The Flaming Lips
Hypnotist
WARNER
The Flaming Lips are still celebrating the 20th anniversary of their seminal 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots this year with a gigantic box set and a worldwide tour where the psychedelic rock band is performing the cult-classic LP in its entirety. The latest installment of this campaign is the limited-edition vinyl EP Hypnotist, a cotton-candy pink curio for collectors that assembles mostly fan-favorite demos previously only available on the recent six-CD Yoshimi anniversary package.
The headline track here is the 24-minute psych-freakout odyssey “Psychedelic Hypnotist Daydream”—a rock-leaning head trip on a cosmic scale and an amusing diversion. Side B includes the hilarious “Duck Dodgers Theme,” the crunchy garage rocker “I Know I’ve Got to Make That Dream the Real Thing,” and an instrumental version of the de facto classic “Do You Realize??”
When Wayne Coyne revisited the original 4-track recording of “Psychedelic Hypnotist Daydream” in a pre-release teaser video, you can see even he’s a bit flummoxed by how to explain the transfer process for this particular recording to the digital recorder they used at the time (producer Dave Fridmann didn’t have any leads either). Coyne explains in the behind-the-scenes clip that the band finally realized that part of this old demo tape is running forward and the other side is running backward. There were hundreds of tapes from these demo sessions and this one slipstream accident they exhumed from that archive feels fitting for that exploratory era full of blissful accidents. It shows that The Flaming Lips put a concentrated amount of time and effort into Yoshimi, and it’s worth the amount of attention the band is giving it all these years later.
The Hypnotist EP is a warm piece of rock mythos for fans of The Flaming Lips, and it’s great to finally hear it on vinyl. The four tracks really show off not only the experimental side of the band, but also their playful spirit that still remains today even on darker releases like American Head and Oczy Mlody. Even though Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots can be an incredibly poignant LP, it always has that Wayne wink peeking through the clouds.
