The Flux Wildly Experiment

Originally Published August 1, 2025

The Observer (TO): When did you first discover The Flaming Lips?

Flux Wildly: Back in 2000, when I was 13 years old, living with my parents in the Netherlands. Not knowing a thing about alternative music, my stepdad gifted me all CD soundtracks of Jim Carrey films, as I loved his acting work. Among these was the soundtrack for the film Batman Forever. The last song on there is Bad Days. This was my first contact with the Flaming Lips sound.

At the time, it didn’t fully understand it. A couple of years later, I was browsing the early days of the internet and stumbled upon a gif animated advertisement for their latest album at the time, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. I recognized their name from that movie soundtrack and I went to discover the Yoshimi album. This is when it clicked.

I hung out with my friends at the time, in my parents’ backyard, with a portable CD player and I played us the Yoshimi album. It blew everybody’s teenage minds, including my own. That was a point where we collectively expanded, from being disgruntled punks and dark goth rockers, to embrace more color, weirdness and a psychedelic influence into our lifestyle.

I got hooked, went and got all previous albums, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Since 2006, when their next album At War With The Mystics came out, I’ve been following their output on the go, as it happened.

TO: Have you seen the band live? If so, when was the first time you saw them? Location and venue etc… and what was your first impressions?

FW: Yes! I have seen them live 8 times, since 2006. The first show was at the Paradiso, in Amsterdam. I was 19 at the time and went with my mom and my grandmother, they loved it! Some friends and relatives joined too. It’s when I got all the bands’ signatures in one of my little sketchbooks, which I carried around everywhere at the time. I would sketch at any given moment, anywhere. So I got my first signatures and quick little drawings from Wayne, Steven, Michael and Kliph at the side of the stage, as they were checking out the opening band. Wayne bowed down, with his big curly hair silhouetting towards me (as I was front row, down in the audience), shook my hand firmly and let my sketchbook go around the whole band. Such energy and kindness, it was inspiring. They played songs like Vein Of Stars, Free Radicals and a cover of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs… and some kind of music toy cow jam…

A couple of years later I was involved in a collaborative Flaming Lips comic book fan project called ‘Captain Yeah!’, led by Andrew Pawley. I don’t think it ever materialized but it did help me end up hanging out pre-show with Wayne, backstage in Belgium. This was during their Beatles and Miley Cyrus era, back in 2014. Wayne held off roadies just to show me things on his phone, among it being an unreleased version of their Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds music video. He scribbled over an image of the Virgin Mary, that I had brought along. That drawing is my favorite Flaming Lips fan possession. It doesn’t get more down to the core than that.

Photograph by Robert Eydner

Q: What was it about the band that drew you in?

FW: I fell in love with their universal thinking, existential wandering, and how they painted with sound. To me, this was no ordinary band, they’re like artists using music as their medium. The colors, the emotions, the happiness and sadness. The freak-outs, the druggy and the sobering moments… you know, it’s just life to me… just being alive. All these things and thoughts, sparkled with a layer of bravery and optimism. It’s what has become my preferred flavor of life.

TO: What has the music and the group meant to you?

FW: Through their output, The Flaming Lips have shown me many qualities of life, magnified through their odd and zany lens of Oklahoman perspectives. They’re still freaks, with an intense and super creative do-it-yourself mentality, after all these years. In times of loneliness, sadness and even depression, I have always found solace in their songs and ethics. They motivate me get back up on my feet, to stay in the ring. I have learned how to present and promote myself artistically, through their ways of doing it. The depths of their music and exploration of the individual mind, has been a relief and a blessing. I’ve never had so much fun enjoying and exploring, and basically growing up and growing older alongside them, with a band like this.

TO: As an artist, how has the music inspired your work?

FW: The music has positively influenced my outlook on life, and therefore my output as an artist. I’m seeking for that optimism, that human spark of hope and kindness, combined with a form of fantastical escapism, in order to keep that child-like wonder intact. Themes, vibes and attitude within my work, as a live action painter and visual artist, all have strands of The Flaming Lips ethos woven into it.. even down to the ‘do-it-yourself’ punk mentality and creativity that comes with it. You can see it in the albums that I’ve put out with my band projects throughout the years. Sometimes I run a little DIY music label, called Garden of Eyes, which is the title coming from a short instrumental tune, that can be found on their very first self-titled EP (1984).

TO: How do you use music in your work?

FW: As a live action painter, I’ve been at it since 2007. I paint in front of audiences, never silently. It’s the music that drives me into this altered state of being. It’s a state where I think less and I just am. Lines flow out of me, onto the canvas. It’s fast and wild and it’s always a surprise what the outcome truly looks like.

I use music to decide if parts of my performance should be fast and wild, or if a moment to take it slow is needed.

When I perform solo, as Flux Wildly, Flaming Lips music is often part of my performance. Back in the days of Twitter, Wayne once shared a video of me doing a live painting during their 6 Hour Song.

Lately I perform more with live bands, my two current bands being Joywire and Newmaker, and they totally get me into it just as well. I rock out with them and we play and perform and create some wonderful music and some wonderful art.

Photograph by Dave Mante

TO: Living in Germany, do you feel that there is a Lips fan base there? If so, if not, why?

FW: A little bit. There is definitely more curiosity about The Flaming Lips, among music lovers here in Germany, than back home in the Netherlands. Of course, a bunch of dutch people I know got curious after learning about my excitement about this band a long time ago, but most friends only stick to a few albums, all from different eras.

I have a friend who has always mostly stuck to the first 3 albums from the 1980’s (Hear It Is, Oh My Gawd!!! and Telepathic Surgery). Most other friends only favour their most-known work, the late 90’s until mid-2000’s albums (The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and At War With The Mystics). I’ve also got a friend who only likes The Terror (2013), and another friend recently purchased his first Flaming Lips CD, the art installation album King’s Mouth (2019), without diving much further into the band. A colleague at work recently purchased their Greatest Hits on gold vinyl and a couple of my German friends are genuinely curious but are so overwhelmed and confused by the sheer output of this bands ever-growing discography, that they never seem to know where to start. I try to help them but I don’t know if it works.

Everybody’s got their own little Lips space going on, in some degree or form. Some more distant, some get more into it.. but meeting fans like Amy Cufflin and Bram Moony this year, who also know right about everything about this band, truly still is a rarity to me, it’s exciting and something I cherish and connect with going to these concerts.

TO: What has been your best memory from seeing the band and why?

FW: My best memory is my most recent memory, from this year! I got 3 tickets for 3 shows in 3 different countries and I saw them in Belgium, the Netherlands and in Berlin. That whole week was just amazing. I freaked out every night. I remember bass player Tommy dedicating their song Riding To Work In The Year 2025 to me in a private message, which they only played in Belgium. That was very kind of him!

In every city, I met different friends and family members and I also made new friends! Again, especially Amy Cufflin and Bram Moony, who I both met in Belgium … and then bumped into again in the Netherlands!

The giant pink robots, the loud cheering, the confetti, the bass, the sounds, the brightness and energy of it all.. I’m glad I went 3 times.

It was my first chance since their last European Tour for their album Oczy Mlody, which was 8 years ago. The Flaming Lips don’t come around these parts so often, so when they do, I have decided to just go for it as much as I can.

From the June 2, 2025 show at TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands.

TO: Do you have a favorite song, lyric or piece of music?

FW: Suddenly Everything Has Changed, a song from The Soft Bulletin. This is the Flaming Lips song that encapsulates it all for me. The lyrics, the emotions, the feelings and realisations, going through the motions of life, the changes and the composition.. that Michael Ivins bass line.. this song has it all, in a nutshell.

Q: Do you have a favorite album or period of the Lips’ history? If so, what and why?

FW: I love all periods of Flaming Lips history, for different reasons. The scruffy early years, their unorthodox first years at Warner Bros., their evolution by re-inventing themselves into how we know them now.. every phase has its wonders.

One era that I really liked, as I grew along with them, was Embryonic. That was such a bald move, to grow bigger and bigger in a mainstream way, only to just let those noisy, psychedelic freak-rock sounds back in and go for it. It was an experimental but very freeing double album, artistically, mentally and spiritually. They set themselves free with Embryonic. It’s very vibrant and bright. It rocks your socks off. It’s also the moment pretty much all of my friends got out-weirded by the sound and jumped off the Lips bandwagon, and I just continued exploring them on my own.

After At War With The Mystics, this was the second Flaming Lips album that I listened to on psychedelic drugs, and it made me feel as if I was right in the room with them. Every string, every instrumental touch, amplified their personalities. It’s as if I could feel them purely, as individuals, straight through these sounds, that they made, during Embryonic. Also the music videos were wild, some of them currently being lost or banned. I downloaded and saved a lot of them back then and I’ve recently sent them to The Satellite Head, the Flaming Lips Youtube fan channel.. so I guess most of it will return back online again, a bunch of it already has!

TO: What are you looking forward to the most when you see the band next?

FW: An exciting new setlist to enjoy and to go out there with a bunch of friends, colleagues and relatives again! But first I will keep my fingers crossed, just hoping that will happen again. I have no clue if and when they would re-visit Europe again. Also, I hope Steven Drozd finds his way back into the band.

Photograph by Dave Mante

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

FW: Once, I totally fell out of love with the band and stopped being a fan. When they did that Oczy Mlody album, they managed to totally alienate and out-weird me. I unsubscribed from their newsletters, unfollowed them on social media and stopped listening to them for quite a while, after they did that album and tour. I just didn’t get it. It seemed like some shallow, psychedelic hip-hop party album that tried too hard to be what it was.

I bought the album and saw them on that tour and completely fell out of love… …only to come back around, to the sound of Oczy Mlody, a couple of years later, and fall back in love with them. That was a personal turning point for me. No other band had done that, to disconnect and throw me out of the loop like that, only to win me back a few years later. That’s a trip too. It was a maturing moment for me as a fan, as if I’d reached a level of understanding that I didn’t even know was there.. but here I am, still on-board, nearly 25 years later. Thanks for having me!