As The Flaming Lips continue to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” with a 5-LP vinyl box set due April 14 and tourdates performing the entire album, this six-CD Deluxe Edition brings together the original album, previously-released EPs “Fight Test” and “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell,” demos, b-sides, radio performances and a live show. Sadly, what’s missing is a live DVD documenting one of the band’s chaotic, joyous, mind-blowing concerts supporting the album.

The set is bookended by the “Yoshimi” album itself and a live concert five months after its release. In between rests various musical ephemera, a poster plus a booklet that includes Wayne Coyne and Steve Drozd and others within the band’s universe discussing the album’s beginnings and several key moments promoting it.

On the surface “Yoshimi” gives the impression that it’s a sci-fi concept album with a narrative dealing with a young girl named Yoshimi battling Pink Robots. That’s too convenient. In the fertile minds of the Lips it’s a long road of connections that encompass philosophical, symbolic and emotional battles. Its origins started with Coyne and Drozd’s admiration for Yoshimi P-We — drummer, trumpet player and screamer for the Japanese noise rock outfit The Boredoms — whose contributions make it on several tracks including “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2.” From there Coyne veers off the use of the musician’s name to journey through lyrical territory that combines reality and fiction, drama and fantasy, life, love and death, while the music embraces music technology of the present and acoustic instrumentation of the past, particularly on “Fight Test,” the title track, and “It’s Summertime.” “Do You Realize?” becomes the penultimate tear-jerking number that grounds the 21st century psychedelia that permeates through the rest of the release.

The EP “Fight Test” collects covers of Kylie Minogue, Radiohead and Beck with dance mixes of “Do You Realize?” that dulls its emotional impact along with the charmingly odd “Thank You Jack White.” Other than the dance remixes, “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell” bears a more reflective, somber tone. 

Longtime fans should be very familiar with what’s contained on discs one and two, which is why the final four CDs prove their worth as they are filled with rare and interesting material. On CD3 it’s a compilation of Lips live sessions that includes covers of White Stripes (“Seven Nation Army” and Bing Crosby (“White Christmas”), b-sides from CD singles and contributions to The Chemical Brothers and “Sponge Bob” soundtrack.

Disc four, which brings together over an hour of live radio sessions in the U.S. and at the BBC, becomes a reminder of the band’s disciplined abilities to play as a tight unit. That sensation’s backed up by a radio broadcast on WBOS from Boston’s Paradise Lounge for contest winners on CD5 as well as a BBC radio broadcast on CD6 from London’s Forum on the last date of the band’s European tour.

Altogether, it’s a small compact disc-sized package of a band blossoming in its creative powers.