The Flaming Zaireeka

I walk into the classroom to find the desks in disarray, and ghetto blasters surrounding the room. Then I remember that post that I read a couple days prior. Oh today's that Flaming Lips Thing I sit on the ground with my back to the heater behind me as a support for my back and get out my composition note book to write down the observations I had and will make.

Finally we start and I hear four different audio tracks coming from each boom box "Track number one," from all of the stereos fallowed by a subsequent "one..." from the front "two.." from the left side "three..." from the back of the room where I was sitting "and four..." from the right side of the room. I thought that it would be four different songs that were meant to mesh with each other but it's something else entirely, each of the Cd's had a different part to the same song. The first song begins with some sweet bass guitar grooves and evolves quickly one instrument at a time until it's a complete song, at this point the stereos are almost right in sync, I enjoy the song.

The second song begins with drums that sound as though they are meant for battle, the different stereos are slightly out of sync now and each of them fight for beat supremacy. An eerie whisper is sounded by each of the stereos and as each one is ahead of the other it sounds as though the whisperer is circling around us as he does so. I see the title to be you're invisible now. I feel as though it is really reflecting the hollowing and translucent feel that the song, it's fallowed by a frightening scream that is sounded from all of the stereos. The song ends.

Next I hear the start of the next song. the stereos are more out of sync now. The song is called Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair, but so far it doesn't have any feeling of despair at all, just the sound of jet turbines accelerating. Ambiance builds through the dis junked parts and the music feels very weightless. Then the music shifts into it's parallel minor key and begins the sounds of despair as the name would suggest, the turbine sounds turn into synthesizers and clash even more to make the song sound desperate.

The fourth song is entitled A Machine in India and though the stereos are very very out of sync it manages to keep some sort of rhythm between the four competing tracks. One track has a what sounds to be a song with all of it's parts while the other tracks have mechanical sounding noises that pop in and out and random intervals. It's beginning to sound very much like an orchestra tuning. The underlying tracks take a dark turn as the above happy sounding music. It begins to sound very confused as the four separate tracks split into what could be four different completely different songs. Inhaled screams begin to sound from one player to the other until i felt I was in the middle of a holocaust, it's then melted away by an orchestra.

I can't believe how much farther ahead this track is than the last one. The fifth track is called The Train Runs Over the Camel but is Derailed by the Gnat. The song has a very sauntering feel to it sort of resembling the walk of a camel. It is then hurled by the percussion into a traditional song backed with vocals and the whole nine yards. That yet again changes into raw choral singing in a language I don't understand. Finally all three different parts intermingle and are thrown in with an organ. The organ is the last thing to die out, right after the sauntering feel returns.

The sixth song How Will We Know (Futuristic Crashendos) turns out to be the shortest one. It incorporates extremely high pitches in with quiet four part music which gets quieter until it's over.

March of the Rotten Vegetables is completely out of sync the fourth track is completely ahead of all the others and which have been competing for second since it took the lead. A piano playing in the treble clef takes the focus of the song and is matched by percussion, a windy sort of static then emerges and dominates all of the stereos and fills the room. Harmonics and overtones can be heard above these.

I'm told that this is the last song Big ol' Bug is the New baby Now. We're met with a story of a residence that has several dogs. Childish sounding music plays over the story. The story ends with a song emerging and at it's climax the vocals say "this big ol' bug is the new baby now," almost as if in slow motion as the music ends each of the stereos cuts to dogs going wild until the last one sounds, and you're surrounded.