As I mentioned earlier, Embryonic was the first Lips record I ever heard. Admittedly, it’s hardly the most conventional place to start with their expansive discography–far removed from Yoshimi’s space folk and The Soft Bulletin’s wide eyed optimism, and even further from the trippy drug punk from the earliest days.

But I’m convinced that I would never have any interest in any of that had I not first been exposed to the paranoid basslines, the menacing drums, the schizoid keyboards, the frantic guitars, and detached vocals contained in the seventy-one minutes of music here. It’s a record composed by a band holed out in a distopian space station, hopeless but not resigned to hoplessness. Yoshimi spoke of violence. This album delivers it.