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.

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!

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’ve been aware of this album and its concept for some time. Out of convenience I listened to a combined mix on YouTube, but just thinking about how I could properly realize the music got my mind working. I would like to listen to this the intended way at some point, but for now it’s still a solid piece of work

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.

I admire the ambition but ultimately this fails because it's too much of a gimmick. The overall music just didn't work for me to justify such a 4 CD separation. I listened to a version on youtube that mixed everything down. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

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.

It's definitely a life goal of mine to listen to this on 4 turntables as intended. Hopefully someday. Listening at home in normal stereo though, it's still a very fun album as you'd expect from The Flaming Lips. Not their best but super solid.

Jag gillar det här men den är ju på tok för jävla lång.

Unwilling to rig up a 4-source setup, so I went with one of the youtube mixes. I only really know Flaming Lips from the main list, and I didn't really care for what I heard, mostly on account of finding Wayne Coyne's singing really annoying. And that's a bit of an issue on this one as well, but there's also a bunch of times throughout where he shuts up and the composition gets *weird*. Big flashes of absolute transcendence peppered into an otherwise dull holding pattern. Big fan of bands doing unwieldy experimental stuff like this.

Very strange, right from the concept to the way it appears on streaming, to (most of) the actual music. Must have been a head melter of a release for the record label - but a band who needed to go through this process to be able to come up with their next two flawless albums. 4 discs, 4 stars! p.s. there are videos on YouTube of all four parts played at once - worth a listen, but (imho) only after listening to the building blocks

I remember listening to this with my housemates in 2003, we all carted our stereos into a room and synced them up and it was kind of fun. We probably should have had more weed. Not entirely sure it makes sense separately (and, on Amazon Music* at least, there's no mixdown of the those thing), but it's an interesting experiment nonetheless. *The worst thing about having a low income is that I have to use an Amazon Music trial now.

Crazy concept to listen to 4 different albums at once. Obviously I don't have a set up for that, so I found a fan-made mix on bandcamp. A pretty cool concept, just doesn't necessarily hit with the way we listen now. This is probably a high 3 but I'm pushing it to a low 4 because of the cool concept.

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.

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...

Weird

I had no way to listen to it in the intended way, like most people I imagine. In the end I listened to a stereo mix of all the cd's, to get the picture kinda and it sounded a lot like an audio installation you sometimes get at art galleries.

Visión diferente de un disco con 4 versiones (con apenas diferencias, hay que decirlo). En sí, un disco con canciones un tanto extravagantes, variedad instrumental y con voz melodiosa. Lo que tiene de diferente le falta de chispa.

Listened to a version of this album mixing its four CDs together on YouTube. Verdict: it's a... mixed bag. No pun intended at first, I swear! Beyond that lame play on words, the "disjointed" nature of the project first and foremost informs the music itself for me. You can have the most ambitious or the most original "concept" in the world for your album -- original on a 'technical' level here, that is -- you still need the real "substance" that would justify that sort of ambition in the first place. And I can't really find it in *Zaireeka*. Worse, I think that the (potentially endearing) poetry suggested by song titles such as "Riding to Work in the Year 2025", "A Machine in India" or "The Train Runs Over the Camel, But Is Derailed by the Gnat", actually gets stifled by all the logistical and conceptual shenanigans associated with an LP whose 'complete' mix is spread over four different CDs, requiring four different CD players. Maybe indeed I would need to listen to the record in its intended quadrophonic set-up, but honestly, and as far as I can tell, I'm not necessarily convinced it is worth all the trouble. Yes, *Zaireeka* foretells great things to come -- that second era of the band, when they reinvented their psychedelic artistry, abandoning their messy garage rock sound for more spacious and more expanding soundscapes. And as such, the album is probably a milestone in The Flaming Lips' career. Yet even in the best *stereo* mix of the record found online, it feels like the project also too often emphasizes the potential flaws found within the rest of the band's long discography -- either before or after they so noticeably switched gears. And the flaws can't be understated this time around, in my humble opinion. You have for instance: the off-key singing of Wayne Coyne -- a little annoying at times on *The Soft Bulletin*, and one that is even more so grating in here, especially on cuts that are not that interesting songwriting-wise to begin with. You also have a lack of dynamics and melodic focus in the same underwhelming cuts, not to mention some very questionable harmonic choices here and there -- where instrumentations and musical elements that decidedly don't go together are somehow forced to cohabit. You even have the use of supposedly "dangerous" frequencies at some point! Decades of listening to music have made my ears a little fragile, I imagine, so I only gave a very cursory spin to the track displaying those frequencies, and this at a very low volume. I wouldn't want to go deaf today because some drug-addled goons overplayed their hands in their experimental forays decades ago. As I have already pointed out, said forays into off-kilter textural work admittedly triggered the writing behind *The Soft Bulletin* and *Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots*, to which I respectively gave a 4/5 and a 5/5 grade (I really, *really* love this one LP!). Heck, the long shadow of *Zaireeka* might even extend to the creation of the somewhat underrated *Embryonic* (will some other user select this LP as well one day?). So, if only for this, still want to warmly thank the person who suggested *Zaireeka*. That suggestion led me to finally spend some time on it, at least. Given the daunting aspects of this album's overall "concept", I had never done so before, and I'm glad I finally gave it a chance to affect me as a work of art. Yet as I said before, in quite similar situations encountered through this generator, not every lab experiment should necessarily see the light of day. And I still count *Zaireeka* among that type of laboratory testing, or its equivalent in the music world -- conducive to more successful endeavors, sure, but clearly a partly-failed experiment *in and of itself* for my ears. I also guess that I won't read Mark Richardson's book about that record (from an admittedly very nice collection of essays about music albums). I might be wrong about what is about to follow, but reading the pitch presenting the book (which Richardson wrote himself?), the latter ticked all the wrong boxes for me. The author might have all sorts of intellectually convincing arguments to defend *Zaireeka*, along with a breakdown of all the "thinking" and logistical questions that went into its creation, yet I can't seriously expect that any of the arguments and narratives displayed in those pages will make me change my mind about the project. I even suspect that such literary endeavor -- whether related to the band's later career, music history at large, or the manifold technical aspects behind the recording of the four CDs -- is 100% intellectual, or close to it. Believe it or not, it always makes me raise an eyebrow when such intellectual endeavor takes over the more subjective expression of passion as related to music appreciation. Not necessarily saying this is *how* the user who selected this record *chose* to love the latter. But whether from one speaker or, most surely, from eight of them, I can't hear said love pouring into my soul when I listen to *Zaireeka*. "Interesting curio" is the only response I have for it. 2.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 3. 7.5/10 for more general purposes (4.5/5 for the musicianship and production values + 3/5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 98 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 112 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 236 (including this one) ---- Hey Émile, j'ai répondu sous Demon Days ET ta sélection pour la users list ! 🙂

I listened to a pre-mixed version. I never had the setup to listen to 4 CDs at once. This is a experimental and weird album. Not bad, but not my favorite Flaming Lips.

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

At least it's not the Miley/Flaming Lips album?

Not sure I can rate Zaireeka fairly as I can't listen to it as intended, but then that's not my fault. It's fine, some good, some less so, but really the experimental rock scene just rarely works for me. High 2 maybe.

Tried to find the mashed up version of all 4 disks at once like it is necessary to listen to this album to get its full experience. But I don't think I was able to so it just didn't work, or it did. I have no idea. Not an album that should have been added on here due to the complexity

Bro 3 hours 1

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

Who has 4 stereos that they can rig up to play 4 separate albums in perfect sync? Just mix the album yourselves you pretentious hipster ass hats. This right here is why I hate indie music so fucking much. Everyone is celebrating these tools for being complete and utter pylons. This isn't art, it's a dumpster fire. I certainly don't have the thousands of dollars worth of required equipment to listen to this album properly, but thankfully someone on YouTube has the fully mixed 4 cd's as a playlist. Props to them for doing something that these complete morons couldn't do in the studio. When listened to "one cd at a time", you're left with incomplete subsections of songs that are disjointed and odd. Stuck together and layered, you're left with an absolute assault on the senses. There are so many layers all playing at once that it is just a jumbled mess. That, plus the singer couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. This is easily one of the worst things I've ever had the misfortune of listening to. This isn't music, it's noise. Please, no more Flaming Lips recommendations. I feel like 3 albums is enough. Sadly, I didn't mind the first two albums, but this...... This is fucking atrocious. Whoever thinks this is music needs to be on an FBI watch list. I just noticed that there is literally a warning on the album cover that states: This recording contains frequencies not normally heard on commercial recordings, and on rare occasions has caused the listener to become disoriented". This album is quite literally Sonic terrorism. Conveniently, I was able to maintain all my faculties (probably because any disorientation was completely overwritten by absolute rage). Favourite songs: The Big Ol' Bug is the New Baby Now.... I guess? Least favourite songs: this whole stupid fucking album 1/5