The Flaming Lips have pushed the envelope and bent boundaries for more than two decades with the band’s Grammy-winning music and ground-breaking concerts. This year, Rhino and Warner Bros. Records will celebrate Oklahoma’s most famous freaks with an ambitious reissue program, kicking off with two releases that spotlight the joyous weirdness the band recorded for Restless Records before signing with Warner Bros. in 1991.
It begins with Scratching The Door: The First Recordings Of The Flaming Lips, a single-disc compilation that features music recorded by the band’s original lineup. The 19-track collection will be available on April 20 and will be followed by Seeing The Unseeable: The Complete Studio Recordings Of The Flaming Lips 1986-1990 - six-CD boxed set that includes their four Restless studio albums and two discs of rarities, available on May 25. Both releases will also be available on digital download and streaming services, with over 40 tracks making their digital debut.
2018 also sees a slew of vinyl reissues from The Flaming Lips, including remasters of the Restless albums. These will feature some tracks appearing on vinyl for the very first time.
All of the music on Scratching The Door and Seeing The Unseeable has been remastered from original sources by the band’s longtime musical foil and producer, David Fridmann with help from the Lips’ Wayne Coyne and Michael Ivins.
Scratching The Door highlights tracks recorded by The Flaming Lips’ original line-up, which featured Wayne Coyne’s brother Mark on vocals. The album includes the band’s first and second cassette demos, in addition to The Flaming Lips first self-released EP, and marks the first time all of these recordings have been collected together on a single release. Among the other featured tracks are covers of The Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and the theme song from the 1960’s Batman television series, which previously appeared on Rykodisc’s 2002 compilation, Finally The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
Seeing The Unseeable brings back into print (physically – they are available digitally) all four studio albums that the band released on Restless Records between 1984 and 1990: Hear It Is (1986), Oh My Gawd!!!...The Flaming Lips (1987), Telepathic Surgery (1989) and In A Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares) (1990). Among the set’s many sonic treasures are: “Godzilla Flick,” “Unconsciously Screaming,” “One Million Billionth Of A Millisecond On A Sunday Morning” and their cover of the classic “(What A) Wonderful World.”
The set is also packed with rare recordings originally released as b-sides, flexi discs, and on various compilations like, the Sub Pop single “Strychnine/Peace, Love And Understanding” and a cover of “After The Gold Rush” from a 1989 Neil Young tribute album Also included is The Mushroom Tapes, the series of demos for the band’s final Restless album, In A Priest Driven Ambulance, only previously issued on the Rykodisc compilation CD, The Day They Shot A Hole In the Jesus Egg.
Fans of the band should get stuck into their catalogue on Spotify here...
