The Flaming Lips And Stardeath And White Dwarfs With Henry Rollins And Peaches Doing Dark Side Of The Moon

The Flaming Lips, Stardeath & White Dwarfs | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 4, 2010)
• Original Release Date: 2010
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: WEA/Reprise
• ASIN: B003D8O8FY
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,773 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The world's most predictably unpredictable band, The Flaming Lips, have teamed up with their Oklahoma City brethren, Stardeath And White Dwarfs to record their own unique take of Pink Floyd's 1973 classic album 'The Dark Side Of The Moon,' under the title of The Flaming Lips and Stardeath And White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins And Peaches.
The collaborative project was recorded after several weeks of both bands touring the world together and mutually citing Pink Floyd as one of their favorite bands of all time and 'The Dark Side Of the Moon' as one of their primary influences. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Freakish Multicolored Side of the Moon, May 10, 2010

By 

L. Ricciuti (MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Flaming Lips And Stardeath And White Dwarfs With Henry Rollins And Peaches Doing Dark Side Of The Moon (Audio CD)

Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" is an amazingly powerful and passionate album about the anxieties of the human race. "The Flaming Lips and Star Death and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing Dark Side of the Moon" is something quite different. I am not blown away by the power and passion of it. I'm more impressed by its weirdness and originality than anything.

Let's start at the beginning. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side" opens with eerie sound effects and voices before easing into a mellow slide guitar tune ("Breathe") that I find very relaxing. To contrast, this album's version of "Breathe" is a loud bass-driven space-rocker, the slide guitar replaced with an array of strange, dissonent guitar noises that give the sensation of taking off in a rocketship. Interestingly, it sounds somewhat like Barrett-era Floyd.

The rest of the songs are full of weird surprises, some of which are more succesful than others. The highlight is probably The Flaming Lips' "Us and Them". While the Pink Floyd original is a dramatic epic that sounds like it has been made to fill a stadium, the version on this album has been made quiet, with Wayne Coyne sounding totally alone in a small room on the outside of which the world is collapsing. On the other hand, there's "Money", which has also been left to The Flaming Lips, who have turned it into an annoying robo-funk jam monstrocity.

This is no generic, "faithful" re-production. Some might even complain that the songs have been butchered, but I believe that so-called butchery is part of the art of making fresh interpretations of old songs. I don't want a Pink Floyd nugget with Flaming Lips sauce all over it, I want a new nugget with good cuts of both Flaming Lips AND Pink Floyd meat in it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Bag Of The Moon, May 12, 2010

By 

Alan Caylow (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Flaming Lips And Stardeath And White Dwarfs With Henry Rollins And Peaches Doing Dark Side Of The Moon (Audio CD)

I love the Flaming Lips, and I love Pink Floyd. Knowing that Pink Floyd are a huge influence on the Lips, you'd think that Wayne Coyne & company would hit their cover version of the Floyd classic, "Dark Side Of The Moon," right out of the park. Right? Well, not exactly. The Lips' take on "Dark Side" is really sick & twisted, in both great ways AND not-so-great ways. It's a real mixed bag. On the positive side, the Lips' musicianship and studio prowess are still in top form---and if you're gonna cover this legendary Floyd album, you'd *better* be in top form---and the two standout tracks for me are the two that are most faithful to the Floyd original: "The Great Gig In The Sky" (featuring a scorching vocal turn by singer Peaches), and a totally slammin', barnburning workout of the instrumental "Any Colour You Like." And getting the one-and-only Henry Rollins to do all of the spoken-word stuff is truly inspired casting.

As for the rest of the album, which is *drastically* altered by Coyne & company from the Floyd originals...."Breathe" and "On The Run" are a little bit jarring; the soft, acoustic remake of "Time" is, sorry to say, pretty boneheaded; the electronic, punch-drunk rendering of "Money" is....amusing (I suppose), and "Us And Them", minus *both* the percussion AND the classic echo effect on the lead vocals, just kinda lies there. However, the concluding "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" come off okay (I guess).

So, to sum up, dear reader: The Flaming Lips' reworking of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" ain't gonna make you forget the classic original album, but, if nothing else, it's certainly interesting. The Lips' tribute to Floyd is well appreciated, and I'll give the Lips points for effort. Do you like the Flaming Lips and/or Pink Floyd? You do? Then go ahead and buy it. Why not.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shades of the FAR SIDE OF THE MOON revisited, June 23, 2010

By 

W. T. Hoffman "artist and musician" (Pennsylvania, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Flaming Lips And Stardeath And White Dwarfs With Henry Rollins And Peaches Doing Dark Side Of The Moon (Audio CD)

I'm a huge FLAMING LIPS fan, and as far as DARK SIDE OF THE MOON goes, for someone of my Generation X vintage, the album is practically burned into my DNA. Naturally, that makes this an automatic buy for me. Normally FLAMING LIPS do a pretty good job with remakes, having heard remakes of BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY by the LIPS that sounds almost mirrorlike, and Radiohead's KNIVES OUT another excellent choice. So, what happens here? The short answer might be that the LIPS decided to take a very postmodern, psychedelic electronica, and mash it to artrock, to give this FLOYD classic a new lense to view it thru. After all, if FLAMING LIPS simply remade the album note for note, sound for sound, why even bother listening? Going into it, they must have decided to use either distortion to overwhelmed the electronic soundscape, while at times matching the late night, washed out DUB effects, for the isolation and madness, that whisper of insanity insistantly calling from the back of the skull . The LIPS brought in cool supporting characters to help with the little extras. Casting HENRY ROLLINS as the crazy man who talks deranged nonsense, works perfectly. My only question, is how and/or if these STARDEATH & WHITE DRAWFS musicians, add anything substancial to the songs they play on. Their songs have a bit more overdrive than I normally enjoy. BUT...it works, it relates to the insanity theme of the DARK SIDE album. As the lazer first hits the CD disc, SPEAK TO ME pulls you right in, with the sonic effect of heartbeats fading into Rollin's psycho talk. The listener clings to the parts of the songs that remained fixed to the original arangement, while processing thru the parts of the album where distorted electronics and mind searing guitar solos, sit on top a simple rock beat. The leads mirror the original guitar leads, without slavish reproduction...exactly what you might expect with musicians this original. Thankfully, the singer keeps the melodies recognisable. BREATHE, at least when it starts, reproduced far less of the original album's sound, except for the layering of effects that both PINK FLOYD and FLAMING LIPS exploit occasionally within their style. ROLLIN's mad laff, sets the song up, and we ride shotgun til the piece CRASHES and EXPLODES into ON THE RUN. Just like the original, ON THE RUN opens with an asthmatic cough and weeze, which is looped to produce a totally cool rhythm. A keyboard set to HELL HOUND SCREAM gives those eerie organ chords Wright used. The movement into the song TIME is hard to pinpoint, since you dont hear tons of alarm clocks. Yet, it hardly seems to matter. Its when the TIME lyrics are sung, that the intensity and creativity of this album's direction really starts to shine. From all the heavy texture on the album's opening numbers, suddenly the LIPS are nearly producing a DUB remix of the original FLOYD version, with the lyrics being forced up front and center. THE GREAT GIG IN THE SKY replaces the free jazz vocalizing of Doris Troy with "Peaches"...and she puts down her take on Doris's iconic vocals PERFECTLY. Of course, MONEY is the album's original mega smash world wide hit, and the LIPS dont disappoint with this number. It keeps the jingling coin loop central to the song, just as FLOYD used the coins hitting the opening draw of the cash register. (Would a cash register's 1972 sound be recognisable today, since the modern electronic registers never make that sound anymore?) Various electronics and synthesizers do a good job replacing the bass line, with a clean, nearly underproduced picture of the 7/4 riff that continues thru most of the song, til the BASS WALK DOWN comes in. The vocals on this song, are EXTREMELY transformed, with overdrive and distortion. Somehow the song comes off as heavy and understated simultaneously. US AND THEM utilizes the same distant, soft, spacey opening as the original. When classics like this are performed, the fans often wish to hear their favorite guitar solos reproduced as closely as possible, even if the guitar effects have been substancially altered. For the most part, that is how this guitar lead was approached, ie, with reverence. It shined a new light on an old favorite, without ripping the heart out with an overuse of overdrive effects. ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE has hard rock drums, pushed under distorted guitar, tacked onto beautiful electric piano parts, braced against noise-like keyboard buzzes and bumps. It sounds....crazy. As it should, of course. Once more there's enough of PINK FLOYD's DARK SIDE married to FLAMING LIPS acid punk overdrive, to make the whole project work. The sparse textures, and quiet whispering lyrics, bring an ominous vibe on the remake of BRAIN DAMAGE. When the electric guitar lines holler out, along with what sounds like a musical saw sound, it adds a mindnumbing florish to FLOYDS original. Nothing is taken away, except the acute expectations which come from hearing the same album a thousand times. Towards the song's end, the soundscape freaks out, becoming increasingly textured and atonal, to match the insanity of DARK SIDE'S lyrics. (My mind views the troubled distortions portrayed in the guitar, as the band's collective memories of Syd Barrett's meltdown). WHen ECLIPSE starts, the FLAMING LIPS have metamorphised out of their freaky internalized monologues, and are back to being a punk band using DUB effects to make the song have a completely relevant, 2010 appeal. ITs an album that begins and ends clinging to sanity, that's wrapped around a creamy insane center.

Lets face it, an album like this is going to have a limited appeal at its best. If you are into that whole genre of music related to Flaming Lips, what might be called 80s psychedelic punk, morphed into 90s experimental alternative, linked onto 00s Techno-rock YOSHIMI --EMBRYONIC albums, and if you like PINK FLOYD's "DARK SIDE of the MOON", its likely you'll enjoy this album. If you just like PINK FLOYD, and think a overdriven metal version is what you might be getting here, you might as well pass this album by. IF you dont like any FLAMING LIPS past SOFT BULLITINE, don't expect freaky orchrestral rock either. However, if you have a punk alternative heart, matched to a 70s art rock soul, with the eyes of a Yoshimi robot synthesizer, you will GROOVE this baby all the way to the Dark Side of the Moon. And that's quite a trip.