The Flaming Lips – Are You a Hypnotist??
2002 · Directed by George Salisbury
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Best comments
1.“Doctor: Are you prone to having seizures? Patient: I don't know. Doctor: Watch this...”
More comments
- 2.“The title of this track is what Wayne asked Steven when he laid down this drum beat. Even he could feel his soul leave his body when he heard it.”
- 3.“I saw the Flaming Lips on tour when Wayne was jumping around with a giant strobe light on his chest. Someone in the audience collapsed, and Wayne handled it calmly – stopped the show, got the lights on, cleared space for first aid. (The person was fine.) Then he said, 'Yeah, this happens probably one show out of every ten.' Which kind of explains this video: Wayne sees seizures as an occupational hazard for Flaming Lips fans.”
The story
Are You a Hypnotist?? is track seven on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the 2002 Flaming Lips album they made with Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York. It was never a single. The album still became the band's first gold record in the US, and went platinum in the UK. The song plays with the question in its title: is this pull real, or is somebody working you?
The video has the band performing through a storm of flashing lights and juddering, stuttering images. On the album's DVD it shows up as a bonus with a mad-scientist subtitle, George's Photogenic Stimulation Theory #1134, and George Salisbury, the band's longtime art director and video maker, lists it among his work. It later landed on VOID, the 2005 DVD that gathered nineteen Flaming Lips videos in one place. Fair warning if strobes bother you: this one flickers.
