Earlier this year The Flaming Lips released one of their most eclectic works yet, Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. An entirely collaborative album, featuring works with artists as diverse as Yoko Ono, Nick Cave, Tame Impala, Erykah Badu and Ke$ha. A record our Tone Deaf reviewer said was “at its best when things are at their weirdest.”
It could be the mantra for the Oklahoma outfit, as now, in the same vein, the band have announced that they’ve taken part in a collaborative ‘reimagining’ of one of progressive rock’s most influential and important albums, King Crimson’s (quasi)eponymous debut, In The Court Of The Crimson King.
The original 1969 album remains one of the most influential of its era, featuring the original lineup spearheaded by virtuoso guitarist Robert Fripp, along with multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, drummer Michael Giles and lyricist and “illumination” from Peter Sinfield; along with the vocals of Greg Lake who went on to form Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
For its 2012 reworking, The Flaming Lips have joined forces with other psych-freak-out adventurers like Linear Downfall, New Fumes, Spaceface, and Star Death and White Dwarfs (which features Lips frontman Wayne Coyne’s nephew, Dennis), all piecing together a truly spaced-out reworking of the 1969 psych-prog masterpiece, now titled Playing Hide And Seek With The Ghosts of Dawn.
It’s not the first time these bands have come together to reimagine some truly remarkable psychedelic albums. The Flaming Lips joined forces with Star Death and White Dwarfs (along with both Hnery Rollins and Peaches) to completely rework Pink Floyd’s 1973 magnum opus, Dark Side Of The Moon.
This time however, as the Future Heart points out, the five different bands have attempted to re-interpret each of the five songs that make up King Crimson’s landmark 1969 LP into a 21st century context. Linear Downfall ditches the saxophone and jazz for a distorted maelstrom of noise on opener ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’.
New Fumes mutates the peaceful flutes of ‘I Talk to the Wind’ into something much darker. Everyone gets together for an all-star jam on ‘Epitaph’, and helps add a truly contemporary psychedelic bleakness to the song’s apocalyptic lyrics.
‘Moonchild’ is given weight by Steven Drozd’s bombastic drum-flurries; while Star Death and White Dwarfs do a very faithful rendition of the album’s title track to close.
The cover album is only available on limited edition multi-coloured vinyl from Dallas’ Good Records, but will have an online release sometime in the future. For now however, you can stream the album in its entirety over on The Flaming Lips’ Satellite Heart Radio.
There’s also footage of the album’s recording process at Future Heart, while you can also view footage of Linear Downfall joining The Flaming Lips for a rendition of ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ during one of their Guiness World Record attempt shows earlier this year.
Listen to New Fumes, featuring The Flaming Lips, reworking of ‘Moonchild’ below:
