The Flaming Lips Create An Interactive YouTube Symphony

The Flaming Lips, a band who is no stranger to technology having sung about it in their music (even if it did involve a woman battling pink robots who have been sent to destroy us), has embraced the zeitgeist and released their latest song, “Two Blobs F*cking”, on YouTube. But being the Flaming Lips and fond of experimentation, a little mischief, and audience interaction (their live shows at one point featured giant inflatable balls flying into the crowd—sometimes with Wayne Coyne inside), their YouTube video is slightly different than the standard guitar-and-a-webcam variety. Rather, it’s an audiovisual symphony that uses 12 electronic devices—be they smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop—to play different tracks that, when played simultaneously, will compose a complete song.

The project echoes their four disc album from 1997, Zaireeka, which could be played on 4 different audio systems to create a harmony. But this new musical concoction is more of a collective experience (unless you run an electronics store); instructions on how to experience it are given in the rather shambolic video above featuring Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd. Essentially it amounts to going to their YouTube page on 12 different devices, each one keying up one of the 12 elements of the song—named Two Blobs F*cking 001-012—and all pressing play at the same time. After that you’ll experience a kind of experimental multi-track music-video-instrument. But depending on how successful you are at syncing up all the phones, the results may be just as shambolic as the instructional video, so if you don’t fancy the stereophonic version, you can try out the cheat’s version here.