Zaireeka
Encyclopedia
Zaireeka is the eighth studio album
by the alternative rock
band The Flaming Lips
. Released on October 28, 1997, the experimental rock
album consists of four compact disc
s. Each of its eight songs consists of four stereo tracks, one from each CD. The album was designed so that when played simultaneously on four separate audio systems, the four CDs would produce a harmonic
or juxtaposed sound. The discs can also be played in different combinations, omitting one, two or three discs. The album's title is a portmanteau of two words: Zaire
, chosen as a symbol of anarchy
after Wayne Coyne
heard a radio news story about the political instability of the African nation, and eureka
(literally: "I have found it"), an expression of joyous discovery.
Zaireeka was the first album made by the band since the departure of guitarist Ronald Jones
. It acted as a preview of the music and style that would surface on the next album, The Soft Bulletin
(1999) and is the predecessor to the band's more conventional surround sound
releases.
, threatened their status at Warner Bros. Records
. They eventually found that drummer Steven Drozd
could compensate for the loss of Jones by becoming a multi-instrumentalist. However, live shows proved to be more challenging and in order to maintain activity and output, Wayne Coyne conceived an experimental show.
to be played in synchronization. The band invited people to bring their cars to parking lots, where they would be given one of the tapes and then instructed when to start them. The music was "a strange, fluid 20 minute sound composition".
was involved in a car crash, and Steven Drozd's hand became severely infected. Drozd initially claimed that his hand had been bitten by a spider, although later he admitted the infected abscess was caused by injection of heroin.
The Flaming Lips began work on Zaireeka in April 1997 in the then-new Tarbox Road Studios. Initially, the band was frustrated while making the album. Even after diverting half of the budget for the next album into Zaireeka, there were no tangible results. The band experienced difficulty writing songs for the album. Finally, Coyne exclaimed "Look, we don't have to be friends... but we have to make this record!" While this philosophy aided progress, the band only began to complete songs when they learned to write for the medium as opposed to trying to split normal songs across four CDs.
The group wrote several songs that were unsuccessful in the four-CD format. These songs, including "Race for the Prize", were reserved for the next album, which would eventually become The Soft Bulletin
.
.
Eventually, the two factions reached an agreement in which the album would be released, although Zaireeka would not count towards the seven albums the band was contracted to deliver to Warner Bros. For an advance of $200,000, the band would make both Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin. In addition, Booker mentioned that by allowing the media to proclaim how "weird" the band was with Zaireeka, they would be more prepared to treat The Soft Bulletin as a serious album. Zaireeka was released in October, 1997. , 28,000 copies have been sold.
or echo
being heard on one disc before the original sound is produced from another. Further, the type and quality of each audio system affects the relationship between the four CDs.
. Coyne and Drozd conducted two "choirs" of people controlling the boom boxes, giving them instructions for actions like turning the volume up or down, while Ivins controlled the mixer
.
Songs played in The Boom Box Experiments include:
in 2002, The Flaming Lips would return to the concept of surround sound with a DVD-Audio
special-edition of that album in 2003.
Zaireeka is viewed by the band as nothing more than an experimental release. "It was, and still is, intended to be listened to by other artists, musicians and producers," Coyne would later state in the liner notes for The Soft Bulletin 5.1, adding that they "never expected the less involved members of our audience to care about it."
. Next, "The Train Runs over the Camel but Is Derailed by the Gnat", is a speech by a man who is on the verge of discovery, but ends up "talking himself into circles". Track six, "How Will We Know? (Futuristic Crashendos)", is based on an urban legend
that being exposed to high and low frequencies can cause a person to experience premonitions, and thus contains its infamously extensive frequencies that caused the band to place a warning on the album cover and inside the booklet. The seventh song, "March of the Rotten Vegetables", is "music for a cartoon about a group of demented vegetables". The eighth and final song, "The Big Ol' Bug Is the New Baby Now", contains a spoken-word story about Coyne's dogs; the track ends the album with loud barking from each disc. On the 10th anniversary of Zaireeka, Wayne Coyne himself made and distributed an additional 5th disc to go along with the set. A limited amount of copies were made, and were handed out at the 10th anniversary listening party for the album. The disc, which looks identical to the other four discs with an exception of the disc being numbered 10, contains what was originally discs 5 through 10.
gave Zaireeka four stars out of five, writing: "Zaireekas wall-of-surround-sound approach melds droning-rock dissonance with warped, off-kilter pop melodies, producing a totally immersing post-Pet Sounds
audio séance." Allmusic mentioned that the album would only really be accessible to hardcore Flaming Lips fans, but that "they're in for the musical experience of a lifetime".
Critics who disliked the album cited what they viewed as a ridiculous concept. Salon remarked in its review that "Musically[...] their 1995 album Clouds Taste Metallic offers the same psychotic results without all the technological hassle. And conceptually? The same thing, just all at once: stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid." A Pitchfork reviewer emphasized the social experience that takes place when listening to the album.http://web.archive.org/web/20060502004643/http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/watw/02-06/zaireeka.shtml
.
In the UK, the "Race for the Prize" and "Waitin' for a Superman" CD single
s were released in 2-disc sets.
Each disc of the two sets contained a different version of "Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)" and "Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair". This marked the first time material from the album would be released in the four-disc format in Europe. The "Waitin' for a Superman" Maxi-CD, as released in the US, contains stereo mixes of the two songs.
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by the alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips are an American alternative rock band, formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983.Melodically, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles—such as "What...
. Released on October 28, 1997, the experimental rock
Experimental rock
Experimental rock or avant-garde rock is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique....
album consists of four compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
s. Each of its eight songs consists of four stereo tracks, one from each CD. The album was designed so that when played simultaneously on four separate audio systems, the four CDs would produce a harmonic
Harmonic
A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...
or juxtaposed sound. The discs can also be played in different combinations, omitting one, two or three discs. The album's title is a portmanteau of two words: Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
, chosen as a symbol of anarchy
Anarchy
Anarchy , has more than one colloquial definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is meant to refer to a society which lacks publicly recognized government or violently enforced political authority...
after Wayne Coyne
Wayne Coyne
Wayne Michael Coyne is the lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter for the band The Flaming Lips.-Early life:...
heard a radio news story about the political instability of the African nation, and eureka
Eureka (word)
"Eureka" is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery, a transliteration of a word attributed to Archimedes.-Etymology:The word comes from ancient Greek εὕρηκα heúrēka "I have found ", which is the 1st person singular perfect indicative active of the verb heuriskō "I find"...
(literally: "I have found it"), an expression of joyous discovery.
Zaireeka was the first album made by the band since the departure of guitarist Ronald Jones
Ronald Jones (musician)
Ronald Jones is an American musician, who was a guitarist in the Oklahoma rock band The Flaming Lips from 1991 to 1996....
. It acted as a preview of the music and style that would surface on the next album, The Soft Bulletin
The Soft Bulletin
-UK & Australian CD release:-Vinyl release:-The Soft Bulletin 5.1:On January 31, 2006, Warner Bros. re-released The Soft Bulletin in the US as a two-disc package titled The Soft Bulletin 5.1. It includes a remastered CD and a DVD-Audio disc that contains a 5.1-channel surround sound mix of the album...
(1999) and is the predecessor to the band's more conventional surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
releases.
Background
Adverse circumstances led to the production of Zaireeka. The departure of guitarist Ronald Jones compelled the band to change fundamentally. In addition, the limited success of the previous album, Clouds Taste MetallicClouds Taste Metallic
- Personnel :* Wayne Coyne - vocals, guitar* Steven Drozd - drums* Michael Ivins - bass* Ronald Jones - guitar- Cover versions :"Lightning Strikes the Postman" was covered by Scottish rock band Aereogramme on their album Seclusion....
, threatened their status at Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
. They eventually found that drummer Steven Drozd
Steven Drozd
Steven Gregory Drozd is an American musician. He is a multi-instrumentalist and lead guitarist for The Flaming Lips.-Early life:...
could compensate for the loss of Jones by becoming a multi-instrumentalist. However, live shows proved to be more challenging and in order to maintain activity and output, Wayne Coyne conceived an experimental show.
The Parking Lot Experiments
During 1996 and 1997, The Flaming Lips ran a series of events known as "The Parking Lot Experiments". The concept was inspired by an incident in Coyne's youth, where he noticed that car radios in the parking lot at a concert were playing the same songs at the same time, Wayne Coyne created 40 cassette tapesCompact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
to be played in synchronization. The band invited people to bring their cars to parking lots, where they would be given one of the tapes and then instructed when to start them. The music was "a strange, fluid 20 minute sound composition".
Production
Production of the album was preceded by two unfortunate events, which were recounted in "The Spiderbite Song" from The Soft Bulletin. Michael IvinsMichael Ivins
Michael Lee Ivins is the bassist and one of the founding members of The Flaming Lips.Along with Mark Coyne and Wayne Coyne, he formed The Flaming Lips in 1983 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. According to Wayne, Michael was found as the bassist for the band because of his punk-rock look, and not...
was involved in a car crash, and Steven Drozd's hand became severely infected. Drozd initially claimed that his hand had been bitten by a spider, although later he admitted the infected abscess was caused by injection of heroin.
The Flaming Lips began work on Zaireeka in April 1997 in the then-new Tarbox Road Studios. Initially, the band was frustrated while making the album. Even after diverting half of the budget for the next album into Zaireeka, there were no tangible results. The band experienced difficulty writing songs for the album. Finally, Coyne exclaimed "Look, we don't have to be friends... but we have to make this record!" While this philosophy aided progress, the band only began to complete songs when they learned to write for the medium as opposed to trying to split normal songs across four CDs.
The group wrote several songs that were unsuccessful in the four-CD format. These songs, including "Race for the Prize", were reserved for the next album, which would eventually become The Soft Bulletin
The Soft Bulletin
-UK & Australian CD release:-Vinyl release:-The Soft Bulletin 5.1:On January 31, 2006, Warner Bros. re-released The Soft Bulletin in the US as a two-disc package titled The Soft Bulletin 5.1. It includes a remastered CD and a DVD-Audio disc that contains a 5.1-channel surround sound mix of the album...
.
Release
Warner Bros. Records was initially apprehensive about releasing Zaireeka, so manager Scott Booker carefully researched the costs of releasing a box set. Booker discovered that Zaireeka could be released so that once 12,000 copies had been sold, the label would break even. (Advance orders for the album came to 14,000 copies). Booker pitched the album to Warner Bros. Records president Steven BakerSteven Baker
Steven Paul Baker is an Australian rules footballer who played for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League from 1999 to 2011.-AFL career:...
.
Eventually, the two factions reached an agreement in which the album would be released, although Zaireeka would not count towards the seven albums the band was contracted to deliver to Warner Bros. For an advance of $200,000, the band would make both Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin. In addition, Booker mentioned that by allowing the media to proclaim how "weird" the band was with Zaireeka, they would be more prepared to treat The Soft Bulletin as a serious album. Zaireeka was released in October, 1997. , 28,000 copies have been sold.
Logistics of listening
The speakers being used may be physically positioned in many different configurations (e.g. at different heights or even in entirely different rooms). Some listeners may even choose to disable the left or right speaker of one or more systems. Synchronization errors between the audio systems may cause effects such as reverbReverberation
Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...
or echo
Delay (audio effect)
Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.-Early delay...
being heard on one disc before the original sound is produced from another. Further, the type and quality of each audio system affects the relationship between the four CDs.
The Boom Box Experiments
After completion of Zaireeka, The Flaming Lips tried an unconventional method to tour the album. "The Boom Box Experiments", like "The Parking Lot Experiments", involved tapes being played at the same time. However, these shows were held in conventional rock venues, and the band supplied their own boom boxesBoombox
Boombox is a colloquial expression for a portable cassette or CD player. Other terms known are ghetto blaster, jambox, or radio-cassette. It is a device capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music , usually at relatively high volume...
. Coyne and Drozd conducted two "choirs" of people controlling the boom boxes, giving them instructions for actions like turning the volume up or down, while Ivins controlled the mixer
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
.
Songs played in The Boom Box Experiments include:
- "The Big Ol' Bug Is the New Baby Now"
- "A Winter's Day Car Accident Melody"
- "Altruism, or That's the Crotch Calling the Devil Black"
- "Heralding in a Better Ego"
- "Realizing the Speed of Life"
- "Schizophrenic Sunrise, or The Loudest Blade of Grass"
Aftermath and legacy
With Zaireeka, The Flaming Lips had overcome the loss of Ronald Jones and proved they could still work as a band. The situation at Warner Bros. Records was still dire, including a risk of being dropped from the label. However, songs had already been written for the next album, The Soft Bulletin, which would be both a critical hit for the band and their breakthrough into mainstream success. Following the release of Yoshimi Battles the Pink RobotsYoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
-Special edition DVD-Audio:-The Flaming Lips:* Wayne Coyne - guitar, vocals, artwork, mixing, production* Michael Ivins - bass guitar, keyboards, vocals, mixing, production, additional engineering...
in 2002, The Flaming Lips would return to the concept of surround sound with a DVD-Audio
DVD-Audio
DVD-Audio is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio is not intended to be a video delivery format and is not the same as video DVDs containing concert films or music videos....
special-edition of that album in 2003.
Zaireeka is viewed by the band as nothing more than an experimental release. "It was, and still is, intended to be listened to by other artists, musicians and producers," Coyne would later state in the liner notes for The Soft Bulletin 5.1, adding that they "never expected the less involved members of our audience to care about it."
About the songs
Zaireeka opens with "Okay I'll Admit That I Really Don't Understand", a mantra of sorts about the admitted lack of comprehension regarding one's situation. The second track, "Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)" [sic] tells a science-fiction story about a man who pretends to be a secret agent in the future and imagines his own psychological demise from the stress "of being the most important secret agent in the world". "Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair", the third song, is the tragic story of an airplane pilot who commits suicide mid-flight. The next song, "A Machine in India", is about the "dull and depressing, mild insanity" that Wayne Coyne's partner slips into during her menstrual cycleMenstrual cycle
The menstrual cycle is the scientific term for the physiological changes that can occur in fertile women for the purpose of sexual reproduction. This article focuses on the human menstrual cycle....
. Next, "The Train Runs over the Camel but Is Derailed by the Gnat", is a speech by a man who is on the verge of discovery, but ends up "talking himself into circles". Track six, "How Will We Know? (Futuristic Crashendos)", is based on an urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
that being exposed to high and low frequencies can cause a person to experience premonitions, and thus contains its infamously extensive frequencies that caused the band to place a warning on the album cover and inside the booklet. The seventh song, "March of the Rotten Vegetables", is "music for a cartoon about a group of demented vegetables". The eighth and final song, "The Big Ol' Bug Is the New Baby Now", contains a spoken-word story about Coyne's dogs; the track ends the album with loud barking from each disc. On the 10th anniversary of Zaireeka, Wayne Coyne himself made and distributed an additional 5th disc to go along with the set. A limited amount of copies were made, and were handed out at the 10th anniversary listening party for the album. The disc, which looks identical to the other four discs with an exception of the disc being numbered 10, contains what was originally discs 5 through 10.
Critical reception
Critical reaction to the album was polarized. Rolling StoneRolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
gave Zaireeka four stars out of five, writing: "Zaireekas wall-of-surround-sound approach melds droning-rock dissonance with warped, off-kilter pop melodies, producing a totally immersing post-Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds
Pet Sounds is the eleventh studio album by the American rock band The Beach Boys, released May 16, 1966, on Capitol Records. It has since been recognized as one of the most influential records in the history of popular music and one of the best albums of the 1960s, including songs such as "Wouldn't...
audio séance." Allmusic mentioned that the album would only really be accessible to hardcore Flaming Lips fans, but that "they're in for the musical experience of a lifetime".
Critics who disliked the album cited what they viewed as a ridiculous concept. Salon remarked in its review that "Musically
Other formats
Wayne Coyne confirmed that Zaireeka will eventually be released on DVD format in the vein of the surround-sound special editions of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Soft Bulletin, and At War with the MysticsAt War with the Mystics
-At War with the Mystics 5.1:Like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi, At War with the Mystics was released as a special edition 5.1 CD+DVD-Audio mix on October 24, 2006...
.
In the UK, the "Race for the Prize" and "Waitin' for a Superman" CD single
CD single
A CD single is a music single in the form of a standard size Compact Disc, not to be confused with the 3-inch CD single, which uses a smaller form factor. The format was introduced in the mid-1980s, but did not gain its place in the market until the early 1990s...
s were released in 2-disc sets.
Each disc of the two sets contained a different version of "Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)" and "Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair". This marked the first time material from the album would be released in the four-disc format in Europe. The "Waitin' for a Superman" Maxi-CD, as released in the US, contains stereo mixes of the two songs.
Track listing
All tracks written by The Flaming Lips. All four discs have identical track listings:External links
- Album information at the official Flaming Lips website.
- Information about The Parking Lot Experiments at the official Flaming Lips website.
- Information about The Boom Box Experiments at the official Flaming Lips website.
- Complete transcription of Zaireeka liner notes (via Wayback Machine, retrieved Aug 2002).
- [ Zaireeka] at Allmusic.