Surround Sound Lips, Pt. II

The Flaming Lips have always tried their hand at pushing the boundaries of musical enjoyment, from conducting massive parking lot experiments involving hundreds of car tape decks each with a different set of music, to the release of Zaireeka, a four-CD box set designed to be played all at once. Now, the Lips have taken the liberty of re-releasing their past albums in glorious 5.1 Surround Sound.

Their first endeavor, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 5.1, was impressive, despite the fact that the US version had a flaw in it causing the last song to cut off twenty seconds early.

After that album's release, the Lips asked their fans to pick which one of their previous albums should be given the 5.1 treatment next. The fans came up with the obvious choice, 1999's The Soft Bulletin, one of my favorite albums of all-time (that's another list that I've been meaning to post on this blog).

I'm listening to it right now and, I must say, it's quite impressive. If you have a 5.1 speaker setup in your house, this is the perfect disc to try it out on. Plus, it's the Lips, so you know it's good. In addition to the complete album in 5.1 Dolby Digital format (with psychedelic visualizations for your TV), you can listen to several unreleased outtakes and radio sessions, as well as watch the music videos for "Race for the Prize" and the uncensored version of "Waitin' for a Superman." Also, like the 5.1 version of Yoshimi, the Lips include the original CD version on a separate disc. But what's interesting about The Soft Bulletin 5.1 is that while the CD contains the US version of the album, with the Mokran mixes of "Race for the Prize" and "Waitin' for a Superman," the 5.1 DVD version is the original UK sequence, without the Mokran remixes but including "Slow Motion," a song cut from the US version and replaced with "The Spiderbite Song." Luckily, I found a copy of the song in regular MP3 format and am presenting it here for your downloading pleasure:

The Flaming Lips, "Slow Motion" (right-click, Save As...)

For those who want more, here's a nice cover of the Lips song "Suddenly Everything Has Changed" by our good friends The Postal Service:

The Postal Service, "Suddenly Everything Has Changed (Flaming Lips cover)" (right-click, Save As...)