Alternative
The Flaming Lips are reissuing “At War With The Mystics” for its twentieth anniversary: Rhino and Warner put it out on 13 November as six CDs, six LPs and digital, with the band’s eleventh album remastered for the first time.
Of the new material, nineteen are previously unreleased demos and fourteen are studio recordings that have never come out, among them “Don’t Be Shy”, “Death In Picher”, “Jesus And A Spider” and a reading of Devo’s “Gates Of Steel”. Added to that are forty-two non-album tracks: B-sides, alternate mixes, radio sessions, film work from between 2005 and 2007 and covers of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”.
The two live recordings are “U.F.O.s At The Zoo”, the Oklahoma City concert that until now existed only on video, and a “Live At The Hollywood Bowl” that has never been issued. Neither goes on the vinyl: both are CD exclusives.
The original album dates from April 2006. “The Wizard Turns On…” took the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and the album itself won one for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, for Dave Fridmann.
Text by Marçal Bonastre