And voila, the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka is born. More power to ya, Wayne. The Oklahoma City band's ninth full-length studio release, it is undoubtedly their strangest album--which says quite a bit coming from one of the strangest bands out there--if for no other reason than because of its unconventionality, which requires instructions for, ahem, proper play. But according to Coyne, the label expects out-there projects from the Lips, even one that Wayne himself considers "something that's even weird for us." "I don't think it surprised them as much as we thought it would," says the Lips' chatty, mad-scientist-like frontman, sitting in an office at Warner Bros. Burbank. "I think we were more surprised at how little they were surprised. They don't look at it like, 'You've gone insane.' They look at it like, 'You're staying insane.'"

It's precisely such insanity that makes Zaireeka so fascinating in concept. Its genesis can be traced back to the band's semi-legendary parking lot experiments, including one at the 1997 South By Southwest music conference. Then, some 2000 looky-loos packed the upper level of an Austin, Texas parking garage to witness a megaphone-wielding Coyne orchestrate a composition via the cassette players of some 20 parked cars. Beyond that though, Zaireeka stems from the band's perpetual need to hear music differently. They like the balance turned all the way to the left. They like spinning multiple copies of the same song simultaneously. "We've even tried to make songs that were so out of phase with each other that the louder you turn it the softer it came out of your speakers," Coyne says. This from a man who actually enjoys when radio station signals bleed over into one another. "Sometimes two [stations] will do this amazing, accidental blend," he muses. "Here's two songs that normally I would hate that are jammed together in some weird way, and instead of looking at it and thinking, 'That's two songs that don't belong together,' you think, 'Listen to that, those actually match up tonally. Rhythmically they are totally fucked, but melodically they are making new things.'"

Zaireeka has eight songs. Each disc has elements for each song, with one disc containing the main melodies and infrastructure, if you will. The other three discs include various vocals and other instrumental ambiance like the sound of dogs barking or, in the case of "How Will We Know? (Futuristic Crescendos)," high-pitched frequencies supposedly prone to inducing nausea. (They didn't.) My personal Zaireeka lab experiment takes place in my living room. Here, a friend and I go three-fi, surrounded by the home stereo and two boom boxes. (Note that I said a "FRIEND and I," thus refuting Coyne's contention that music writers would have a difficult time with Zaireeka because they have no friends and thus, no one from which to borrow any additional CD players. Take that, Wayne.) We twiddle with the volume knobs, deliberately achieve out-of-sync-ness and even throw an odd power-pop CD into the mix. The cats freak, the friend suggests the college dorm as the appropriate listening venue (one CD per room, doors wide open, keg flowing) and I get off on creating my own personal cacophony. As for the music, well, from what I hear, it's a loose, narcotic mix of '70s-inflected pop, Moody Blues-like grandeur and the Lips' own perpetual dementia. But, reality is, absorbing the actual tunes proves secondary to pondering the process itself.

Coyne's own attempt at showing off the concept at Warner Bros. Burbank do not fare as well. Once again barking out orders through his trusty megaphone, he instructs four assistants to hit "play" on the four CD players positioned in the corners of the label's patio area. As the music starts to take shape, Coyne encourages everyone to wander in a circle. And here we are, hacks, flacks, schmoozers and Warner Bros. shakers shuffling around like lobotomized drones at the state insane asylum, except that we're making a conscious effort to point an ear toward each stereo as we round the corner. But before the event ever reaches any sort of symphonic epiphany, multiple stereos fizzle out. After two more unsuccessful attempts, Coyne, obviously disappointed, cuts his losses and drags the crowd out back for a more-successful run-through of the tried-and-true (relatively speaking) parking lot experiment.

			"Thirty-Five Thousand Feet Of Despair"
			"March Of The Rotten Vegetables"
			"The Big Ol' Bug Is The New Baby Now"

While it might not have "worked," it was memorable in an event-as-performance-art sort of way. It's quite a singular accomplishment, if nothing else, for the Coyne to play Simon Says and spur a crowd of industry folks into milling around in a circle, don't you think? But Coyne would prefer that this twisted little gathering succeeded instead in provoking thoughts about how artists create and how listeners listen to music. "We are trying to find some way of making records that are different, even different from our own records, and not even just in the sound of it but in the whole approach," he says. "And people say, 'Well, gee, what are you going to do? It comes out of two speakers, it's all been done.' I don't agree with that. It's the ideas that people have that keep all this music alive."

Do we really want to listen to CDs this way? Do we really need to? Zaireeka is undoubtedly asking much from a fan. Coyne concurs. "When the 10 people rush to the store and get it that we expect, then in January we'll probably put something else out," he confesses. But, he says, pondering his own legacy, "We can't just say, 'Yeah, we got turned on to rock when we were 10 years-old and we play rock music.' So what? We should do something that maybe 20 years from now people will go, 'Oh yeah, they did that fucking four-CD bullshit.' At least someone said, 'Well, we'll try that.'"