And if people hear that on our record, a lot of that can be attributed to him, because we’re still just the weirdos sitting on the couch going, “Make it louder!” “He’s recorded Sparklehorse and Mogwai, and he’s really on the - I hate to use words like this - the cutting edge on where ideas and music and production can be. “We started to record Zaireeka there, and as his studio becomes more impressive it shows up on the records,” Coyne says. so that’s the loooong-winded reason.”Īs with The Soft Bulletin, the album was recorded with producer Dave Fridmann in his studio near Buffalo, New York. “A lot of times we get into these things that are philosophical and heavy, but there was a little bit of relief when we could just say, ‘Why does everything have to be death-oriented or existential?’ Somewhere the relief of having something called Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots as opposed to “Psychiatric Exploration of the Fetus With Needles”. “Once I had this title it really loosened the whole feel of what we were doing,” Coyne says. The title then proved fetching enough to get tagged onto the album itself. So we thought it would be smart if we said it was Yoshimi, and then you’d think, ‘Oh, she’s a Japanese girl.'” We wanted it to sound very specific: a crazy Japanese woman. But we didn’t want someone to think this was a black woman or a white woman. Sometimes you just hear a voice and associate an image with that and move on. And when we were recording Yoshimi doing this screaming, it was apparent to us that she was a small, crazy Japanese gal, but we didn’t know if the audience would hear it that way. “And on Dark Side of the Moon, they have that gospel-esque singing on there? When I hear that music, I think of a robust black woman singing with these English guys sitting around. “You know how on the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” they have that woman screaming?” he asks. That would get rid of that other useless vile title.” “So I just thought, ‘OK, I’ll call it “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,”‘ and that’ll be that. “I had this recording of her doing some screaming, and I thought, ‘You know, it really sounds like she’s in some kind of fight or something,'” Coyne says. The song happened to feature a guest vocal spot from Yoshimi, a member of Japanese experimental unit the Boredoms, which ultimately led to the title. “Everybody kept calling it that so I needed to put a title on it before people started to hear it.” Lips frontman Wayne Coyne says the track “Yoshimi” had only a “vile and disgusting” working title that he chose not to disclose. The album’s title is pulled from one of the tracks, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part 2,” which itself had a roundabout trip to its title. The album will be the band’s first release since 1999’s The Soft Bulletin. The Flaming Lips have wrapped up work on their next record, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which is set for a July 16th release.