Change begs itself.
I needed to do something different here. Too much has happened to remain the same. This will now be a home for mixtapes. I will still write about music that I love, sometimes even in the same fashion as before, but this place will change. I have a large mix backlog that can and will be shared, but I assembled one special for this occasion. Here is the inaugural Optimistic Underground mixtape:
So the Flaming Lips made a 6 hour song.
As a longtime fan I am horrified, annoyed, and yet.. far too curious not to listen. I’m over halfway through the first hour and thinking this hasn’t been any more a waste of time than any other new music from a great band I could be hearing. In other words, I’m glad I dove in. In all likelihood you will be too. It’s the only sort of trippy space adventure you’d expect to last so long. Listen below.
The Flaming Lips – I Found A Star On The Ground
Part 1 / 3
Part 2 / 3
Part 3 / 3
The story goes that band leader Wayne Coyne was playing with some psychedelic toy and thought, if this one device can provide hours of entertainment, why can’t a song? Hence the astounding, ridiculous length of this piece. For the increasingly preposterous band – already known for their gummy skulls, fetuses, and assorted collaborative gimmicks this year – it’s not such a leap toward releasing a quarter-day song. Let’s face it, if you’re already on their weird train, you’re psyched about this.
The USB stick containing the music is in there somewhere.
Having heard almost a third of this I can report that it’s basically a version of their Embryonic-era dirty ambient krautrock jams, stretching ever deeper into a black hole. It stretches as it goes on and folds in a few new wrinkles along the way. I won’t speculate as to where it goes in the next two segments but I can imagine if you enjoy the first 10 minutes, consider it a keeper. Fucked up way to get our attention aside, this is actually fun. Let me know if any of you have purchased the hallucinogen accessory kit pictured above.
Brock Van Wey took a headfirst leap off the end point of dub techno last year into the oceanic swells of ambient bliss on this first album under his given name. Instead of crashing into the waves and sinking, the man usually known as Bvdub simply took flight and never looked down. This is White Clouds Drift On And On.
Optimistic Underground 