One Day Holiday - The Dark Side of the Dark Side of the Moon



What kind of glue Wayne Coyne and co were sniffing when they made that cover of Pink Floyd's magnum opus Dark Side of the Moon? Well for one thing, we are already at this stage well acquainted with Flaming Lips' materials; but the end result of this (not so) latest venture sounds like it is on the wrong shade of the spectrum. Or perhaps a much stronger hue of the rainbow?

The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing the Dark Side of the Moon (the whole stretch is by the way is the title of the album), released in 2009, or 2010 if availability in the market in Malaysia is to be taken into account, is, as anyone could have probably guessed, the Oklahoma-based acid heads' remake of the classic 1973 epic record. The original album is a monumental record, largely for the theme of the lyrics that covers on matters ranging from life and death to politics, war, and mental illness (lunacy). Not to mention the music which, unlike other pre and post-Dark Side releases, their music does not meander aimlessly in search of any stable and coherent structure. The whole album felt bespoke and meticulously, carefully constructed from the ground up so as to perfectly capture the theme that was contained within the lyrics. In fact, our Goosebumps feature was actually in part inspired from this album - never there has been an album where the song and lyrics have come together as a unified, single entity bearing a message.

Knowing Flaming Lips and the 'playful' nature of their music, it was not entirely surprising that the end result sounded... well, their trademark sound is plastered all over the album cover anyway - anyone can straight away tell it from the get go. Seeing that it was released in quick succession right after Embryonic, there are parts in the album that reminded us of the said album especially in terms of song arrangement - where in the original album, it all swells up majestically, Flaming Lips and a bunch of guest musicians went for a zany attack right from the word go, and that is pretty typical of them. Most apparent changes is in the song arrangement - almost all songs were broken apart and restructured so as to fit the Flaming Lips style of playing.

Is it a bad thing then? Well, we don't dare to say so because initially we weren't expecting this album to stick faithfully to the original source anyway; and Flaming Lips being Flaming Lips, we were quite pleased that the quirkiness has not disappeared in the process of remaking such a serious and sobering album. The Londoners who made the album in the 70's knew that when the album will be released, people (at the time) will be spending most of the time listening to the album while lying on the floor, stoned and wasted. Not sure if it makes a good drug companion originally, but with this remake, it sounds trippy. Oh and not forgetting, it sounds mental as Hell. "The Great Gig in the Sky", the song where Clare Torry went absolutely lunatic like a wolf howling at the moon, Peaches's take of the same track however is just barking mad.



P/S: Oh and one more thing we forgot to mention - the bitching guitar shred has went missing in this 2009 version. We no like this very much...

LISTED: 30 Best Albums of the Last Decade (2000 - 2009)

*As the year 2010 is about to draw its curtain close, it is the time of the year (of any year) for many music sites and blogs to come up with a top list of albums of the year. Yes indeed the year 2010 has seen many interesting releases worthy of at least a top 20 list. But here at The Genuine Mind Zine we decided to do things a bit different and take a look at some of the best (of the best) releases throughout the last decade. This may not be the most comprehensive list around, lack of hip hop records for one, but all the albums listed here are indeed the most precious of last decade's precious gems.

4. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) / Embryonic (2009)

Fucking brilliant

Blame me for being fickle minded or just being plain shitty, but the Flaming Lips in the Aughts had released not one, but two equally amazing album that I just can't put the two apart. It's like having to choose between two of your own child on which one you love more - it's impossible. So, in breaking with the tradition of how a 'best of' list is usually made where only one album occupies one space, here's why Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Embryonic are both the number 4 best album of an entire decade.

If you happen to read any good Isaac Asimov novel, you'll probably get the overall gist of his stories - the future is one Hell of a bleak place for humanity. It is such a cold, desolate, grim, harsh, and hopeless place that the way we see it, we're doomed to go through it rather than blessed. In fact, such theme does not only permeate through literature because there is also a very good presentation of the idea in movie-dome through the equally heart-wrenching Artificial Intelligence, the movie in which Haley Joel Osment played a humanoid robot that is almost realistic in being human except for a lack of emotion. It is a deep, thought-provoking heavy drama that raises the question of "is a robot, a humanoid robot, capable of feeling love?"

Speaking on the same train of thought, the particular ethics-based question was also made as the central theme on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Is a robot capable of simple human emotion? And when it does, where will it put all of us as human? Because when once the border has been crossed, and the line blurred, will there anymore be any difference between human and robot? Between human and non-human? Will it matter anymore for us as human, to be human? Usually when faced with philosophical question of such nature, the answer will almost definitely be lost in definition and scientific, empirical researches. But in Yoshimi, the answer to all the questions is very simple: we're all doomed.

It is this kind of philosophical level depth of emotion that is ingrained in the Flaming Lips' music that really sets them apart from the rest, that makes them such a unique specimen, that makes them what they are, and they are the finest lot. They are known to be a wildly entertaining and stunningly creative and bafflingly weird band all the way since their inception in the 80's. But none of that erratic creativity is best matched than with their effort in the two albums featured here. While one is a cautionary tale on a bleak future concerned with robots capable of emotion, the other percolates through such wide ranging field of emotional depth never seen in any good Christopher Nolan's movie, it hurts your spleen. Some of the thoughts presented in their songs may be a little baffling at first but then at the end of it you just have to shed a little tears, moved by such a hopelessly sentimental album. But then again, clichéd as this may sound by now, when it comes to an album (or two albums) with true emotional depth, no other comes as close as these two very exceptional records.