King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity

Fuck this is good

gonna guess no

it iz it izz

https://vimeo.com/157973501

Guess again
Xpost

I liked Papier Mache Dream Balloon (or w/e it was called) well enough

normally don't trust much from this city, but they're mostly good.

It might be good. I don't regret looking at this thread.

Paper Mache Dream Balloon sounds like 90s Of Montreal, and I love it. Don't understand the drastic change in sound. They want to sound tougher I guess.

Wasn't PMDB the stylistic diversion?

New one is maybe my 2nd favorite album of the year after Black Star.

Spotify really wants me to listen to this

You should, it rules.

Turned up in Pitchfork's overlooked music list about a week ago:

http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9910-overlooked-albums-2016/

Wasn't PMDB the stylistic diversion?

yes. nonagon infinity just doubles down on the fidgety, high-energy, garage punk that's their primary through-line so far. one of my 2016 favorites, and i'm surprised it hasn't caught on with fans of tongue-in-cheek prog oddity.

yeah this is great. never listened to any of their other albums

finally listening to this, great! they really got psychedelic ants in their pants

based on this i feel like they'd be really fun live

yeah def seem "high energy"

global have you heard General Baby (local band), has a bit of this vibe but more lo-fi zappa

(it's from that whole larry wish & his guys house show axis that i don't really fully understand)

never heard of em!

General Baby don't even have a web presence, really

oops i guess they used to be fortified five that's why it's hard to find

https://fortifiedfive.bandcamp.com/album/a-brief-demonstration-on-baby-talkin

Ilx doesn't love the gizzards and that's a fact.the last album is very good though.

most recent one (polygondwanaland) is super-proggy and totally rules. these aussie freaks own 2017 imho

this is one of the best bands going rn

I like them

especially their microtonal/weird tuning stuff, a lot of stuff on that Banana record sounds great.

not so keen on the new one with narration, it seems extraneous

Yeah i meant polygondwa above as their best record of the year. I wish they werent as repetitive melody wise though. Like back in the Fill Your Lungs days..

they seem like they're excellent live too- the main guy definitely borrows some john dwyer moves tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGHgpVU3UuU

https://youtu.be/_Eg3OUQPayk

Gold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDnOJkrRv3g

Who can report on the new one ?

bit of a psychedelic soul vibe. mellower stuff, a la paper mache dream balloon and sketches of brunswick east

Sounds like mediocre b-sides for all previous 4, except for one surprising and great doom metal/Uncle Acid style song (Great Chain Of Being)

"muddy water" sounds like a victory lap

"barefoot desert" is dope. 1 year, 64 songs. damn!

destroying all that will keep us heading for a meta-thesis

\m/

chill band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENCswmcSALI

I only need to see nardwuar once every 5 years or so but that is good servietting

Friend last night: "have you heard ... they're called like ... Daniel Strudel and the Noodle Doodle?"

Omg actual lol

ILM don't care about Gizzard and you may be right at this point.Used to be great though.

ok i listened to the latest i was erm not expecting straight 86 speed metally thrash. Its not terrible i guess.

It made me think of HNIA’s different smart-ass visitation to metalfrom 2016, which was like, sunshine prog-metal(?). HNIA’s album was actually much more interesting imo.

lot of young aussie bro's really really like these dudes (and possibly drugs??)

because i'm slightly interested in what they're on about, repeated listens haven't been bad, also the guit style is more thrash than beedleybeedleybeedlebeedely. i guess ecoconscious thrash shit is closer fit for olds who are more garage or postpunk maybe. 'i have gone insane-o i lust for volcano pee with molten lava give me my nirvana' and 'auto-cremate! self-immolate!'

Taking my son to see them in a few weeks, he's a big fan. Trying to get caught up on their endless catalog. They seem like great musicians, very creative and intense, but the sheer repetition of their approach wears me down.

Which ones should I listen to if I want to hear them mix it up more? So far I've liked Flying Microtonal Banana the most, but I've barely scratched the surface.

nonagon infinity is the most accessible to early olds imo, it's relentless and stirring.

i love the first one that was my intro, which is very psych- can't remember the name, it has Head On/Pill?

I'm in Your Mindfuzz is pretty strong imo.

I was meh on Fishing For Fishies which is working that sound conceit so hard, or maybe not the sound I wanted. The recent is really fun, but it's way chewing gummy to me. Still the more I listen, there more I am charmed by it.

I can't remember Polygondwanaland, so...

I was half-hoping the new one would be even more thrashy, which is kind of a funny thing — they're constantly churning out so many records in so many different veins that you wind up with a fairly loose attachment to any of them sounding particularly Gizzardy. Or maybe it's just the nature of thrash that once you blend a little of it into what you're doing, it starts feeling like you might as well thrash all the way; it's kind of an extremist genre!

At some point they should release a detailed guide to their working methods, like a productivity self-help book for rock musicians. At this point I'm just curious how they divide up their time.

Minimize chord progressions, tempo changes, syncopation, and vocal melodies seems to be part of it, at least for the straightforward rock LPs.

gonna guess no

― some men just want to watch the world Bern (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, May 4, 2016 5:06 PM (three years ago)

this is definitive

Is it?

gonna guess yes

Infest The Rats' Nest is kind of a wild record. I think I like them in metal mode more than some. This pretty much sounds like old school Metallica meets Sleep.

one of the better metal albums of 2019 so far imo

you could say "it's just kind of a gloss of common metal ideas" to which i would say so is like 80% of metal nowadays

I saw them play in Austin last night, pretty good show. Huge, extremely hyped up crowd. The new songs went over really well, but there was a little too much time spent on the slow jazzy numbers, letting all the band members sing songs, and some endless boogie beats. Needed a bit more of the fast-paced material.

Ooh, I'm liking K.G. so far. A return to the microtonal shit.

Very fun yes, and some enjoyable curveballs as well

K.G. is indeed really good.

The Live In SF LP is great as well

That's next on my list to spin, actually.

First half is all Nonagon all the time, and it ends with a fantastic Head On-Pill that also goes Nonagon when yr least expecting it

What's KG? I loved microtonal banana but never really got this band beyond that.

It's the name of their latest album

it has like a dance track which feels ~weird~, but what, am i gonna tell THIS band how to genre?

Yeah, “Intrasport”, the weird disco track stands out a little, but it segues so nicely into the next song that I can’t hate it.

KG is very Microtonal, it's great

This rules.

LW out Friday, lol

i was into this band for a bit but haven't kept up with them at all, and now i see them being used on social media (even tiktok) as shorthand for annoying arcane prog rock dorks in the same way as tool, so i guess they've hit the big time

they're still great, love both kg & lw - strong albums both!

with the massive volume of albums they've put out, there are absolutely some duds, but there are so many good ones as well. If LW continues with the direction of KG, them I'm totally down.

Not a massive expert on them but they always strike me as great fun - certainly moreso than Tool!

Yeah, there's nothing po-faced abt Gizz, they do not take themselves seriously like that at all.

LW is literally the other half of KG, more excursions on the seas of microtonality. TBH i prefer KGLW to the Flying Microtonal Banana LP that started it all off.

https://kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/album/l-w

yet another record!

A great one, too

I really loved these guys for a minute and then a bunch of stuff happened in my life and I kind of lost track, probably missed 9 albums

I always enjoy them when they're playing, but I can't really be doing with the sheer amount of listening it must take to be a true fan.

Alice bought one of their albums on RSD

I forget which one: I'd look through their discogs list, but I really don't have that kind of spare time...

Forthcoming album Butterfly 3000 is very fun, a new age synth pop record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDMldn7hFZo pretty cool 18 min jam

is fake vinyl lead-in groove noise the sonic equivalent of fake ring wear on the album cover art?

Saw them live doing a garage rock set recently. Up there as one of my funnest gig experiences and the first time I realised crowd surfing can actually be not terrible (obviously only to a degree, don't crucify me). I drunkenly also started a movement which resulted in 50% of all males at the front taking their shirts off and it was all around an absolutely great time.

All that said, don't have time for their albums. They really are best as a live band

That’s a shame. I love Butterfly 3000

Listened to Mind Fuzz and Butterly 3000 after avoiding them for years due to the name. Goddamit, I'm kind of hooked. The disco-y stuff reminds me of later Tame Impala, but better?

Catching Smoke off the latter is a fun ride.

Of their recent ones, I really enjoyed KG, LW, and Infest The Rats' Nest

I will check those out. They have a million albums!

Rat's Nest is just a fantastic thrash album. The forthcoming LP is brilliant as well, a good place for the neophyte to begin as it draws on lots of different styles, etc, rather than pursuing a single concept.

I got in pretty early, despite the stupid name, with I'm in Your Mind Fuzz. It was a decent garage rock record, but it was hearing the range reflected on Quarters (four 10 minute 10 second psych rock jams) and Paper Mache Dream Balloon (all acoustic instruments, flutes, etc) that convinced me to pay attention. Not every album is great, but they've had far more hits than misses.

I always liked their name. A lizard wizard and a king of digestion, the latter now sounds as fantastic to me as the former

I had a garage-brew milkshake stout named after them, long before I checked out their music and it was amazing the end.

As much as I love Infest The Rats' Nest, I think it would have been improved if the lyrics were unintelligible.

Ha the lyrics having an intelligible uh, spirit (?) makes me like it more somehow.

A pal was at their usa debut at austin psychfest back when, came away awed (and shared head on to me) and i guess the show recording has been released. I should get that🤔.

these guys are making bob pollard look lazy

wow. didn't realize they had another one out today. so difficult to keep up with this band but I dig a lot of it

I wish they would make another garage rock influenced record

...Dripping Tap is one of their best tracks.

(and Ice, Death etc.. is top 5 KG imo)

Dropping Tap remains astonishing - like a rollercoaster fashioned from prog and krautrock. 17 minutes pass in what feels like seconds.

Does this singer have some tourette's tic where every time the chords come to the turnaround, he can't help but let out a falsetto "woooooooh!"? Is there some dude in the band whose only job is to go woooooooh!"?
Listening to "Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava" this afternoon, I'm really struggling to get past this. It was fun the first time, but come on.

It's his signature move, kind of like Ryu saying "Hadouken"

listening to these guys for the first time, love it - "dripping tap" is the shit

kraut section reminds me of super roots 7 but sub in prog rock tunefulness for tape speed experiments

Signature move indeed

It would be interesting to see what everyone's top 5 KGLW albums are, so many to pick from at this point

I see they're touring. I'm only a casual fan - I know their discography is ridiculous but I've scarcely listened to 1/4 of it - but I'm sure it would be a great show. £40 a ticket though, is that normal these days? Sold out anyway.

lol that's sort of my thinking. I've only heard one or two songs from them, but they've released 100 albums and have earned a grassroots level of legit appreciation, so advantage King Gizzard, I will totally see them. (fwiw, was just visiting family in Australia, and neither my brother in law - nor *his* hipper brother in law - had heard of them.)

I went to the Red Rocks show in November 2022 as "only a casual fan" and left a fully converted Gizzhead after 30 songs and a three-hour marathon set.

One of the best live shows I saw all year.

XP: If they get a giddy mention in a state government press announcement they can't be toooo obscure domestically!

they've played some pretty big venues here in aus but it's a cult following thing where unless you're an active music fan you probably wouldn't know who they are

got a ticket, in the circle, ah well. nevertheless.

having listened to two of the most recent of their five 2022 albums i'm feeling good about my decision (to buy the ticket, would still prefer to be in the stalls).

I'm a pretty big fan of these guys, but didn't expect they'd have a lot of ilm love. I'm really disappointed that they've given up releasing their music on CD and have just fully embraced the multi-pressing, varied color LP thing for every single release, but the 2022 material was pretty good. I'd rank 'em:

Ice, Death, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (seriously great record that I recommend to the curious, one of their best albums ever imho)
Omnium Gatherum
Laminated Denim
Made in Timeland
Changes

Dumb question about bands like this and lots of other similarly prolific acts. Can they really remember and tell apart all the hundreds of weird songs they've released? I always wondered that about guided by voices; so many songs, so many weird non-sequitor titles, how many could Robert Pollard name? I suppose jazz guys are equally if not more prolific - like, how many albums or songs has Bill Frisell recorded? I bet even he has no idea - but jazz is often about quickly moving forward onto the next thing, not a lot of retrospective stuff. Does a band like this operate similarly? Are there songs fans expect them to play, or do they expect every set to be a semi-improvised psychedelic explosion, with a few nods here and there to current stuff or fan fave stuff?

I've never seen them live, but heard a few live recordings and it seems to be all over the place - some shows are just a grab-bag from all over, they have a number of fan favorites that show up a lot, other focus more on specific modes/genres (the microtonal thing they've done on a few albums, or the heavier rock stuff paired with the material from the thrash record, etc.).

KGLW definitely play specific songs in their live shows including at least a few fan favorites, I don't think the live material is particularly improvised. They obviously have a lot of space for improvised solos, but it all seems fairly planned out in advance.

Can they really remember and tell apart all the hundreds of weird songs they've released?

Stu is insanely sharp, and seems to have a handle on everything Gizzard has done (though he admits he doesn't own all their stuff on vinyl). It helps, I think, that a lot of their stuff is conceptual, in sound if not text: each of the three albums they put out at the end of last year follows its own strict concept, and I interviewed him about them and he had a real clear understanding about each one, how the songs work within that concept, and what they were doing. He's deep into world-building and has an insanely driven work-ethic - he's not just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, everything seems, on some level, to be an intellectual exercise, and he understands what he's doing and what the music is doing. With Pollard, I feel there's a mercenary vibe that's developed in later years (maybe less so than circa GBV's initial split and the avalanche of releases that followed), where he seems to be focused on making PRODUCT, and knowing that there's a faithful audience there that will purchase all his output, even box sets sourced from fan-circulate bootlegs. For Stu, he seems genuinely intellectually engaged with each project Gizz do - there's an infectious sense of joy, and one shared among the other bandmates. It's a bit of a utopian thing, if you can dig it.

Are there songs fans expect them to play, or do they expect every set to be a semi-improvised psychedelic explosion, with a few nods here and there to current stuff or fan fave stuff?

At the Red Rocks show in November 2022, they played 30 distinct songs from their 23 albums. Many had improvisational bits added and/or were extended live versions, but the improvisation was tied to existing studio cuts. A few songs were transitioned into each other seamlessly (unlike on the studio albums). The two prior Red Rocks shows in October had another 55 to 60 unique songs with no overlap between the three setlists — close to 90 songs across three shows and nine hours.

I spoke with a superfan who said that altogether, King Gizzard played about 130 different songs on last year's tour.

This summer's run of three Red Rocks shows in June 2023 is promised to be similar. Three shows with no overlap between the setlists for fans who want to attend all three (... and you can guess how many shows I have tickets for).

I'm really disappointed that they've given up releasing their music on CD

My wallet is torn about this. I have a complete set of King Gizzard studio albums on CD — it was finally easier to keep up last year!

I'm just not into the variant chasing thing and their vinyl is really expensive (although I did finally cave and buy Ice, Death) so I was happy to keep rolling with the CDs. The abandonment was surprising since they'd even gone back a year or two ago to specifically release stuff that wasn't previously on CD, like Quarters.

Hopefully, they'll come back around with CD pressings of the recent albums. I'll certainly pick up copies if they do.

Ice, Death, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (seriously great record that I recommend to the curious, one of their best albums ever imho)
Omnium Gatherum
Laminated Denim
Made in Timeland
Changes

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, January 17, 2023 11:30 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

interesting, Changes is my fav of their 2022 albums! feels like the most fusiony steely dan-ish of them. Omnium Gatherum prob would've been #1 without the rapping.

I need to give Changes more of a chance I think, it honestly might have been KG exhaustion by the time I got to it when I was powering through the three October albums. Yeah, the rapping was awful and I'm so glad Changes wasn't the "rap" album that some fans were theorizing on based on the cover art.

yeah otm i love all their sounds so far but the dad rap

Omnium Gatherum prob would've been #1 without the rapping.

There was almost a whole rap album. Omnium's my favourite of the bunch, and 'The Dripping Tap' is probably my favourite track of 2022 and maybe the best thing they've ever done? 'Gaia''s also their best full-on metal number yet. But all those records are great.

So there was some basis to those rumors/theories... er, uh, not looking forward to that one.

"The Dripping Tap" alone is what prompted OG to be my #2 for the year.

Hahaha, I don't think it'll ever see the light of day tbh. Joey said "We were very aware how problematic it was, six white idiot psych-rock guys, making hip-hop…”

Ice, Death, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (seriously great record that I recommend to the curious, one of their best albums ever imho)

listened to this earlier, never heard this band before but it reminded me so much of Gong that i ended up throwing on the Dashiell Hedayat record.

They definitely are like an Antipodean Gong. Same playfil attitude allied to thrilling muso chops and willingness to go balls-out without a safety net.

not quite sold on this band but i'm onboard with the recurring falsetto wooooh's that enochroot didn't like, it's never quite expected and made me laugh a bunch of times.

yeah, broadly Gong-like in attitude and approach but there are also more direct similarities, at least on that one record.

Can they really remember and tell apart all the hundreds of weird songs they've released? I always wondered that about guided by voices; so many songs, so many weird non-sequitor titles, how many could Robert Pollard name?

well a key difference is they have a ton of stylistic variety compared to guided by voices who pretty much just have one sound so it's probably easier for them

God this band is good live. Yet I never have any desire to listen to their recorded output. Bummed I didn't catch tickets for their upcoming Brisbane show. If you ever get a chance to see the Giz, do not pass it up, even if you hate them.

Yeah I'd love to see them, but the tickets disappear almost instantly around here, since they (understandably) don't tour a ton over here, meaning their shows are "events".

Diving more into Omnium. These guys rule. I even like the rap tracks. So much wit and spirit. I wasn’t sure about em but I’m getting increasing returns.

The most impressive thing about the giz is that with their ridiculous output, they’re never boring.

yeah totally! i mean there are honestly some sections here and there when i am a little ??? but the imagination and engagement is just consistently there & they always bring a smile to my face within a few seconds. some impressive songwriting too that feels very intuitive. as far as the metal goes, it's not like they're technical masters or anything, but the real draw through all their styles for me is the philosophy, outlook and spirit behind it. like "gaia" as a subject, that's hippie shit, but they kind of go off the deep end a little bit, i.e. it's hippie stuff that gets it right and drops the self-importance and is more often than not an arresting song, like the byrds' "5d" or something.

it's perfect stoner music for the times and makes me have some faith in people since they're apparently kinda huge now among a certain type? i also just love that they deliver a concentrated version of the feeling of being younger and having a bunch of music freaks for friends and just like eating it all whole.

i'm also enjoying that they're not afraid of some things that might come across as kinda cheesy, it's all in the service of their whole vibe. also when they bring out eclectic instruments, even when they're obviously not masters of the instrument or anything, the imagination delivers and, like you said h p, it's never boring.

otm to everything. They really capture some of the best parts of Australian youth culture: wide optimism towards everything, the willingness to have "FUN" at the expense of status. Re: the hippie stuff, I think it's because Giz is so broad in their style that whichever style they pick loses the corniness as it is more of an exercise of "let's pull out all the fun/good from this particular style" and less of a "lets take conceptual metal albums or hippie gaia musing as some narrow road to the truth" that can inadvertently come out of bands where such a style is a sole focus.

and yeah, they are huge over here. It's a surprise to meet anyone under 30 who doesn't at least know of the giz. And I mean anyone, yuppies, beachies, do-nothing'ies, churchies, skate'ies, gamer....'ies, etc. etc. And even if the band is not for said people, there's still a sense of respect given (work-ethic and diversity, we suck at it so we respect it when we see it).

oh that's interesting to hear about their audience in australia.

i see them doing all of these big venues here in the states in the summer, red rocks and all that - with multi-day engagements, matinee shows, that kind of thing. it seems to me that they're the perfect "college music fan" band of the 2020s, i think of the crowd i was with in the early 2000s that were into flaming lips and jam bands and indie rock and jazz and stuff.

everyone otm and I need to listen to them more, they are very big with the kids at the college station I DJ at

I’m getting increasing returns.

This is absolutely them, for me. The more I listen, the more I love it. The more of it there is, the more I admire them. It helps that my 8yo is currently OBSESSED and plays them non-stop at the moment.

Re: Gaia, I think that's their best "metal" song yet. I think it was Rat's Nest that made me realise how genius this band was - that they could play such a breadth of music, but also demonstrate such a depth of understanding, or at very least sincere enthusiasm, in all that music at the same time. They played thrash so well, so enjoyably. But Gaia is something else - the way the riffs ride over the switching grooves, the sliding sections of it, the sheer heaviness and darkness of it.

Their embrace of climate politics is 100% sincere, by the way. I don't doubt Stu believes Gaia theory and is probably on the planet's side tbh.

yep I agree with map, idk if this band is gonna be my thing (I like what I've heard though) but either way it's super cool they're as big as they are. They really do seem to be having fun with what they're doing and I love how they seem to just let anyone who wants to press their records. For a band as strange as they are sometimes they seem to be fairly well known. I've heard them brought up in conversation a lot lately and my local shop has a bunch of posters for them up.

Their embrace of climate politics is 100% sincere, by the way. I don't doubt Stu believes Gaia theory and is probably on the planet's side tbh.

oh absolutely, you can hear it! i didn't mean to sound dismissive of it by calling it hippie shit - that is really nice to hear atm and i think it's part of what makes them so appealing. "gaia" also dives into a kind of cosmology that i also basically agree with. there is an embrace of death in a lot of their lyrics / subjects that feels like the opposite of nihilism to me.

my other fav on omnium right now is "evilest man." the subject matter of "conservative media" is like .. proceed with caution for me, lol, not something i necessarily want to hear a song about, you know? but i'm all in when it gets to this section:

I wonder if he knows this song
Probably read before it was done
He probably hacked my phone
I'll change the locks when I get home

and after the last line it just blasts off into one of their psych guitar explosions - like it's such a gratifying affirmation of interior personal space in the face of some hall of mirrors nightmare land.

i got ice, death..., laminated denim and changes based on jon via chi's list. he is otm about ice, death..., what a great album, just deep psychedelic rock goodness that goes further into their earth-based cosmology. that first track is so unbelievably euphoric. laminated denim burns bright too, two 15 min tracks with some ashra / can shenanigans going on. haven't connected as strongly to changes yet but think it's likely i will.

pastiche distillation music

With Pollard, I feel there's a mercenary vibe that's developed in later years (maybe less so than circa GBV's initial split and the avalanche of releases that followed), where he seems to be focused on making PRODUCT, and knowing that there's a faithful audience there that will purchase all his output, even box sets sourced from fan-circulate bootlegs. For Stu, he seems genuinely intellectually engaged with each project Gizz do - there's an infectious sense of joy, and one shared among the other bandmates. It's a bit of a utopian thing, if you can dig it.

― his cartoon heart expands, then he relaxes by smoking crack (stevie), Tuesday, January 17, 2023 11:18 AM

If they did a collabo with Guided By Voices, I really hope they call it "Doug Gillard and the Lillard Willard"

hahahahahaha!

this is gonna sound like a stretch i'm sure but the band these guys remind me of is neil young & crazy horse, in overall scope and vibe more than a particular set of common sounds, although some of the extended guitar work has a resemblance.

hell's itch: a beautiful song about flaying oneself

the kraut influence sometimes translates as stereolab-gone-prog-rock. the music is good to great but the lyrics are really where it's at for me. in that department they remind me of radiohead a bit when that band was really nailing the zeitgeist in the late 90s. but their lyrics are better. really interesting / probing stuff about bodies and the earth, making really bleak observations sound affirmative, sometimes joyous, sometimes funny, sometimes just weird.

that's an intriguing take! where do I start, which album do u recommend?

Omnium Gatherum is probs the best starting place - eclectic sounds throughout, and the lyrics are smart and strong (Gaia, Evillest Man, Blame It On The Weather)

That was the first one that clicked with me when I was trying to catch up. And then my friend said they reminded him of Ween, and ... yeah, kinda.

would also recommend Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms & Lava as a next stop after OG

yeah, for me, those two are equally as good. As far as their older stuff goes, I still think of Nonagon Infinity as the ultimate KG album, and it maybe leans the hardest into the non-stop motorik vibe. Flying Microtonal Banana is my personal favorite from that period, and I'm In Your Mind Fuzz is a great dirty garage rock jam. I also think Infest The Rats Nest is excellent, but it is a straight up metal album and is pretty far from their core sound.

Second j/v/c's next-step purchase and entirely agree with Moodles' choice of old skool Gizzard LPs. The Live In San Francisco album is great, too - that closing Head On/Pill is such a fabulous jam.

^^ yeah that live album is so good

My two early favorites were Quarters and I'm in Your Mind Fuzz.

I actually sprang for Needlejuice's 9-CD release of their entire 2022 Red Rocks run, as a consolation for not being able to see them on the upcoming tour.

Bought my 8yo I'm In Your Minid Fuzz for Xmas as the first record she owns herself. She's already a massive Gizzhead but that one contains a bunch of her favourites.

Considering taking her to the End Of The Road festival when they play there this summer, but also considering not because I just am not convinced taking an 8yo to a festival isn't a massive headache.

want to give a shout out to laminated denim too. at this point it's up there with omnium and ice death planets for me.

I’m sure there’s a better thread to post this in, but the Gizz is relevant whatever

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=586231203546287&id=100064782364065&mibextid=tejx2t

bluesfest is imploding

Good.

Deserves to implode, imho, after the organizer's absolutely terrible response to Gizz pulling out.

Based on this article, the festival organizer's response seems pretty reasonable.
Do he do something else that was terrible?

It’s possible that Noble’s definition of “extremely apologetic” matches yours, but doesn’t align with other readers here, or some of the musicians on the lineup.

listening to Ice, Planets, etc. now and whoever said they were like a modern Gong is totally otm. was kinda hoping I would *not* like this band because I see their vinyl all over and it looks so cool. but I can't help but notice that everyone who's into this band has excellent taste, so I guess it's fate

"one of us, one of us"

they are just a great band, you probably won't like every single album they put out, but there are some great ones.

Based on this article, the festival organizer's response seems pretty reasonable.
Do he do something else that was terrible?

the general feeling is that sticky fingers never really made amends for their behaviour - after their year-long hiatus they gave a disastrous interview on their return downplaying the incidents as 'boys will be boys' and they've continued to get into trouble - two of them got into legal trouble after having a drunken fight in 2021 for instance, so people are right to be sceptical about claims that they've reformed and that frost especially has gotten his issues under control

Well the guy behind the festival released an initial response when KGLW originally dropped out that was super defensive, arrogant and basically taking Sticky Fingers' side. As the backlash gained steam, they backtracked and released a newer statement. Still trying to find the original response...

It's been scrubbed pretty completely, even the two Reddit threads that posted his initial response have had the original posts nuked.

As is well known, I am and always have been the Director of Bluesfest.

Over the years, Bluesfest has been the promoter of music festivals which allowed diverse artists to exercise their freedom of artistic expression and have afforded the Australian public access to their works.

In the course of doing so, Bluesfest has been proud to give prominence to indigenous artists and to promote diversity in the music industry.

Recently, a band decided to cancel a forthcoming appearance at Bluesfest because Sticky Fingers, particularly its lead singer (who are booked to play at Bluesfest), was involved in an incident with another artist offstage a long time ago.

There has already been a lot of social media traffic about this decision. I think one commentator well reflects my feelings, as previously stated:

“That whole situation happened 7 years ago and the lead singer of Sticky Fingers has been extremely apologetic and open about his bipolar schizophrenia and substance abuse during that time and is also Māori. They’ve done the work to try and make amends and took a long hiatus to fix things.”

I believe an attempt to victimise this man and his band in the circumstances is cruel and unforgiving. This cruelty and lack of compassion are foreign to my values, as is the attempt to suppress the band’s artistic expression. I was and remain proud to give the band a chance at rehabilitation.

Bluesfest hopes that the public will understand, respect, and hopefully, on reflection, agree with the position my company and I have taken. Forgiveness is critical to helping people with mental health challenges continue functioning in society.

It has been suggested that because of the listing of Sticky Fingers, Bluesfest and I endorsed the lead singer’s ancient troubled behaviour. That suggestion is deplorable, untrue, and actionable as being defamatory.

That one?

I have no clue what he's done but this sentence makes it sound real bad

That whole situation happened 7 years ago and the lead singer of Sticky Fingers has been extremely apologetic and open about his bipolar schizophrenia and substance abuse during that time and is also Māori.

yeah, that one, thanks.

the official Bluesfest PR that was published as a screenshot so you could see the crybaby paragraph c+p'd from the band's management was pretty good too

https://themusic.com.au/features/what-did-sticky-fingers-do-to-be-cancelled/R_BTW1pdXF8/25-02-23

this is a detailed summary if you're interested in reading far too much about sticky fingers' history

putting all the mess to the side for a moment, sticky fingers make horrible music and I was glad not to hear it playing in public the past 5 or so years

i thought 'king gizzard & the lizard wizard' was a not-great band name at first (it has grown on me tbh), but 'sticky fingers' is just abysmal. like naming your band 'rubber soul'.

from a Marrickville bowling club

wonder which one, Staff Writer

'sticky fingers' is just abysmal. like naming your band 'rubber soul'.

with the additional wrinkle that "sticky fingers" is gross and double-entendre-y

I have finally reached the point of my life which I mocked all others Australian Gizz fans for for. Giz has become influential in me finally wanting to buy a massive 100 watt orange amp+cab duo and just smash out some garage rock (rock, in my garage). God damn their early stuff is so much fun to churn out loud in your shed. There is something about this band that makes you feel like "hell yeah, lets do what they're doing". Not for art, not for music, not for fame, but simply for fun. The Giz know how to have a good time.

Would like to reiterate as well, very very very very very fun and great live band

Based on the name alone, I will never voluntarily listen to this band.

I hate the name too, have heard in the background since my kids listen to them, but didn’t make an impression on me either way.

Based on the name alone, I will never voluntarily listen to this band.

Absolutely your loss.

That spinoff or whatever it is of theirs, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, is even worse!

Are they a spinoff? They don't share any members and Perth is 2000+ miles away from Melbourne!

Never investigated directly -- that name gave me the hives -- but the PR over here were hyping up some kind of connection. Wouldn't be surprised if it was hot air!

their name is obviously stupid and would be fitting for some half-serious spinoff band but I do think the fact that they have such a ridiculous amount of output makes it kinda funny now. plus you know they came up with it when they were like 18.

I have finally reached the point of my life which I mocked all others Australian Gizz fans for for. Giz has become influential in me finally wanting to buy a massive 100 watt orange amp+cab duo and just smash out some garage rock (rock, in my garage). God damn their early stuff is so much fun to churn out loud in your shed. There is something about this band that makes you feel like "hell yeah, lets do what they're doing". Not for art, not for music, not for fame, but simply for fun. The Giz know how to have a good time.

lol because while it's not playing it myself, i experienced the need for appropriate gear for these guys: i blew out a bluetooth speaker a few months ago blasting the gizz! i had not previously approached playing the type of music capable of doing that at the volume capable of doing that since i was a kid. (only other time i can remember blowing out a speaker was playing License to Ill on an old school boombox. those were good times...)

it's like that denis leary joke, "pot is a gateway drug, but it doesn't lead to more drugs, it leads to carpentry"

seems like the connection is just some vague idea of an australian psych rock scene

Yeah Murlocs is the KGLW spinoff band, I don't think they have anything to do with PPC (whom I've never heard), other than both playing psych rock in Australia.

there's a local bar here which does a "prog night" every month and I love how you have one generation of people there who grew up through the 60's and 70's and will talk about what it was like to buy The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway the day it was released and then another generation of young people who know every King Gizzard record which led them to Yes and Soft Machine and all that

The youth yearns the rock. Re: the name, definitely your loss. Obviously first reaction is “why”, but I think it’s a great name for them insofar as it directly communicates playful fun and the complete absence of all pretension.

I feel like I’m reaching a little here. It is a dumb and probably regretful name lol. But who cares?

With Pollard, I feel there's a mercenary vibe that's developed in later years (maybe less so than circa GBV's initial split and the avalanche of releases that followed), where he seems to be focused on making PRODUCT, and knowing that there's a faithful audience there that will purchase all his output, even box sets sourced from fan-circulate bootlegs. For Stu, he seems genuinely intellectually engaged with each project Gizz do - there's an infectious sense of joy, and one shared among the other bandmates. It's a bit of a utopian thing, if you can dig it.

― his cartoon heart expands, then he relaxes by smoking crack (stevie), Tuesday, January 17, 2023 11:18 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it's worth noting that, when GBV had been a band for 13 years as KLGW has, they were releasing Under the Bushes Under the Stars. Let's reconvene in 30 years and see how fresh KLGW is then.

I think it’s a great name for them insofar as it directly communicates playful fun and the complete absence of all pretension.

i understand that this sounds a little foolish and eye-rolly, but i want to defend the name in the other direction - i think it's actually a serious choice and reflective of their subject matter. gizzard is, well, our digestive tract, and i've never heard a band take on embodiment as a theme like they do - it seems like a bit of a dark cavern for them, maybe the king of it is a bit of an antagonist, like goliath. lizard wizard? yeah it's a silly rhyme but i think it puts over the kind of third eye / magic persona that animates their joyfulness, maybe that's david. anyway.

embodiment and ecology. it's a bit vague / mysterious and the alliteration is maybe unfortunate, but i think it reflects those themes, which seem pretty central to the band (though surely aren't the only ones).

gizzard is, well, our digestive tract, and i've never heard a band take on embodiment as a theme like they do

let us not forget that they once cut a concept album that ends with a cyborg vomiting the universe into extinction

Wait til you hear ausmuteants do an ep all about cops. I love orstalya

never really checked this band out, one of those instances where those Spotify "This Is King Lizard and the Gizzard Wizard" playlist are helpful

i don't have the bandwidth to listen to a lot of new music, and i'm not "serious" about discovery, like i'm a really lazy crow who just latches onto whatever shiny thing that comes their way, so that's where i'm coming from, but with these guys i'm definitely turning into a FAN, as in omg i love them, haven't had that experience happen for a few years at least.

they make Motorpsycho's release schedule look like Peter Gabriel. I can respect that.

i'm only 3 albums into their discography so far! (going backwards). but i've had those on repeat for a while and they keep doing it for me.

i love this one to death. if this doesn't make you smile at some point then this band probably isn't for you imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2akBAjCNVY

I've listened to that album twice and there are so many parts still stuck in my head

four people at work asked me who I was going to see this evening, hadn't heard of them and laughed when I told them. it's a good name.

phenomenal gig. tons of shredding interspersed with motorik electronic, slow jamz, flute rap. started with gaia, then three from nonagon infinity mixed with other songs in a non stop jam, ended (after a bunch of other stuff) with dripping tap. I will, if possible, definitely go and see them again.

Took my daughter to the show last night, her first gig - was able to get us snuck on side of stage as it was a "no under 14s" show and she's 8. Her mind was absolutely blown - we had to leave about 75 minutes in as she was seriously flagging but what a fantastic show - mildly disappointed to have missed The Dripping Tap but they opened with Gaia, my favourite of their thrash jams, and it was mighty. Cavs drummed like a beast throughout, what a superstar.

the nonagon suite was so ace. I sort of feel they could jam on those four or five songs all night if they wanted to, building up to the crescendos and then pulling back and then building up again, and it would have been sublime.

Yeah the drumming was incredible, that minutes-long drum solo in gaia \m/

Stu busting out the flute was unexpected - well by me anyway, maybe not by more devoted fans!

I've just listened to the album version of 'Shanghai', it's a pleasant little ditty. Last night it was a motorik monster.

Ah yes - love the Butterfly 3000 LP, but they totally gave it a krautrock carapace so it could stomp last night!

Still haven’t really listened to this band. Already some younger guys in the neighborhood who told me to listen to them are doubling down and recommending yet another band, one called Babe Rainbow. Which seems to be named after an album by The House of Love, who I never heard of either, but this album seems to be the one that is most my speed.

Okay, back to King Gizzard. Think I will listen to “Gaia” first.

Let me say I'll preface my post here by saying that I 100% understand that trying to survive as a band in 2023 has got to be incredibly difficult and I can't fault any band for doing what it takes to make money and keep doing what they love.

That said, (here comes the "but") I'm increasingly getting a sour taste in my mouth about the way they are turning more and more to releasing physical versions of their albums like they are exclusive sneaker drops - tiny batches, limited by different regions, color variations. etc. Like this tweet from last night to announce a "drop" on Friday:

Friday's repress drop includes - amongst HEAPS of other things...

Murder of the Universe on 2LP for the first time

Willoughby's Beach with original artwork on 12" for first time

Infest the Rat's Nest with alternative "smouldering rodent carcass" artwork (lol)

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

— King Gizzard (@kinggizzard) March 29, 2023

When you get into the replies (also! I do appreciate whomever on their team spends the time patiently wading through twitter replies to answer fans) you see even more about how these are intentionally limited in certain countries or whatever. Out of curiosity, I dug into some threads on the band's subreddit and apparently these things sell out in minutes, if not more quickly. I get it, these dudes are popular! But it's very clear that this is an intentional approach by the band to inflate demand through limited releases.

I think this aspect has always been a part of their approach and probably helped to their appeal among hardcore vinyl nerds. But I'll say that it was also easier to ignore this when they were also releasing their albums on easy to get CD and wider vinyl runs. I didn't get into music to have to chase drops like a madman, I just want to support the artists I enjoy and have a physical copy for my collection. I was happy to wait a little and grab the CD when it came out. But now that they've done away with the CD option completely and are increasingly focusing on limited drops, I can't lie..it's kind of taking the joy away a little bit for me.

They've become my gym/car band via streaming.

aren't they the band that lets any label release their stuff so long as they get a copy? maybe that's live records only. still I think "release as much stuff as possible" is kind of this band's M.O.

I suspect that the market for regular CDs is mostly non-existent, and the only way they sell any physical product is through these ultra exclusive drops.

I understand being bummed about CDs if that's your thing, but I think the limited runs on vinyl is just a reality of being a band releasing their own stuff in a world where any affordable pressing plant is likely to be jammed up with neon vinyl reissues of herb alpert records for RSD. The new albums from last year (save Omnium) are, as far as I can see, largely available in the UK at the moment, but they'll come back into print at some point. The alt pressings are just for the collecter scum fanboys, and I'm sure they partly keep the band rolling. But also, they aren't signed to a label, they release their stuff themselves, so I'm guessing they have to run these things on quite tight budgets.

Like I said in my post, I don't blame them for doing what they need to do to survive. It's more just my observation that the distribution has changed in recent years and what used to be easy to scoop up has gotten pretty hard. The last five albums haven't been released on CD at all and only 3 of those 5, afaict, got wide vinyl releases. It seems like they are still kinda associated with ATO since they are reissuing a few vinyl things this year, but doesn't look like the same distribution deal they used to have.

I honestly think a good solution (getting to frogbs' point) would be to license someone like Needlejuice to press up CDs and get a cut from that. I know Needlejuice has done a really good job with the live physical packages they've put together and I'd be happy to support that too.

At the end of the day, obviously I can stream and that's what I've done with the 2022 albums that I missed on vinyl. I think it's just more that I've been collecting these guys since pretty much their fourth album and it's mildly annoying to just have stopped in 2021, despite them still releasing great new stuff.

To more specifically answer frogbs' point - yeah, they freely license live stuff but I think only one or two specific studio albums so far.

ok I'm stoned to the bone and am listening to the album in the thread title for the first time, which I bought purely on good faith based on the cool people in my life. I tell you what going "okay I'm not that high, this really has been going on longer than 5 minutes" is a fun feeling

hahahahahahaha

i can imagine being stoned and not expecting the same riffs ro reoccur throughout the record would be a fun experience

Jon OTM. (I haven’t heard this band but we clearly share similar frustrations about CD availability in the modern era.)

by the way anyone who digs this should check out "N.O.X." on the Motorpsycho album The All is One, which is a similar blend of motorik and hard psychedelic rock. 40 minues long too. kinda makes me wonder if it would've been hyped up more as a separate album. obviously these guys thought this sort of thing would stand on its own.

Good recommendation frogbs, that's a great tune. Motorpsycho was a great discovery for me during the pandemic. Still have a ton of their catalog to discover, but I've fallen hard for everything I've gotten so far, which is everything starting with Death-Defying Unicorn (also got the Blissard 4xCD reissue thing).

you may wanna go a little back for Heavy Metal Fruit, that's when they really started hitting the prog hard and IMO it's one of their best

Definitely on my list, kinda working my way backwards. I think when the new album comes up for pre-order, I'll grab a handful from Stickman.

I'm listening to one of their live shows from last year and it's way harder/bigger than I expected.

going to see them this summer despite not really having listened to much of their music since nonagon infinity. they seem like they'll be fun live though

New album is called "PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation."

Wish I was going this summer, enjoy. I've heard nothing but amazing things about their live shows.

xpost - yep, and per a discussion from another thread, it's not due out until June 16th, but it is completely sold out in every format already.

Apparently many of the variants sold out in 9 minutes. I love these guys, but jfc the tiny pressings and drops drive me absolutely batshit.

they gotta be the only band around right now that could get away with a title like that

well there's a parallel discussion in the billy woods thread about cult-popular hip hop artists like woods and roc marciano and mach-hommy doing similar things

worth checking out - someone asked woods about it in an interview and he said he was not trying to create artificial scarcity, it's just hard for him to find the sweet spot in terms of how many LPs to produce without losing money

yeah, though I think it's a little different for these guys, I suspect there is a bit of intentionality in what they do, because it works. they have fans salivating for these drops and, every time, they sell out nearly instantly. they don't do typical pre-orders, it's precisely timed drops for different regions with different vinyl variants, it reminds me a lot of the hype and drop cycle for like new sneakers. and it works, as someone pointed out on a reddit thread, 6 variants in runs of 10,000 each @ $40 a pop - the band pulled in over 2 million dollars in just a few hours.

correcting faulty numbers there, it was actually runs of 2,000 each, so they "only" cleared half a million in that time frame. still, imagine most artists would kill for those numbers.

enjoying some gizz at the office, great way to momentarily chase away bad vibes

what gizz did you go for?

definitely reckon the dripping tap would annihilate any badvibes

IDPLML

"mycelium" is low key the most positive song ever recorded

They're playing three sold out shows here. Assuming I can get in, I'm trying to figure out which of the three might be the most strategically appealing for a band with 25 albums that I've never seen live before. First show? Third show?

have they announced any themes for the three shows?

Ooh, I never even thought about that. I did a quick google and I think word is they are not going to repeat any songs over the course of the three nights, so ... roll a dice?

I’m going on the 13th.

they've done metal shows, garage shows, etc, before. they're also REALLY GREAT at pacing and planning their setlists - the show i took my then-8yo to a couple of months ago began with a bunch of their thrash jams, then eased into some Nonagon Infinity stuff, and then slipped into a bunch of Butterfly 3000 stuff, and it all worked together so well.

I'll be there tonight, no idea what to expect. I'll be the one looking old and confused and (checks weather) possibly damp.

My only advice as a fellow old is if it is general admission, be careful about standing in the middle of the crowd. I made that mistake when I saw them and almost got crushed as soon as they started playing.

all metal so far!!!!

now stoner krautrock boogie

now space prog

hope you're having a blast these guys sound like a lot of fun

a little too phishy for me at times, but they are all over the place in a good way

This sounds a lot like the show I saw a few years ago. Started off super heavy but after a while shifted into more of a mellow jam mood that I found less engaging.

it's gone back and forth tonight. two hours straight, thought it'd be longer, maybe because of the rain.

the "stoner krautrock boogie" segment/medley was the peak for me, especially the flute song (maybe not coincidentally, this is also when the rain finally stopped). the metal stuff is fun but feels pastichey imo.

Talked to a dude who flew in from Seattle. This was his 15th show this tour, and he said it was a great set. But I get the feeling they don't really do "bad" sets, just always a hodgepodge of their styles.

My buddy, a recovering Phish guy, was impressed. On one hand, he said, there were moments that reminded him of peak 1995 Phish (I trust him), but he also said there was also lots of other stuff that Phish could never authentically pull off, like the metal or krautrock/psych. Maybe Ween could do that, I dunno, I've never really listened to Ween. (I did see a few Ween shirts, but I also saw a kid wearing a Rites of Spring shirt.)

Anyway, it was fun, not really my scene, so a change of pace.

i saw someone wearing a green velvet cape with a fur collar and a ween logo on the back

I know that before they did the metal albums they were anxious that they wouldn't seem like dilletantes, that it wouldn't seem like pastiche. I know Stu's favourite era of metal is that moment when prog hits thrash - And Justice For All-era Metallica - and I think they make a fine fist of that noise. Certainly Gaia is one of the finest metal songs I've heard in years - that groove, those changes.

I like metal KG, but I'm also definitely a metal dilettante

Ha! Me too tbh...

Sounds like a pretty good show! I have to admit I haven't heard much Phish in their stuff just yet, but I haven't seen them live and haven't caught up with any of the recent recordings. I could see them hitting on some similar jam vibes though.

we couldn't really figure out how much jamming was happening - i'm guessing some of the solos were improvised but there would also be sudden shifts in tempo/rhythm that seemed like they had to be planned, so structurally it didn't seem as jammy

Apparently the band has only recently started exploring the Dead. I found this illustrative interview in (of course) Relix (I corrected the typos, lol):

https://relix.com/articles/detail/king-gizzard-the-lizard-wizard-a-beautiful-mind-fuzz/

During that five-album span, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard also exploded on the live-music circuit, headlining amphitheaters in the U.S. for the first time and aging into the rare torch-receiving act to simultaneously draw in hipster tastemakers, hard-edged metal fans and off-season Phishheads at any given show. It was a long time coming: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have been gradually expanding their own Gizzverse for just over a decade and their rise through the ranks has been singular and organic. In that time, they’ve learned how to make their fans happy—though the group has long staked their claim to one of the more adventurous corners of the jam-scene, recently they have started thinking of themselves as more of a “jamband” than “a band who jams.”

“I didn’t understand the Grateful Dead— they weren’t a cultural phenomenon here like they were in the States,” Mackenzie says, while sitting for a 9 a.m. Zoom at his studio, his two-year-old daughter already awake for the day. “So, early on, when we said we were a jamband, we meant that we had no fucking idea what we were doing. We would just get up there and improvise. The vocabulary wasn’t learned from jambands. But, as soon as we started coming to the States, we noticed that some people would come to every show on the tour. We would always think, ‘I feel so bad for these people. They’re coming to watch the exact same show every night.’ I didn’t realize that they saw this seed of improvisation within our music. I didn’t have access to the cultural understanding of what touring with a band meant. But spending a lot of time in the States opened us up to playing different, unique shows every night and improvising a lot more. And I love that—it makes us feel like we are musicians rather than performers.”

The Gizzard leader says that he will often look back on the group’s past setlists before they return to any given city, in order to offer a unique show. He’s also found himself going down a deep Grateful Dead rabbit hole in recent years.

“As soon as I realized that there were hundreds of versions of the same songs that were all amazing and different, I was like, ‘OK, I get it,’” Mackenzie—who sings and provides guitar, keyboards, flute and a range of other instruments in Gizzard— admits. “When I find a Dead song I like, instead of listening to it over and over again—which is what I do when I find a band that I’m quite obsessive about—I’ll listen to the same song from different years. I said to myself: ‘I understand how this is life for people.’”

I don't really know much about Phish except I've never liked what I've heard, but this Gizzard song (making its live debut last night?) captures what I've always thought Phish sometimes sounds like (at least in my head):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON2YIIPCJr0

btw I'm kinda wondering which records to get, I've got Nonagon and Ice, Death, Planets etc. and I like both of those. I'm more into the band's krautrocky/proggy side than I am the metal stuff

Flying Microtonal Banana

laminated denim very kraut/prog, only 30 minutes but better for it i think.

Omnium Gatherum is a great grab-bag of everything. Polygonwanaland has Crumbling Castle, their great krautprog anthem. KG and LW are great subsequent volumes of their Turkish psych stuff.

cool thanks, I know my local shop has at least one of those

listening to Ice, Death, Planets etc. and I kinda get how they can do so much so fast - it's song based but I suspect like 2/3rds of it is improv. or at least began as improv. that's kinda what Can did I think.

I think their song writing has gotten more complex on recent albums, but yeah, this is basically true.

This is from the Ice Death press release, it's pretty interesting about the improv nature of that album, which was inspired itself by how impov'd a lot of The Dripping Tap was:

For this new album, however, the group wouldn’t be bringing in any pre-written songs or ideas; instead, they planned to cook up all the music together in the studio, on the spot.
Ambitious stuff, then. “All we had prepared as we walked into the studio were these seven song titles,” says Mackenzie. “I have a list on my phone of hundreds of possible song titles. I’ll never use most of them, but they’re words and phrases I feel could be digested into King Gizzard-world.” Mackenzie selected seven titles from his list that he felt “had a vibe”, and then attached a beats-per-minute value to each one. Each song would also follow one of the seven modes of the major scale: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian (“I’m not sure if many people will notice that,” says Mackenzie, “but any musical dorks will get it”).

Over seven days, the group recorded hours and hours of jams, dedicating a day to each mode and BPM. “Naturally, each day’s jams had a different flavour, because each day was in a different scale and a different BPM,” Mackenzie says. “We’d walk into the studio, set everything up, get a rough tempo going and just jam. No preconceived ideas at all, no concepts, no songs. We’d jam for maybe 45 minutes, and then all swap instruments and start again.”

The group ended each day with four-to-five hours of new jams in the can. Mackenzie auditioned those jams after the sessions were done, stitching them together into the songs that feature on the 21st studio album by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava (the initials of the title, IDPLMAL, spell out a mnemonic for the modes). “I went through it all and cut it up,” he said, of the hours of new music he’d recorded to two-track tape, preferring to “commit to print” over the conveniences of modern digital production. “It was a huge editing job, actually. I edited each track down to ten-to-fifteen minutes of music drawn from that specific day’s recordings, trying to find narratives, arcs and loops within the jams. So the songs were actually written during this editing phase, which was something we’d never done before ‘The Dripping Tap’. The raw power, the real energy, was just a loose jam, and then we refined it and edited it in a way that felt very musical.”

Having assembled full working instrumentals from these jams, Mackenzie and his bandmates began overdubbing flute, organ, percussion and extra guitar over the top. The lyrics, meanwhile, were a group effort. “We had an editable Google Sheet that we were all working on,” says Mackenzie. “Most of the guys in the band wrote a lot of the lyrics, and it was my job to arrange it all and piece it together.”

The result of this radical, experimental creative process is one of the densest, most unpredictable statements from a band whose work always rockets in from unexpected angles accompanied by a wealth of subtext and theorems. But you don’t even need even a passing understanding of those Ancient Greek musical modes to appreciate this adventurous new music. Highlights include ‘Lava’, a suite of pure fire music that swings between spiritual jazz and new age visions, powered by psychedelic saxophones, shimmering cymbals and McCoy Tyner-esque pianos, and the wormhole-riding prog-folk excursions of ‘Magma’, which leads unsuspecting listeners into unfamiliar realms via the siren call of Mackenzie’s flute, while ‘Ice V’ delivers apocalyptic funk with a cool hand at the controls, ‘Hell’s Itch’ hypnotises with its coiling guitar lines, hard honking harmonica and polymorphic basslines, and the ever-shifting ‘Iron Lung’ follows the choppy grooves of its happy/sad songcraft through unexpected twists and turns, a vision of pop refracted through a house of mirrors. Sinister closer Gliese 710, meanwhile, pushes ever onwards into the darkness, its lumbering-but-lithe heaviosity enough to get corpses to nod their heads.

Listen close and you can hear the electric interaction between the members of King Gizzard, the pure, distilled instrumental fire at their disposal, the simpatico musical conversations between these friends. Pull back and you’ll marvel at how their lightning-in-a-bottle improvisations yield songs of such craft, such laser-guided focus. This freeform creative process – chasing the moment in the jam, then selecting flashpoints and highlights afterwards – is one Mackenzie can see the family Gizzard returning to in the future. “We’re already jamming a lot more onstage,” he says. “I guess bands like Can made records this way before, but it’s new to us, and it was a really, really fun experience.”

Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava is already one of Mackenzie’s favourite Gizzard records to date. “It’s like we were able to escape song structures,” he says. “It felt ‘far out’ for us – we took heaps of risks and did heaps of different new things on this one. It wasn’t just about one concept – there’s stacks embedded in this one.”

Petro D operates along similar lines - all 7 tracks were written from improvs, each track written and recorded in a single day, each day of improv starting from scratch but following a loose idea of the "story" that track was supposed to "tell".

I’m not sure which is cooler, if that pr is true, or if it is just totally false—SIKE!

i like both possibilities but it seems v specific

they were on Office Hours with Tim Heidecker this week. wonder if those fanbases cross over much, both King Gizzard and On Cinema are great things to get into if you have hundreds of hours to spare

I'm digging PetroDragonic Apocalypse, I like them in thrash metal mode and this has a bit of that non-stop Nonagon Infinity energy as well.

I've quickly grown to appreciate a lot of what this band is up to, but I don't think I would have made the effort without the metal stuff.

Yeah, i find that I connect with them more in lava/death mode than in mushroom/planets mode (which is opposite of what I expected going in).

I think what makes them fun is they have both those sides.

They played Tennessee in drag. Kings.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CujMAKjR863/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

like a month ago, right?

Yup, but just shared on their instagram this morning

Gila Gila Gila!
WOO!

They just put out a 40-track official (but still already much bootlegged) compilation of all three Chicago nights.

After a pretty traditional journey (put off by name; people persuade me they're actually pretty good; attempt to listen but immediately give up when confronted by SO MANY albums) I saw them at the End of the Road festival, found them huge huge fun and now I just listen to The Dripping Tap all day.

\o/

sticking it on right now

Dripping Tap is their best track I reckon, no shade on their wealth of other brilliant music. It's like this glorious waterslide constructed from motorik jams.

it was certainly a very very persuasive way to open the set

One thing that has been helpful in wading through the massive discography is that it's so diverse that if you're looking for a particular sound, you can narrow it down somewhat. I'm far from comprehensive in my knowledge but this thread's namesake album is a good next step from the Dripping Tap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jnsD-fEHdY

new album is their synth album and comes in two versions - one with all the tracks under 5 minutes (but they seem to segue together judging by the three-song suite they've released) and one with all the tracks extended into 10+ minute jams for their longest album yet.

sounds quite promising

lol I just listened to their last album (which was straight up metal) so this is kind of a shock. I mean you know that's what they do but still. very interested in this one

out today. oh god uhh this sounds incredible.

Yeah I played some of the extended version and it was great. Probably just gonna wait for an LP release, it’s not like there’s a shortage of King Gizz records I haven’t heard

the short version is great but i'm a little disappointed the tracks don't quite all segue together

first one of the extended versions is wonderful

some of these extended versions are transcendent and some do not justify their length at all

I agree with that, but I'm still having a blast. When that one track ("Set"?) busts out a Freedom Williams-esque rap verse I cracked up.

Actually, there's a lot of stadium house/KLF coursing through a lot of this. But also nods to drum and bass, acid, etc.

Lol at this line in the allmusic review: "... giving the listener more time to wonder why the band chose to go down this route." Like, of all the bands that would make you ask "why," this band is not one of them.

this is excellent running music.

^hugely looking forward to running to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHZR9SA5pOg

Before the album came out I saw a few references to Giorgio Moroder, and of course they've done Krautrock (sort of), so I was not expecting the Eurodance jock-jam vibe.

me neither but everything they do is a bit silly so it's not exactly out of character. I think this is what's so endearing about them, for example I'm not really a metal guy but I dug Petrodragonic Apocalypse because it wasn't afraid to be dumb in a real fun way. I mean "Gila Monster" is one of the few metal tracks I've heard that really made me laugh.

I know better than to get hung up on just one particular album from these guys and this made for a fun listen (esp the extended version), but I don't know, this whole album and rollout feels to me like they are leaning way too hard into pleasing the reddit fanbase or something. It just seems too intentionally meme ready and winking, or something. I dunno, it's hard to put into words how I'm feeling about it, but I guess this is where I think the silliness outstrips the quality of the music and I've never really felt that way before.

I enjoyed the euro techno jock jam esp because i was rollerskiing. at least they good at what they do.

found a copy of Polygondwanaland today and wow this is just up my alley. real progressive and kind of electrofunky. genuinely nuts that this is was one of FIVE albums they did that year. with most modern prog acts you're lucky if you get an album like this every 4 years.