By Ines Min
Whether it was the human hamster ball stunt rolling above a roaring crowd of an outdoor venue or the imaginative sweet sounds of that electro-psychedelic mix that first caught your ear, The Flaming Lips has indelibly made its mark on those in the music world.
The Oklahoma crew, led by frontman Wayne Coyne, makes their Korean debut Saturday at the Melon-AX Hall, eastern Seoul.
Closing the Asian leg of a tour for their 2009 albums — “Embryonic” and a track-by-track remake of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” — the band’s first concert here plans to retain the combustion-style fantasy grandeur while entertaining in the intimate Melon-AX (characteristic antics involving the aforementioned crowd surfing via a large-scale plastic ball and the unleashing of thousands of massive balloons into the sky). Coyne and his fellow members’ stage presences have led to an oft-headlining trait of The Flaming Lips, who’ve closed out such festivals as Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.
The psychedelic-rock group first rose to fame in the 1990s, and hit it big with “The Soft Bulletin” in 1999 and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (2002). Their latest two releases see a continuance in talented collaborations with Karen O, Peaches and Henry Rollins, while “Embryonic” was ranked as one of the best albums of 2009 by known-hipster critics Pitchfork Media.
While their sound ranges from fantastical rock to the emotional, a sense of grand-scale eloquence never escapes their music, and the accessible “Do You Realize” — one of the Lips’ best known singles — has served as an anthem from the U.K. to hometown Oklahoma City.
The show begins at 7 p.m., and tickets cost 99,000 won. For reservations in English, visit https://ticket.interpark.com/global or the band’s official website www.flaminglips.com. Located near exit 2 of Gwangnaru Station, subway line 5.
inesmin@koreatimes.co.kr