Wayne Coyne loves to get creative. If The Flaming Lips frontman isn’t making posters with his own blood or hand delivering limited, unique record printings, he’s spreading Flaming Lips songs across 12 iPhones. The guy’s head is just full of ideas. In fact, that’s where you’ll be able to get the Flaming Lips’ next offering: inside a head.
Next week, Coyne and Co. will be releasing three songs loaded onto portable USB drives. Those drives will be encased in a life-sized brain made of “edible gummy bear stuff,” which will in turn be inside a life-sized Gummi-skull. The whole thing weighs about seven pounds, and it isn’t the end of the palatable possibilities. “We’ve had grandiose ideas of putting out a life-size, Gummi version of myself,” Coyne explained in an interview Billboard.com, “and in the heart would be this giant hard drive with all the music on it. . .”
“The music” he referred to could potentially be a collection of the multitude of tracks the FLips plan on releasing in unique fashions throughout the year, foregoing traditional CDs or LPs. Coyne told Billboard that other ideas include a stompbox effects pedal with four songs on it, “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). He did note, however, that all the band’s forthcoming releases will also be available digitally.
All these wacky distribution methods are a byproduct of the new deal the trio recently cut with Warner Bros. Records, which allows for more creative freedom. Along with the aforementioned, the band also hopes to follow up its recently released Neon Indian collaborative EP with similar projects featuring Deerhoof and Ariel Pink by year’s end. If Coyne has his way, we’ll also be hearing efforts with James Murphy of the now properly laid to rest LCD Soundsystem, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, and the one and only Jimmy Page. “It doesn’t always mean we get to sit in the same room as someone,” Coyne explained to Billboard, “and a lot of times you’re just sending tracks back and forth, but I’m hoping [Page] is open to it. I know he likes our music. We always have a lot of stuff that someone like Jimmy Page could play over and we have a whole year to try and work this out.”
The news doesn’t end there; the band is “in the early stages of production” for a theatrical adaptation of their ‘02 record Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots with director Des McAnuff (The Who’s Tommy, Jersey Boys). Including songs from 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and ’06’s At War with the Mystics, Coyne stated that “it’ll be a big chunk of Flaming Lips music, probably about 30 songs. It’s a big deal. 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.”
Oh yeah, and according to Pitchfork, Coyne is open to producing more of those screen-printed blood posters. “To me, it’s what I’m doing anyway – our blood is really in our work.” At this rate, the guys must be running low on blood. . .
