The Flaming
Lips – 7 Skies H3
(100-Minute
Edit by soniclovenoize)
Disc One:
1. I Can’t
Shut Off My Head
2. Meepy
Morp (Calliope Trance with Major and Minor Celestial Sections)
3. Radiation
Wind
4. Battling
Voices From Beyond
5.
Electronic Toy Factory
6. In A
Dream
7.
Metamorphosis
Disc Two:
8. Requiem
9. An Outpouring
of Immaculate Light From The Heavens Consumes Your Body
10. Meepy
Morp (Reprise)
11. Riot In
My Brain!!
12. 7 Skies
H3 (Main Theme)
13. Can’t
Let It Go
This is my
own unique edit of The Flaming Lips’ epic 24-hour song, “7 Skies H3”, edited to
the length of a 100-minute double-album.
Each of the song’s fourteen movements were extracted from the 24-hour
piece to represent a “song” on the “album”; each song was then edited down to
an appropriate length for that particular song in the context of a
double-album. In effect, some tracks act
as mere transitions to others, while some tracks remained epic in scope (in the
context of a double-album anyways). While
similar to the band’s own official 50-minute edit released on limited edition
vinyl for Record Store Day in 2014, my 100-minute edit is twice that length and
much more inclusive; not only allowing specific songs a more epic breath that
they deserved but including music that was completely removed from the RSD
release altogether. All track segues are intact and
this album plays as a continuous 100-minute piece--although one could separate
tracks 1-7 as Disc One (49 minutes) and tracks 8-13 as Disc Two (51 minutes). All official song titles are used except for
the unnamed movements, which will default to the long-held fan-chosen
titles.
By the
2010s, The Flaming Lips have reached a mid-life crisis. They had already made their cherished
acid-punk indie releases in the 1980s; they already had their breakthrough
noise-pop hit in 1993 with “She Don’t Use Jelly”; they already made their
self-serving experimental four-disc
1997 album, Zaireeka; they had already made their critically acclaimed
symphonic-pop masterpiece The Soft Bulletin in 1999; they had already managed the trick
of gaining mainstream success while still retaining their core audience with
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in 2002; they had already made a complete
musical about-face into dark, hypnotic Krautrock for Embryonic in 2009. If they refuse to break-up, what does a band
who has already done everything do next?
The answer: whatever the fuck they want.
This of
course meant a series of bizarre EP releases throughout 2011 which included: a
song meant to be played on 12 different cell phones simultaneously; recordings
released on flash drives encased in marijuana-flavored gummy skulls; and a
six-hour song released inside a strobe light toy. While one could perceive this as pure
gimmick, this observer saw it as a result of the combined boredom with the typical
rock-band archetype and the realization of ultimate artistic freedom, something
earned after 30 years of making music.
But it was that six-hour song, “I Found A Star On The Ground”, that set
a new bar for the band searching for something interesting to fill their time
in 2011: how does one top a six-hour song?
With a 24-hour song, of course!
“7 Skies H3”
tells the story of a protagonist whose love commits suicide, and the listener
embarks on a psychedelic journey through his grief process as well as a musical
representation of her afterlife. The
song—becoming an insane challenge for Flaming Lips fans to even listen to it in
its entirety—was released to a limited edition of 13 copies on Halloween 2011,
encased in an actual human skull. It was
also broadcast as a live webstream, which continually (and to this day) plays
the song indefinitely. While detractors
found even more gimmick to condemn, there was one thing they could not argue:
“7 Skies H3”contained some of the best music The Flaming Lips ever produced.
Unfortunately, much of that great music was lost to it's own daunting massiveness. Does one really have the time, energy and will-power to sift through a literal day of music to appreciate the highlights? Some fans did... notably StrangePets who made both a 90-minute and 213-minute cut of "7 Skies H3" (which urged me to do the same!). The Flaming Lips probably took notice, and issued their own condensed 50-minute version as an exclusive Record Store Day release in 2014. Their "distillation" RSD cut showcased some of the most interesting music they'd made in their 30 year career as a standalone album, rather than a 24-hour endeavor. Unfortunately not all of the magical moments from the full endeavor made the cut, notably the atmospheric interlude of "Radiation Wind", the quaint chaos of "Electronic Toy Factory", the ending jam of "Requiem" and it's following "The Other Side", and the driving ecstatic jam of “An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From the
Heavens Consumes Your Body” and it's singular rainstorm breakdown. And criminally, the centerpiece of 7 Skies H3--the seven-hour emotionally-catastrophic sound-experiment "Metamorphosis"--was reduced to a trite five minutes and lacked any of the nuances that made it one of The Flaming Lips' masterworks. Is it possible to make a concise 7 Skies H3 as a typical album that could not only be enjoyed in one sitting, but also retain the aforementioned epic attributes? I have found a run-time that precisely doubles the RSD release is the perfect length, assembled as a double LP--discs timing 49 and 51 minutes respectively--while still edited for continuous play just as the original 24-hour song.
Disc One
1. “I Can’t Shut Off My Head” [7:45]
My 100-minte
edit of 7 Skies H3 begins with one of the four lyric-based compositions that
explains the concept of the album itself.
While the original full-length version of “I Can’t Shut Off My Head”
contained eight verses and ran 25:39, the Record Store Day edit cut it down to
three verses and running at 8:23 (as well as adding superfluous echo onto
Wayne’s vocals). My edit is structured
similarly as the RSD edit, as I chose to include what I felt were the three
best verses (1, 2 & 4) as well as an instrumental introduction. Additionally, each verse was edited down from
seven to five lines, omitting the two weakest lines of lyric for each
verse. The instrumental passages were
then edited to match the length of each verse.
Because of this, my edit is a bit more concise than the official RSD
edit, clocking in at 7:45.
2. “Meepy Morp (Calliope Trance with Major and
Minor Celestial Sections)” [3:15]
Following is
what fans called “Calliope Trance with Major and Minor Celestial Sections” but
was officially titled “Meepy Morp” on the RSD record. Originally an hour in length, I have reduced
it down to just over three minutes to keep the album moving, featuring three
different sections of the piece to give a feeling of variation as
the instrumental progresses.
3. “Radiation Wind” [2:36]
An
officially unnamed track “Radiation Wind”, originally running 37 minutes and
not appearing on the RSD version at all, is reduced to a two-minute
interlude before the battle begins.
4. “Battling Voices From Beyond” [4:02]
The epic
“Battling Voices From Beyond” was a grueling two hours and 37 minutes on the
original 24-hour "7 Skies H3". While it
was edited down to 3:05 on the RSD vinyl, my edit is a paced 4:02, which
showcases several of the interesting sounds that dance around the pounding main
vocal riff.
5. “Electronic Toy Factory” [2:27]
Another
track that was completely omitted from the 50-minte RSD edit, the 10-minute and
unnamed “Electronic Toy Factory” (featuring the experimental duo Pitchwafuzz),
is edited down to a reasonable 2:27, acting as simply a linking track between two main selections.
6. “In A Dream” [6:28]
The original
version of the second of four lyrical songs ran an hour and 4 minutes, which
was edited down to a feasible 4:51 on the RSD release and included additional
vocal overdubs to smooth of the mix.
Here I present a more hypnotic 6:28 mix, organized into two verses.
7. “Metamorphosis” [22:27]
The massive
centerpiece of 7 Skies H3 is “Metamorphosis”, which originally ran seven hours
in length! It was reduced to an
anticlimactic five minutes on the RSD edit, fading out at the end of side A. With a theoretical double-album format, we can
allow “Metamorphosis” to retain its true epic proportions. My edit spans a reasonable 22:27 and features
my favorite elements of the original seven-hour piece. It is meant to be the conclusion of the first
disc of this theoretical double album.
Disc Two
8. “Requiem” [5:15]
The second
disc begins with the third of four lyric-based compositions on the album, which
is also coincidentally the mid-point of the 24-hour "7 Skies H3". Originally spanning 23:20—essentially a
3-minute song with a 20-minute jam—the RSD release unfortunately exorcised the
ending 20 minutes completely. Here I
have restored the ending jam, although only keeping about two minutes of it for the sake of emotional
finality for the song.
9. “An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From the
Heavens Consumes Your Body” [25:58]
The series
of musical movements which follow are mostly absent from the RSD edit, what
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne describes as “the other side of this long
journey through death”, and seems to musically depict the significant other's journey in the afterlife. It starts with the unnamed but aptly fan-titled “The
Other Side”; originally clocking in at
over an hour, an edit of the serene piece eventually found a way onto 2013's
The Terror as the outro to "You Lust". Because of this, I have
excluded “The Other Side” from my edit of 7 Skies H3 in the name of redundancy.
Next is the unnamed yet fan-titled “An Outpouring of Immaculate Light From the
Heavens Consumes Your Body” (but described by Wayne as a “Bb chord with varying
accompaniment”, which would also suffice as a title, I suppose), originally spanning three and a half hours and also completely
missing from the RSD release. In
reality, the movement is a loop of the same 26-minute no-wave jam in Bb with different
sets of embellishments upon each repeat (with one even being played
backwards!). For my mix, the piece is
introduced by one of the greatest moments of the original 24-hour edit: a between-rotation
breakdown of a rainstorm, ticking stopwatch and chiming keyboards. I then have included a
complete rotation of the full 26-minute jam.
10. “Meepy
Morp (Reprise)” [2:42]
“Meepy Morp
(Reprise)”—also known as the fan-titled “Movement of Celestial Bodies”—was
originally two hours and 15 minutes in length, although it is simply a loop of
the same eleven-minute piece. On the RSD
edit, “Meepy Morp” is paired down to a short, two-minute interlude. I have made a similar edit, but allowed the
piece to continue for another 40 seconds to create a logical outro to the
instrumental.
11. “Riot In My Brain!!!” [4:32]
The
destructive noise jam “Riot In My Brain!!!” originally totals an exhausting
hour and a half, but was trimmed down to a digestible 4:28 on the RSD release;
I have made a similar edit.
12. “7 Skies H3 (Main Theme)” [6:26]
The gorgeous
main theme to 7 Skies H3 (fan-titled “Forever Floating”) drifts on for two
hours and 12 minutes and includes three movements; the RSD release condenses it
down to 6:26. I have made a similar
edit, giving each of the three movements about two minutes of time. Coincidentally, my edit runs the same length of
the RSD release!
13. “Can’t Let It Go” [6:08]
The closing
song—the fourth lyric-based composition—originally ran eight minutes in length,
with the RSD release not bothering to edit it at all. Here I have trimmed it down to 6:08, with
numerous edits in the ending outro. In
effect, the build-up is no longer gradual, but immediately apparent and the
track is perceived as more bombastic to end this amazing 100 minutes of
music.
Flac/shn
--> wav --> mixing & editing in SONAR & Goldwave --> flac
encoding via TLH lv8
*md5,
artwork and tracknotes included
