Celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Flaming Lips’ 2006 Grammy -winning album “At War With The Mystics” is released with a 6CD or 6LP set.
Originally released in 2006, “At War With The Mystics” found The Flaming Lips at one of the most creatively expansive points in their remarkable career. Following the extraordinary success of “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots”, the album saw the band continuing to push their music in unexpected directions, combining psychedelic experimentation, electronic textures, orchestral color and huge pop melodies with the surreal, emotionally charged songwriting that had become their hallmark.
Songs including “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, “Free Radicals”, “It Overtakes Me” and “The W.A.N.D.” captured a band simultaneously embracing the possibilities of the studio and questioning the world around them. “At War With The Mystics” was adventurous, playful, and deliberately strange, but beneath its kaleidoscopic production was an album deeply engaged with love, fear, politics, mortality, and the bewildering experience of being alive. Two decades on, the record remains a distinctive chapter in The Flaming Lips’ ever-evolving story.
The upcoming Deluxe Edition substantially expands “At War With The Mystics”, bringing together a remarkable collection of previously unreleased recordings, rarities and material from the wider world surrounding the album, spread across six discs of music. At its heart is a wealth of previously unheard demos, offering a fascinating glimpse into the writing and recording process behind the album. These are joined by non-album tracks, B-sides and alternate versions, alongside music created by The Flaming Lips for film, television, documentaries and other projects, as well as recordings featured on soundtracks, compilations and special releases. Further highlights include radio sessions and other live performances, a selection of covers and additional rarities, while discs 5 and 6 feature two legendary Flaming Lips concerts: U.F.O.s At The Zoo and Live At The Hollywood Bowl, both recorded in 2006.
Taken together, the bonus material paints a much broader picture of the creative world surrounding At War With The Mystics, revealing just how prolific and restless the band was during this era.
As with the previous “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” anniversary box, the CD and vinyl editions have been configured differently, allowing the releases to remain as accessible as possible. The complete collection of material featured on the CD edition will subsequently be made available across vinyl releases, following the approach taken with the Yoshimi box set.
For The Flaming Lips, whose career has consistently been defined by reinvention rather than repetition, the anniversary provides an opportunity not simply to look back, but to rediscover a record that was already looking in several directions at once. Twenty years after its original release, “At War With The Mystics” still sounds like a record made by a band unwilling to stand still.
6CD – The 6CD set features the original album remastered for the very first time, 19x previously unreleased Demos, 14x previously unreleased studio recordings, a further 42x non-album tracks, and U.F.O.’s At The Zoo and the previously unreleased “Live At The Hollywood Bowl” concerts, both on CD for the very first time.
6LP – The 6LP set presents the original album remastered for the very first time across three sides of vinyl, 19x previously unreleased Demos, 12x previously unreleased studio recordings, and 33x additional non-album tracks.
