Flaming Side of the Moon- The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips have done it again. Continuing their string of increasingly strange releases, the band has recently released a stream of an album meant to be a companion to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which is supposed to be synched up and played simultaneously. The first thing I thought is that I hope this isn't an April Fool's joke. Well, it turns out it is. The Flaming Lips, along with Funny or Die, conceived this, along with a few other skits and an article by Wayne Coyne on their site. That being said, is it weird that it works, and is kind of awesome?

Honestly, this type of release would not have been out of the ordinary for the Flaming Lips; the four CD Zaireeka, meant to be played simultaneously, or the recordings meant for twelve smart phones are evidence of their tendency to release things in less than normal fashion. Originally not knowing this joke, which is supposedly the Flaming Lips selling out apparently, I cued up Dark Side and listened along with the stream. I kind of knew what to expect: distortion, electronic weirdness, and a completely strange experience. Were all those things true? Yes. But this filled out some of Dark Side's more quiet moments with interesting little snippets, and moments with more going on sounded absolutely insane. 'Money' and 'Eclipse' are two songs that are made completely manic. The sounds made me feel like my head was going to explode, in a good way.

This is hardly going to replace the original in my heart, but this companion album, joke or not, is kind of awesome, and a fan of the Lips or Pink Floyd should definitely try this out. It compliments the album well, and adds some more psychedelia to this prog masterwork. I'm not going to rate this one, hoping that people will give this a shot on their own and experience it for themselves. I'm pretty sure the joke is on the Lips, because their 'prank' yielded more of a response from me than their most recent effort, Peace Sword.

"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."