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- Released: November 2008
- Rating: 2/10
- Vote and comment on this album:View Comments
Phew, what a mouthful!
Its one thing being a cool and great (whacky) rock band: its another thing doing soundtracks.
Deliberately avoiding the accompanying DVD film, Im focussing on the music out of context.
Directed and written by frontman Wayne Coyne, it tells the story of the experiences of one Major Syrtis (yes really) during the first Christmas on a newly colonised Mars. Great idea eh?
As with all instrumental albums, like something Brian Eno did a few years ago (the titles escape me now), song titles seem to be plucked out of thin air, or in this case, outer space.
Just about every imaginary musical cliché (like those celestial lyric less harmonies and godly harps) has been used from proverbial sound effects to moon-scape (oops sorry Mars) sojourns which leave the listener, well, er, bored.
If theres any kind of originality here, its the slow urban jazz mood of Space Bible With Volume Lumps (mhhhh) , which is pretty good when you consider the rest of the rubbish around it.
Believe me, the track titles are much grander than they really are, and if the film is a bad as the score, then simply forget it.
Seriously, anyone with a bit of techno savvy could have created this.
File under : ZZZZZZZZZ. Stick to the day job Wayne.
Weblink:flaminglips.com /myspace.com/flaminglips /christmasonmars.co.uk
The full list of tracks included are :
1. Once Beyond Hopelessness
2. The Distance Between Mars And The Earth (part one)
3. The Horrors Of Isolation, The Celestial Dissolve, Triumphant Hallucination, Light Being Absorbed
4. In Excelsior Vaginalistic
5. Your Spaceship Comes From Within
6. Suicide And Extraordinary Mistakes
7. The Distance Between Mars And The Earth (part two)
8. The Secret Of Immorality: This Strange Feeling, This Impossible World
9. The Gleaming Armament Of Marching Genitalia
10. The Distress Signals Of Celestial Objects
11. Space Bible With Volume Lumps
12. Once Beyond HopelessnessView the discussion thread.blog comments powered by Disqus= 0) {query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;}}document.write(”);})();//]]]]>]]>
Elly Roberts passed away in 2011, but he was a man who was so passionate about all types of music and loved meeting his musical heroes, such as Mick Hucknall at a book signing at the Trafford Centre, Manchester in 2007.
A former teacher and also a music journalist, DJ and radio presenter on local community station Calon FM, plus appearances on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio 2, Elly started doing reviews for DVDfever.co.uk in 2004 and he did the majority of the CD and concerts reviews on the website.
I know also that he loved getting away for the summer to Spain and I hope that wherever he is now he is enjoying the hot sunshine and, as one of his friends has said on his Facebook page, that he is interviewing his musical heroes.