realized it was designed for multiple disks to be played simultaneously. So I went on to YouTube and found a properly mixed version with all four CDs and it made a lot more sense. I’m not surprised The Flaming Lips would do something like this. I thought how it was a challenge to play all four simultaneously today with music streaming, but then again in 1997 who had four CD players that could play simultaneously? Unique. Maybe a gimmick? But hey, I’m always happy to hear The Flaming Lips and their musical experiments!

I love most of it, but it could be shorter and I'd love it more.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Okay I’ll admit that i really don’t understand

Love the Lips, and I've always really admired this project for how ambitious it is. I've *never* been able to experience it as intended, with 4 different boom boxes in different parts of the room. It was still the 90s last time I gave this album serious thought. It would honestly be much easier now that everyone just has spotify on their phone. If you're in a pinch, people have mixed all 4 audio tracks for each song into one file on youtube. 3 stars for the album itself (not my favorite), but the project is so unique I gotta bump it up.

Jury's still out on if this is a dumb gimmick or actually creative genius. I feel like it's somehow both simultaneously in a weird quantum way. Listened through a Youtube video that did everything for me, because, respectfully, not really in the mood to go on a sidequest just to play this album right now. Musically a very good psychedelic album. Is it 4 CD players worth of money good? Ehh, nothing probably is, but what can you do. It's an interesting oddity at the very least. 4/5, one point for each disc. I was gonna detract a point because this is not really something suited for a daily list like this, but imagining some poor soul who doesn't do any research on the albums they listen to on here rawdogging the 3 hour Spotify upload is kinda funny, so I'll let it slide.

Okay so this album is a ridiculously cool *idea.* 4 discs played simultaneously to have a much richer sound than one could provide? Very neat! I might get some friends together to mimic the experience with phones sometime so I can have the intended experience. I think those same elements make it kind of a poor choice for this list though. I don't have 4 devices readily available to play this on, and sure the other review I saw mentioned there's YouTube videos just layering it for you but that feels wrong somehow. Also the songs all feel too long and sedate for my tastes. Maybe they'll be more stimulating if I play it the way it's supposed to be played, but for now this gets a 3. Nothing wrong with it but it just doesn't land for me.

Creatively this LP is a 5/5 – you could argue the whole synchronization stick is gimmicky, but I like the idea of a communal listening experience that only comes together with some friends (or a whole lot of individual effort) and a challenge from the band to meet them halfway. Musically, it’s a 2 at best. Even by Flaming Lips standards, these tracks are way too ambient and unfocused, meaning the typical out-there Coyne lyricism feels forced and a little uncomfortable. That and the “artistic” choice to have high-pitched whines on a few songs make this LP feel way too avant-garde on top of the CD juggling. If my friends and I spent the time to line up 4 parts and got this in return I can imagine being pretty disappointed. Giving this a 3 mainly for creativity, the challenge does make the LP notable even if the reward is lacking.

As I always find with this band, there's a real and unmistakable talent behind it, and I respect the audacity of conceiving a project like this and getting it through a major label production process. Pragmatically though it's unlistenable in its intended presentation without great effort, making it a poor choice for this kind of project. I sort of listened around the tracks for as long as I felt like putting up with it. 3 stars is generous.

I really love some of the Flaming Lips music, but sometimes I find them pretentious and cringey. This one sort of fell in the middle for me. Some songs, like Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair, I really loved. It's an interesting concept as well. 3 stars.

I think in theory I should really like the Flaming Lips but we are not there yet

Not bad

Interesting concept. I listened to a playlist of a mix of the 4 CD's. Still, the songs felt a bit empty. Not a favorite of mine

How am I expected to listen to this properly

Bro 3 hours 1

Experimental pop, dream pop, experimental rock, psychedelic rock. ¿A ton de qué? Un 1.