Late Night Tales: The Flaming Lips

Wayne Coyne is a strange, strange man. As frontman for art-damaged pop terrorists The Flaming Lips, he’s penned odes to spider bites, killer robots and self-destructing brains, conducted a 40-piece orchestra of car stereos and crowd-surfed inside a gigantic plastic bubble. His band’s entry in Azuli’s series of celebrity mix-tapes proves that his record collection is no less bizarre. Coyne & co.’s set is a predictably weird melange of left-field electronica (Mice Parade), Krautrock (Faust), indie (Sebadoh, Lush) and soft-rock (10cc) that, while captivating, flows about as smoothly as a Biz Markie battle-rhyme. Still, the Lips’ unhinged scuzz-rock demolition of "Seven Nation Army" is so good that suffering through Aphex Twin’s masturbatory "Flim" almost seems worth it.