"Hard News Bulletin: Flaming Lips Back In Surround"

Flaming Lips

HDTV Etc.caught up with Lips member and multi-instrumentalist, Steven Drozd, during a quick pit stop in the band’s home turf of Oklahoma. 

HDTV ETC.: What inspired doing Yoshimi, your first 5.1 surround mix, back in 2003?
STEVEN DROZD: Dave Fridmann, our producer, and Michael Ivins, our bass player and resident computer geek, were really into music in 5.1. Dave hooked up with (engineer/mixer)Elliot Scheiner, and Dave, Elliot, and Wayne (Coyne, lead singer) did the Yoshimi mix.They were obsessed with the fact that many surround music titles had pretty boring mixes,so they wanted to take it as far as the format could go. It was then really natural to go back and do Soft Bulletin after Yoshimi went so well and was so positively received. The way we work is that we record a bunch of tracks and eventually edit out a lot when we do the stereo mix. Now, in 5.1, we can bring a lot of these unused parts back in and hear all these instruments we didn’t hear before. We did there mix of Soft Bulletin as we were making At War With The Mystics, so it was real interesting to go back and forth between the new record and the Soft Bulletin tracks that were recorded as far back as 1997.

HDTV ETC.: Was it an archeological dig?
SD: Oh, absolutely! Now we record in Pro Tools, so recalling all the settings is easy because it’s automated. But back in 1997, all those Soft Bulletin tracks were recorded on analog tape and RADAR (Otari’s “Random Access Digital Audio Recorder”). Things got really sketchy. We would find that we had the Roland Space Echo, but what setting was that on back in ’97? 

HDTV ETC.: Do you view the whole package—including liner notes, videos, and other extras—as part of the experience for each album?
SD: To Wayne’s credit, and also because of in-put from our manager, Scott Booker, there’s a lot of thought in the delivery of our music and how it’s presented. In fact, Wayne is working on some video stuff for the upcoming Mystics DVD as we speak. Let’s go back in time some30-odd years to something like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. You buy the album,you get this big foldout sleeve, you get the graphics, and you get this beautiful package.Now we have the ability to do these amazing multimedia packages that complement the music, and we should make the most of it.

HDTV ETC.: What can we look forward to on the upcoming At War With The Mystics DVD-Audio + CD set?
SD: More of the same, but I think there’s going to be even more video stuff. There’s been a delay in getting the Mystics DVD-Audio out because we’re still putting together all the extras. We’re stepping it up a notch!