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The art of the gimmick: an interview with the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne
The Flaming Lips have never done anything small, from the "Parking Lot Experiments" of the mid-90s to this year's Record Store Day album, "The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends." Set for an April 21st release, the limited edition vinyl record features an odd cast of characters, including Bon Iver, Erykah Badu, Neon Indian, Nick Cave and Ke$ha, many of whom have lent their actual blood to the record. "That is totally a gimmick," Wayne Coyne answers with great relish. "It's a beautiful gimmick. I think all things that we marvel over are based in gimmicks." He's on the phone for a day of back-to-back interviews, a trapping of the job that would cause lesser, more jaded men to roll their eyes and submit with dragged heels, particularly those who've been playing the game through 30 years and 13 LPs. But Coyne, much to his credit, dives into everything he does headfirst with the manner of childlike wonder that's come to be established with the vast majority of the Flaming Lips' catalog. At the beginning of our conversation, he lets it be known that he's slightly distracted. His wife is photographing him. And he's in his underwear. He didn't bother putting anything else on, knowing that he'd be running a marathon of phone interviews all day. Maximum comfort is important. It's a hard image to erase from my mind as Coyne settles in to explain the band's decision to embrace Siri on a recent web-only track called "Now I Understand."
Distro Issue 36 lands with The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, the New York International Auto Show, Ultrabooks and Nikon's D4
Buckle up, folks. The latest installment of our weekly e-publication is chock full of awesome. First, we caught up with The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne to chat about the role of tech in their music and, more specifically, the group's upcoming album. In case you were napping, we take another look at what the New York International Auto Show had to offer this year and what Google needs to do to keep it weird. For your gadget fix, we put the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 and 15-inch Samsung Series 9 Ultrabooks as well as the Nikon D4 through the wringer. To top that all off, Snap Analysis looks at Facebook's purchase of Instagram, the Stat counts Android flavors, Crackberry founder Kevin Michaluk tackles the Q&A and Box Brown has the Last Word. An e-copy of your very own is a few clicks away, as your download link awaits below.Distro Issue 36 PDFDistro on the iTunes App StoreDistro in the Android MarketDistro APK (for sideloading)Like Distro on FacebookFollow Distro on Twitter
Flaming Lips create tune for 12 smartphones
This is a little trippy. The band Flaming Lips once released a studio album containing four CDs designed to be played all at the same time. Flaming Lips has upped the ante and uploaded 12 different clips to YouTube, which are all supposed to be played on 12 different smartphones at the same time (or browser windows, if you don't have 12 iPhones). Here's their YouTube account with all of the videos on it, and here's an "instructional" video (beware: the title of the song is not safe for work) detailing how to get the tracks running and synced up on an iPhone. Like I said, trippy. If you're not a Flaming Lips fan, the whole thing is probably too weird to put in the effort, not to mention that you probably don't have 12 smartphones sitting around to play music with unless you're in a particularly high-tech and relaxed office space. But it's a cool angle on music composition, and it's a neat experiment made possible with YouTube and our favorite smartphone. If you do have the time and energy to make it work, let us know what you think.
Rock Band Stage Kit coming to GameStop in June
We're not exactly sure how to react to the recent announcement of the Rock Band Stage Kit, a peripheral for the already peripheral-heavy rhythm game. It's meant to enhance your experience with a (supposedly) fully synchronized light and smoke stage show -- we imagine the only thing it will truly enhance is your sense of regret, which will sink in when you realize that you'll never see that $99.99 ever again.At the same time, the idea of complete immersion into one of our favorite games of last year excites us to no end -- we only hope they release themed stage kits shortly after the first kit tanks. Perhaps a Flaming Lips kit, complete with costumed fly dancers and two-hundred pounds of confetti? Or, better yet, a GWAR kit, stuffed full of giant rubber wangs and Hitler masks. Can peripherals get an AO rating?
