Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Contemporary popular music > Rock & pop
|
Buy Now
Flaming Lips' Zaireeka (Paperback)
Loot Price: R251
Discovery Miles 2 510
You Save: R52
(17%)
|
|
Flaming Lips' Zaireeka (Paperback)
Series: 33 1/3
(sign in to rate)
List price R303
Loot Price R251
Discovery Miles 2 510
You Save R52 (17%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
Released in October 1997, the "Flaming Lips' Zaireeka" was met with
some critical praise and more general puzzlement. The album comes
as four separate CDs intended for playback at the same time. Which
means, of course, that four CD players are required. And four amps.
And eight speakers. And at least four sets of hands to make them
all go. "Zaireeka" requires several people to get together for the
express purpose of listening to music; there's nothing to dance to
and nothing to look at. It's almost quaint, really. There was a
time when people sat together to listen to records; and, "Zaireeka"
celebrates this disappearing moment. It is, in other words, an
album that does away with the very thing that caused recorded music
become a phenomenon so quickly in the 1920s and helped it stay that
way ever since: it is not convenient. Ten years later, convenience
continues to drive the music business from the top-down and the
listening experience from the bottom up. Digital music has become
divorced from physical reality; with an MP3 file played on devices
using flash ROM, the whole thing happens without a single moving
part. Headphones, the sound delivery technology most in favor, blur
the borders between device and listener, all in complete isolation.
We're shoving the speakers into our ear canals; the music is
literally inside of us even before it's left the wire. And so, the
human experience of music in the developed world is proceeding
along two parallel lines: we're either retreating into a private
world of solitary consumption, or we hear music in the background,
in coffee shops or on commercials, where it is ambience, part of an
environment. Which is part of what makes "Zaireeka" even more
fascinating now than it was at the time of release. In addition to
being a fantastic album of imaginative psychedelic pop and arguably
the Flaming Lips' masterpiece, it was first the final shot fired in
the struggle for the rock album to maintain the centrality it had
enjoyed since the late 1960s. It defies segmentation. The effort it
takes to hear the record properly ensures that the music will be
listened to carefully. It's music that even the interested will
experience only a few times in their lives; it involves hard work.
So listening to "Zaireeka" is a rare event, and it's also a social
experience.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.