Producers: The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker.

Recorded at Tarbox Road Studios, Cassadaga, New York between June 2000 & April 2001.

"Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)" won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

This limited edition includes a bonus DVD version of YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK

ROBOTS including the whole album in surround sound, videos and rare tracks.

The Flaming Lips: Wayne Coyne (vocals, guitar); Michael Ivins (guitar, bass, background vocals); Steve Drozd (guitar, drums, background vocals).

Additional personnel includes: Yoshimi P-We.

Producers: The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker.

Recorded at Tarbox Road Studios, Cassadaga, New York between June 2000 & April 2001.

"Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)" won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

After the symphonic majesty of The Soft Bulletin, the Flaming Lips return with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, a sublime fusion of Bulletin's newfound emotional directness, the old-school playfulness of Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, and, more importantly, exciting new expressions of the group's sentimental, experimental sound. While the album isn't as immediately impressive as the equally brilliant and unfocused Soft Bulletin, it's more consistent, using a palette of rounded, surprisingly emotive basslines; squelchy analog synths; and manicured acoustic guitars to craft songs like "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21," a sleekly melancholy tale of robots developing emotions, and "In the Morning of the Magicians," an aptly named electronic art rock epic that sounds like a collaboration between the Moody Blues and Wendy Carlos. Paradoxically, the Lips use simpler arrangements to create more diverse sounds on Yoshimi, spanning the lush, psychedelic reveries of "It's Summertime"; the instrumental "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon"; the dubby "Are You a Hypnotist?"; and the barely organized chaos of "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2," which defeats the evil metal ones with ferocious drums, buzzing synths, and the razor sharp howl of the Boredoms' Yoshimi. Few bands can craft life-affirming songs about potentially depressing subjects (the passage of time, fighting for what you care about, good vs. evil) as the Flaming Lips, and on Yoshimi, they're at the top of their game. "Do You Realize??" is the standout, so immediately gorgeous that it's obvious that it's the single. It's also the most obviously influenced by The Soft Bulletin, but it's even catchier and sadder, sweetening such unavoidable truths like "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" with chimes, clouds of strings, and angelic backing vocals. Yoshimi features some of the sharpest emotional peaks and valleys of any Lips album -- the superficially playful "Fight Test" is surprisingly bittersweet, while sad songs like "All We Have Is Now" and "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" are leavened by witty lyrics and production tricks. Funny, beautiful, and moving, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots finds the Flaming Lips continuing to grow and challenge themselves in not-so-obvious ways after delivering their obvious masterpiece. ~ Heather Phares

Emerging sometime in the '80s, Oklahoma boys The Flaming Lips have held steady to a peripheral, but significant location in the indie-rock world, visionaries blessed with a hyper-keen pop sensibility. In 1999, four years removed from the surprise alterna-pop hit "She Don't Use Jelly," the trio fronted by the fetching, impelling whisper of Wayne Coyne hit a remarkably high note, making scores of year-end 'best of' lists with THE SOFT BULLETIN, a mellifluous, masterful slice of Brian Wilson-level pop distorted through a few looking glasses. Following an acclaimed album is always a craggy cliff of anticipation, but if BULLETIN was the Flaming Lips' PET SOUNDS, then the ethereal YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS may be their SMILEY SMILE, a record which skillfully straddles the line between pop and experimentation.

YOSHIMI offers lush, enveloping arrangements, forging a soundscape both comfortably predictable and satisfyingly, even dizzyingly, diverse, awash in Todd Rundgren-like grandiosity, yet startlingly simple in structure like the better work of Paul McCartney. Despite having the air of a quasi-concept album, YOSHIMI betrays little pretension, even in the face of the Lips' trademark deceptively complex lyrics. The exceptional YOSHIMI easily cements the Flaming Lips' place in the vanguard of the rock world.

Emerging sometime in the '80s, Oklahoma boys The Flaming Lips have held steady to a peripheral, but significant location in the indie-rock world, visionaries blessed with a hyper-keen pop sensibility. In 1999, four years removed from the surprise alterna-pop hit "She Don't Use Jelly," the trio fronted by the fetching, impelling whisper of Wayne Coyne hit a remarkably high note, making scores of year-end 'best of' lists with THE SOFT BULLETIN, a mellifluous, masterful slice of Brian Wilson-level pop distorted through a few looking glasses. Following an acclaimed album is always a craggy cliff of anticipation, but if BULLETIN was the Flaming Lips' PET SOUNDS, then the ethereal YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS may be their SMILEY SMILE, a record which skillfully straddles the line between pop and experimentation.

YOSHIMI offers lush, enveloping arrangements, forging a soundscape both comfortably predictable and satisfyingly, even dizzyingly, diverse, awash in Todd Rundgren-like grandiosity, yet startlingly simple in structure like the better work of Paul McCartney. Despite having the air of a quasi-concept album, YOSHIMI betrays little pretension, even in the face of the Lips' trademark deceptively complex lyrics. The exceptional YOSHIMI easily cements the Flaming Lips' place in the vanguard of the rock world.