King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity

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?