I just bought Zaireeka!

I've got a copy at home myself that I've never played too - maybe we could get together one weekend and experiment?

Then, when we've finished doing that, we could even have a go at playing Zaireeka!

Two to go in the 'spatial' sound.

Not much mention made about number four...

(I do have that B.C. Gilbert single that has the two tracks to be played simultaneously on each side. The idea being you tape side 2, then play it while playing the A side. But I could never be arsed)

I've put the mixes up HERE - have a listen before I get busted.

It's a fucking amazing album. Now.

Yeah, but not my Zaireeka.

You can always convert WMAs to MP3s.

CD1 - Stereo
CD2 - Small CD Player from The Sharper Image
CD3 - Walkman Hooked up to a Guitar Amp
CD4 - Xbox
it was sweet....the only problem was the walkman which sometimes fell out of place

But When i feel like listening to it and don't feel like going through all the trouble of getting other people to start the different CD players i just play 2 CD's at a time. my favorite so far is CD3 on my stereo and CD2 on my Xbox which is pretty easy cause i have remotes for both. wayne coyne said on their website to try starting the CD's at completly different times or put the CD players in different rooms and just walk around the house. i might try those some other time

This was actually the whole point of Zaireeka though, if you dive into the liner notes. It allows you to experience it differently every time, because things will fall behind sometimes and jump ahead other times, effect precedes cause, etc. But if you're using players with wildly different timings, it gets annoying very quickly.

I also mixed the album down to a single CD using a ripping and music editing program. It's around somewhere. It's actually a pretty good album when you can hear it all together, even without the 8 channels.

Anybody got a mixed down version of Zaireeka around. Love to get a copy, right.

I had the Family Stereo system with CD1, the DVD player with CD2, my mp3/CD portable player with CD3, and Amber's Ghettoblaster (what do you call a portable with speakers in thesedays? due solely to the wonderful advances in social policies, there are no ghettoes anymore..) with CD4. I had some portable plug-in speakers but they would not work. So I had the mp3/portable playing over headphones.

While messing around with speakers (the family stereo had the leads of the right speaker knocked out), play units, etcet, I had a 'various artist' CD playing. This ended up playing entirely, and this gave the impression of a real gig, with the 'band' sitting around in their individual player units awaiting the lead singer to turn up, roadies wiring up shit, and the imaginary audience getting restless and going off to the kitchen to get another coffee.

You have to syncronise all four to play "Track xxx" at the same time, followed by "CD1" "CD2" "CD3" "CD4" in turn, like teletubbies awaiting selection for the 'documentary'. Only, I pressed the 'play' button twice on Ambers, so the first track missed CD4 entirely. No matter, track two started up fine, and apart from the mp3/CD player seemingly getting ahead and having to be 'paused' occasionally, all went fine.

Four units playing at once had the desired effect and as I had headphones 'half on' so as not to give that CD undue prominence, I had to sit and concentrate as you would at a gig, rather than do some irony.

And it was great/interesting/fine. Some tracks stood out, others were long and you wanted them to hurry up/finish and do the next one. (OK, I'm no music writer and my critical facilities only go as far as 'Yeah great', "Hmm this is getting dull" and "This is rub."

The final track "The big old bug is the new baby now" stood out, and as it ended with all four sound sources savaged by dogs, "Would you do it again?" I thought to myself.. Perhaps. If I ever get them portable speakers working. Until then, I think I'll find that nice 'download' of the mixed versions. Yes, two sound sources will be a bit dull compared to eight, but next time it will be a gig by a band playing stuff I know, rather than a 'new material' fans only type gig.

Shake down.

If you did it on your own, how did you manage to start all 4 players simultaneously (or don't you have to)? I've heard this can be the most difficult thing to achieve!

If you had help, what did the others think of the experience?

[* well, OK, maybe not any 4 identical CD's - I mean, not 4 copies of Trout Mask Replica or indeed 4 copies of one of Alice's Busted CD's, obv., that would just be silly - but 4 CD's of something reasonably spacey / unstructured e.g. 4 copies of Phaedra maybe?].

Were you able to experiment with playing different CD's in different M/C's or with with different volume settings etc. or did you just try to get all 4 sources approx. the same?

Were you able to move about between the sound sources at all and do you think it would help to have more space and be able to play it LOUDER?

One CD would have the most parts of the song, one of the others would have extra bits, and the other two would have atmospherical bits. Apart from one song where one CD had the whole acoustic track and the other three (six sound sources) had various tones.

Space/Loudness were reasonable. Ended up having to fade up certain units at particular points, and reducing all at one point due to being nice to neighbors etc.

And now, anyone elses take(s) on this. Has anyone else actually done this?

Do those of you who've tried the full 4-CD, 8-speaker experience complete with mucking about to get tracks in synch etc. reckon:
a) this is a fantastic idea that's long overdue and will make the album much more accessible; or
b) this will miss / destroy the entire point of the Zaireeka! experience?

We bought the original sheet music then played it on instruments that we made ourselves by trapping small animals, skinning them, drying the skins and then stretching them over frames we'd made by bending the branches from young saplings and tying them together with strips of bark....

(seriously stewart, you should really do the four-cd player thing, I think you'd really enjoy it....I'm sure the 5:1 will be cool, but the randomness of the 4 cd thing is pretty cool)

http://www.wscf.com/flintstones.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~selgart/smith/graphics/dlk.jpg

One of those pink robots Yoshimi had so many problems with on a later FLips album:

http://www.whosim.org/timetrap/avatars/pink_dalek.gif

http://home.earthlink.net/~selgart/smith/graphics/dlk.jpg

One of those pink robots Yoshimi had so many problems with on a later FLips album:

http://www.whosim.org/timetrap/avatars/pink_dalek.gif

Her name is Yoshimi - she's a black belt in karate
Working for the city - she has to discipline her body -
Cause she knows that it's demanding to defeat these
Evil machines - I know she can beat them -

Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots defeat me
Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots eat me

Those evil natured robots - they're programmed to
Destroy us - She's gotta be strong to fight them -
So she's taking lots of vitamins - cause she knows that
It'd be tragic if those evil robots win - I know
She can beat them -

kind of ruins the album, if you ask me. maybe it was just a poor mix-down that i heard. part of the fun when you do it on 4 systems it is that an entire system will get devoted to one area of frequencies - all the bass, for example. so the bass ends up being really massive sounding. when you smash it all together on one disc it sounds small and claustrophobic.

also, the mixes of those zaireeka songs that were on the 'superman' single are different than the album tracks

We never did it though. But I bet it would have been cool.

-- nabisco (--...) (webmail), March 30th, 2006 9:49 PM. (nabisco) (later) (link)

really, you need to hear it on four stereos... just the unwieldy lushness of it all.

Pity about the new Lips album, though...

aw, think so? as a sentimentalist, i loved it...

I don't know. I think it was Markelby's idea, though I may be wrong. Perhaps we put a message on the noticeboard and someone stole the idea. I honestly can't remember, I was very very drunk for most of the weekend.

I read that, somewhere

nah it was a broadcast of the show that was going on onstage, being sent out over AM radio ... the idea being, I guess, that you were hearing the show live plus having it "enhanced" by your own personal transmission

I was kinda underwhelmed by the effect until I had to take a leak during a show and could still hear everything loud and clear in the 'phones

I never saw any of the tape-loop shows but after the one with the cars they did a bunch of em at regular clubs where they had people bring boomboxes, handed out tapes, and wayne would play the crowd like a conductor

I've got a mixed-down version, and it's great, but clearly there's a lot of compression so much off the effect is lost.

...Mystics has some iffy tunes (It Overtakes Me) but I love its scrappy quality and silliness. The WAND is awesome and Vein Of Stars lovely. And what a nice touch the Floyd rips on Pompeii... are.

ah! i am less sad that i didn't pony up for the headphones now.

i remember going to the chelsea cinema as a kid, and being impressed that they piped the soundtrack of the movie into the toilets whileit was playing (though since the film was Cyrano De Bergerac, and i speak very little French, it didn't exactly help)

I've got a mixed-down version, and it's great, but clearly there's a lot of compression so much off the effect is lost.

its more the overblown ridiculousness of it, the fun of trying to get everything in sync, the mindfuck of how things sound different coming through different stereos, the excitement of string sections wooshing through your tinny PC speakers while your stereo speakers thud with Drozd's drums, and animal noise bark out from your TV.

i was just thinking the same thing! let's do it. i've only ever heard it properly once and it was awesome.

(do you still have the cds?! i ripped and sold mine... still, i guess ipods and portable speakers might be easier, anyway.)

I was really disappointed with the new album, although I like The W.A.N.D. and My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion. I didn't like Yoshimi much either. Oh well.

As for stereo mixdowns...the biggest problem with those, I think, isn't that they have less directional sound going on, but that they lose the randomness of a real playback (discs drifting out of sync is part of what makes it great and unique every time). I once built a set of contraptions in audiomulch, combining loop players (one for each disc) and very low frequency, low amplitude LFOs, which pull the different tracks out of time slightly with each other, but while it was a fun project, I never quite got it to work in a way I was happy with (or that felt random enough). I should try and tweak it actually, there's a load of new bits and pieces in audiomulch V1.0 which I've not even started fiddling with yet.

It's amazing to hear it properly with other people and all 4 discs playing, but to recreate that experience again is tiring. Can someone please link me to a superior mixed down version? I'd do it myself if I had the knowledge and/or means to. Thanks!

There is no point at all in listening to the mixdown.

I think you're right.

I also note that the 4LP (45rpm) version was one of the all-time great "Record Store Day" remnants.

Because we all have a number of CD playing devices, but who among us has four (working) turntables?

Have listened to this once ever 'properly', at school. Lugging two extra CD players into my friend's room, synchronising, giggling the whole way through. For that alone, thank you Flaming Lips

A good portion of the "Zaireeka" tracks are mixed down on the "Soft Bulletin Companion" cd