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SoundsXP Presents

Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
+more tbc

The Windmill
Brixton
Price tbc

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

Latest Forum Posts

Album Review

The Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs
Dark Side of the Moon Warner Bros

Article written by Ged M - May 20, 2010

The Flaming Lips: Dark Side of the Moon

I always hated Pink Floyd (with the exception of Syd) and most Pink Floyd albums, especially Dark Side of the Moon. As a rites of passage record for a teenager, it soon separated the people you knew into those who hated it (your true friends) and those who loved it (merely acquaintances travelling a path that had just divided). The Pistols' "never trust a hippy" advice seemed directed especially at Pink Floyd and those who bought DSOTM, like my mate's dad who played it on his state of the art quadraphonic system for maximum audio fidelity and didn't mind lecturing you on its finer sonic points. No wonder punk took off. And the weirdest thing was that for all the praise for its spliffed up out-there-ness, it was a cosy product of the English class system, four upper middle class Englishmen whining about death and accompanying themselves with stultifying prog rock and wibbling electronica.

The Flaming Lips cover the whole album in sequence, and, while I’m not converted to the Floyd on the strength of this record, I can appreciate what the Lips and extended family have done (clearly they’re on better drugs than Pink Floyd). ‘Speak To Me/ Breathe’ is fast and funky where I remember the original being turgid and ponderous while ‘Us and Them’ is experimental pop with swirly, swishy arrangements. There’s also unintentional comedy from Henry Rollins; where the original album used roadies and actors for the spoken word elements, Peaches (OK) and Rollins (so bad he’s priceless) add the morbid soliloquies. It just confirms that Hank really is a humourless, talentless lump of over-pumped meat. If you treat the whole thing as a fun exercise, there’s much entertainment in here as well as some decent tunes done in fried-Flaming Lips style, which is now more widely available on CD than its original Record Store Day vinyl incarnation.

Links:
http://www.flaminglips.com/
http://www.myspace.com/flaminglips