Flaming Lips pair with Oak Cliff chocolatier for another crazy album release

by Sarah Blaskovich

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They're releasing a 2-pound chocolate heart with a USB inside, just in time for Valentine's Day.

In 2011, The Flaming Lips released a four-song compilation inside a life-sized, 7-pound skull made of gummies. It wasn't their first crazy record debut: Nearly 15 years earlier, the psychedelic rock band from Oklahoma City sold an album with four CDs that required the user to play each one simultaneously in order to hear the full arrangement.

So when news that the Lips would offer their latest USB album inside an anatomically correct chocolate heart came Tuesday morning, we almost didn't flinch. Almost.

The chocolate heart was created by Oak Cliff chocolate shop Dude, Sweet Chocolate -- known for its creative chocolate combinations. Take their Chocolate Almond "Salami" with date, fig, cocoa nib, and marzipan, for instance. This is not Russell Stover's.

The limited-release chocolate heart album contains dark chocolate with mini whoppers and waffle cone crunch. The hearts went up for sale online Monday for $60 and have sold out for internet shoppers. A total of 100 hearts were available, and just 28 are left -- but those have to be purchased at Dwelling Spaces, a gift shop in Oklahoma that's something of a Flaming Lips museum. Owner of Dwelling Spaces Mary Beth Babcock (who prefers the title "space captain") said a man drove from Boston yesterday to pick up the 15-song album, called Songs of Love, in person.

The chocolate heart is also for sale at Dude, Sweet Chocolate for $45, though it doesn't come with the USB inside and contains slightly different ingredients.

The hearts come in pink or red and contain 2 pounds of chocolate. But does it taste good? "Hell yeah," said Katherine Clapner, owner of Dude, Sweet Chocolate. "I’m not going to make it just because it looks cool. If it doesn’t taste good, I’m not interested."

As for nutritional content, that's not a discussion, Clapner said. "Once you get over 2 pounds of chocolate, calories are irrelevant," she said.

The project is Clapner's third time collaborating with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, and we can expect two more projects from them soon. The two met by chance on an airplane, and Clapner said it's been a "wonderfully organic" process since then making crazy creations. Clapner and Babcock are now regular collaborators on Coyne's "freaky" ideas.

"It's so easy these days to download music, so Wayne is constantly trying to come up with some cool way to sell the music -- more of an experience," Babcock said. "He always explains it as, 'fun ways to freak out.'"

The Flaming Lips will release their next studio album, The Terror, in April.

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