Tonight The Train Runs Over the Camel But Is Derailed by the Gnat
posted by on October 22 at 15:37 PM
During our historic Flaming Lips issue in late August, we ran a short piece by Sam “Retail Disturbance” Machkovech in which he described freaking out Best Buy customers by playing the Lips’ Zaireeka inside the store as it was meant to be played: on four separate sound systems at once. It’s a sonic happening that’s rarely attempted and even more rarely properly attained; synching the CDs is difficult when using four separate boom boxes.
Tonight, the wackos at the Crocodile, abetted by the spazzes at Sonic Boom, attempt a quadrophonic coup by hosting a Zaireeka listening session in the Croc’s main show room. It’s the 10th anniversary of the album and the 10th anniversary of Sonic Boom, so a proper sonic freakout is in order.
I’ve never heard the album in its proper format and I’m pretty fucking stoked that this is happening. It’s free and doors are at 8 p.m. Minds will be blown.
Now there's some news!
Attempting to synchronize "play" with 3 of your inebriated friends is tough. Leave it to the best soundman in town and this might be worth the check out..
If you like cool things, then go.
jz, i did my own "mixdown" of this project a few years ago so i could hear what the actual songs sounded like, and i was pretty disappointed. it's pretty much all "b-side" stuff. not that interesting. i don't think many minds will be blown.
The thing that people seem to miss is that you can't do a fair mixdown of this album. The album was designed to have some syncing issues. The songs are not hit singles or anything but instead sonic experiments that sound amazing when you have 4 different stereos competing with each other.
How was the aural experience? I'd love to read comments from people who had their minds blown. As a result, ridiculously retarded reviews should be in order.
I did the 4 stereo thing in high school when this came out and my impressionable teenage mind was not anywhere remotely near "blown." Interesting in parts, as much as I can recall, it seemed successful by its own standards as an experiment.
And as @3 mentioned, the synching issues are deliberate-- I remember something in the liner notes saying that while playing around w/ earlier versions of this, they found some CD players played tracks slightly faster/slower than others and designed the tracks to sit really loosely on each other.
come on - you can't tell me the dogs didn't freak you out.
they freaked me out.
there were some very strange moments indeed. i had my mouth agape for the first few songs--id never heard anything like them before. these were more swirling sound collages--literally swirling, as in whooshing from speaker to speaker around the room. the croc had set up a major subwoofer, too, so the low end was chest-rattling. at first i couldnt really fathom what was going on, musically--mainly bc its not music, its landscaping w sound, about as physical as any record ive ever hears.
the initial novelty wore off, though, and youre left with some overly weird, self-indulgent noise, until the last couple songs, which were unsettling like a bad dream. the barking dogs were fucking freakish.
for this 10th anniversary re-release, wayne coyne hosted the dvd, counting down each track and introducing each song. while his presence is always light, it kinda broke up the momentum bt songs, too.
it did remind me of watching fantasia on acid in high school. we had to stop the tape bt each vignette bc they were all so goddam overwhelming. we figured disney knew the power of the "new form of entertainment" they had unleashed and had therefore presumed the intermission bt each segment.
so yeah, zaireeka was kind of a flashback, only more aural than visual.
"it did remind me of watching fantasia on acid in high school."
Why did I never do that?
its never to late, levi.
overly weird, self-indulgent noise
Actually the best part of the album. And I'm not saying that just to be contrary.
@7
or watching the wizard of oz synced to dark side of the moon
Talk about your bad trip...
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