Double CD proved 'tough' for Lips

By 6 Music News reporter
By Georgie Rogers

Flaming Lips' last album At War With The Mystics was released in 2006

Frontman Wayne Coyne from psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips admits making their twelfth record has been tough.

The follow-up to 2006's At War With The Mystics, titled Embryonic, is due in September, and may be a two.

"We went into it thinking 'are we going to make a double album?' but it's harder than you would think," he said.

Emrbyonic is the band's first studio album in three years, although they released science fiction feature film Christmas On Mars in the meantime.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, Coyne said the new album came about through lengthy jam sessions and admitted picking songs for the final cut had proven tricky.

"Because we want to go in so many strange directions, sometimes we're unfocused and sometimes we're just so wishy washy," he said.

'Sick of it'

"You have to work on it, you have to really immerse yourself in it and be obsessed and shape it.

You're preparing this great thing but by the time it's ready you're sick of it Flaming Lips frontman, Wayne Coyne

"I think it must be like being a cook in the kitchen. You're preparing this great thing but by the time it's ready you're sick of it because you've been smelling it. You've got it in your hair and in your fingers and all that."

Coyne added that Embryonic should be ready by the autumn, but the band, who played the Rockness festival last weekend, still have to name the songs and put them in some sort of order.

But there will be no wastage. Despite the group's habit of recording and discarding surplus material, only "a couple of things" from the current recording sessions will remain unused.

Nonetheless, the star confessed to pre-release nerves.

"It's great and thrilling but kind of scary because you just don't know if it's going to work."