Read our exclusive track by track interview: We had the audio on the Shake Sessions Bank Holiday Sunday 12th April 10pm on 105 Calon FM & online @ www.calonfm.com.

Hello Shakenstirers, this is Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins and we are The Flaming Lips. We are going to be talking about our seminal record called YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS and hopefully we can highlight some of the more interesting aspects of the writing of the songs, recording of the sound and generally things you’d never know. And illuminating some of the deeper meaning to be found in these songs. So we’ll be guiding you through song by song.

Track One: Fight Test

You’ve got a classic example of one of those fable-telling type songs where you have a story to tell and a sort of lesson to be learned, and so the song had that sort of appeal anyway. Even if you were going to play it on acoustic guitar, it’s great in that sort of way. And we were into trouble straight away because Dave Fridmann recognised it first as being reminiscent of Cat Stevens’ song Father & Son. So with a little manipulation, I changed it so legally it doesn’t resemble it enough to avoid torturing us later. So you take that kind of song which is just a catchy, melodic song anyway and then the idea was to find some wicked beats to put under that and some contemporary elements to mix up the classic acoustic singer/songwriter kind of thing. When we started out it was in a different key which was a lower key and a lot slower. With Dave Fridmann’s insistence and against our wishes we made it faster and it turned out a lot better.

I think when I was doing the original four-track on a tape I used for the boom-box experiment and as I got through with the third or fourth take of my rehearsing of the melodies and that, a voice came on saying ‘The test is over‘ and ‘The test begins now.’ So I thought, well, it’s a bizarre little element to put in there. So you’ll hear at the very beginning of the song a voice saying ‘The test begins now.’ It was just a happy accident. We thought it sounded like James Earle Jones and in fact we were hoping to get him for the record because I’ve met the guy. The fiance of a friend of mine in New York is best friends with the James Earle Jones family and he was going to try to contact him to come on down and do a voice-over - but it didn’t happen. But it kind of sounds like James Earle Jones anyway! So you’ll hear this at beginning of the first song and it implies some battle, some confrontation and then again at the end we leave with another sort of strange test thing.