Since forming in Melbourne, Australia, in 2010, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have turn out to be one of many best-loved bands of their time. The core six-piece – Michael Cavanagh (drums), Prepare dinner Craig (guitar), Lucas Harwood (bass), Ambrose Kenny-Smith (keyboards, vocals), Stu Mackenzie (vocals, guitar) and Joey Walker (vocals, guitar) – have created a universe round themselves with a deluge of mind-bogglingly constant, genre-defying albums and stay reveals which have seen them win a religious following that calls to thoughts the Grateful Useless and Phish. However with 25+ studio albums and numerous stay units accessible, it’s difficult to know the place to begin. That’s the place we are available with our choose of 20 songs from the primary decade or so of their profession.
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20. Smoke & Mirrors (Made In Timeland, 2022)
Let’s start our Gizzodyssey with a observe that demonstrates their superior vary. Initially put collectively as intermission music for the band’s prolonged reveals, Made In Timeland consists of two 15-minute audio collages, every set to a clock ticking at 60bpm. “Smoke & Mirrors” takes up the whole lot of Facet Two of the vinyl album and begins with the sound of a gong, as each epic musical journey in all probability ought to. It wastes no time in hunkering all the way down to a cool, space-rock groove earlier than resplendent synth harps emerge, creating an oasis of beatific magnificence. The temper turns and Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s rap persona, Shrimpomaniac, is launched, chanting the title backed by cranky synths and stomping beats. The place subsequent? A tabla-propelled acid home magic carpet trip, after which trance-inducing beats and sub-bass take maintain. One other whack of that gong breaks the spell and the harps return, but it’s simply the calm earlier than an intense gabber storm. Lilting guitars comply with, however there’s yet one more left flip – a dusty breakbeat begins up, like one thing from a late 90s Grand Royal album, and Shrimpromanic is really unleashed. If “Smoke And Mirrors” piques your curiosity, strap in for a helluva trip.
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19. Sea Of Bushes (12 Bar Bruise, 2012)
One of many stand-out tracks on King Gizzard’s full debut album was the distortion-drenched “Sea Of Trees.” Setting a precedent for future Gizz classics, beneath the life-affirming punk blast was a lyric involved with darker themes. “Just as King Gizzard was forming, Eric [Moore] went to a Gaz Liddiard show where he talked about ‘the Sea of Trees’ in Japan, a place where businessmen go to commit suicide,” Mackenzie advised Mess And Noise in 2013. “This actually ended up being our band name for a couple of our early shows and also seemed like a fitting title to this song.”
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18. Evil Man (Eyes Like The Sky, 2013)
An early indication of King Gizz’s derring-do and willpower to comply with their very own superb path got here with the 2013 idea album, Eyes Like The Sky, a psychedelic, largely instrumental spaghetti western narrated by Brod Smith (Ambrose’s father) that takes 12 Bar Bruise’s “Sam Cherry’s Last Shot” and runs with it. Eyes Like The Sky is about within the blood-soaked “hinterlands of the newly formed United States” and follows the titular youngster soldier’s life, drawing upon the brutal truths of colonialism. “Evil Man” picks up the story on the level the place American troopers, led by a depraved missionary, assault the Yavapai-Apache tribe, whom Eyes For The Sky regards as household. The music is suitably ominous, with a menacing central guitar riff and wailing background vocals. They’d return to outlaw territory on Flying Microtonal Banana’s “Billabong Valley.”
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17. Tezeta (Sketches Of Brunswick East, 2017)
The band’s third album of 2017 was a collaboration with Alex Brettin of Mile Excessive Membership following his efficiency at Gizzfest 2016. Mackenzie and Brettin had exchanged a couple of tune concepts by e mail, which had been fleshed out over two weeks in Flightless HQ, the band’s Melbourne studio. The outcome was a mellow gem steeped in psychedelic pop, jazz and straightforward listening influences. Walker’s “Tezeta” took its title from a elegant observe by Mulatu Astatke, the Ethiopian vibraphone grasp who fused Afro-Cuban rhythms, salsa, funk, and conventional North African music to create Ethio-jazz within the 70s. The Gizz use Astatke’s sonic palette – vibraphone, flute, wah-wah guitar – to conjure up a observe that solely they might create. They instantly wrong-foot us by starting in 3/4, with Brettin’s snaking organ giving the waltz a sinister air. A shift to 12/8 ushers in one other menacing part, with the title chanted over jazz-funk bass and vibraphone, earlier than a buoyant, McCartney-esque melody transforms the tune right into a wistful meditation on reminiscence and notion.
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16. Work This Time (Oddments, 2014)
“This record was a slate-clearer, a head-cleaner. Spring cleaning for the mind,” wrote Mackenzie within the Oddments credit. It takes most bands no less than a decade earlier than they raid the archives, however King Gizz should not most bands. Oddments collects stray songs that didn’t match different initiatives, recorded in a spirit of experimentalism. The pressure-free environment seeped into the slinky lo-fi psych of “Work This Time” (“Joey and I trying to record soulful music,” wrote Mackenzie), which has turn out to be one of many band’s hottest songs and common leaping off level for wild jams (examine the model from Stay At Pink Rocks ’22 for an impressed guitar solo from Walker).
15. Minimal Mind Dimension (KG, 2020)
Following 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, KG was the second quantity within the band’s ‘Explorations In Microtonal Tuning’ sequence, impressed by Mackenzie’s experiments on the Bağlama, a Turkish people instrument, and written and recorded on modified devices utilizing microtonal tuning. “Minimum Brain Size” is without doubt one of the album’s highlights, a heady psych-rock overhaul of conventional Turkish fasıl music constructed round a colossal microtonal guitar riff. The tune is an emphatic takedown of on-line radicalisation, written by Walker in 2019 following a string of shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a right-wing extremist, which left 51 useless. Walker advised Consequence Of Sound, “2020 has been a lot of things, but it has mainly kept us confined to our homes and more significantly, to our screens. It truly is a scary world, the online mind-hive. We live in the age of the comment section. Where Trolls have their own farms and little Incels run free. But just remember… it’s pathetic, bro.”
14. If Not Now, Then When? (LW, 2021)
The third a part of King Gizzard’s microtonal voyage, LW kicked off with the trippy brilliance of “If Not Now, Then When?” It was written by Mackenzie following ‘Black Summer’, a spate of bushfires which devastated communities and wildlife in Australia between July 2019 and Could 2020. Once more, it’s a Malicious program, with Mackenzie’s livid message delivered with a feather-light falsetto and set to a nimble, funky shuffle. “If Not Now, Then When?” was the winner of the primary Environmental Music Prize, set as much as “celebrate artists inspiring action on climate and conservation.” The band donated their A$20,000 prize to Australian conservation charity The Wilderness Society, and Mackenzie commented, “We need actual, real, tangible action from our leaders, otherwise what are they there for? Why are we not doing everything we humanly can to right our wrongs? When we’re literally on fire, why not now? If not now, then when? This song is part of a larger idea, a thread and a collection of narratives that extend through all of our music. Exploring themes of climate destruction and what that might look like is an important exploration for us. A window of what reality could be, if we fail to take real action.”
13. Inside Individuals (Butterfly 3000, 2021)
King Gizzard didn’t got down to make the dreamy, digital suite Butterfly 3000 – it simply sort of occurred. Engaged on instrumental interludes for his or her 2020 stay album and movie Chunky Shrapnel, they quickly realised that the fabric they had been gravitating in direction of, main key electronica based mostly on analogue synth loops, didn’t match the stay challenge and was value exploring by itself phrases. Walker and Mackenzie’s “Interior People” is a key observe, a joyful and blissed-out piece of relentless kosmische that addresses psychological well being points (“I got a sensory road block/I’m in a binary mind lock”). “I remember that Joey had this concept of interior people before the lyrics were really written,” Mackenzie advised Stereogum. “I remember talking to him about the conceptual idea of the whole record, back when there were only two or three songs put together and there wasn’t a huge amount of lyrics written. And he was like, ‘Well, I wanna write about interior people.’ And I was like, ‘That’s cool, this is how that idea fits in the record.’ I don’t know, the song just made sense to us.”
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12. Float Alongside – Fill Your Lungs (Float Alongside – Fill Your Lungs, 2013)
From their earliest days, King Gizz had been decided to push themselves to new musical locations. That spirit of journey led them to pledge to study a brand new instrument yearly; the primary was the sitar, starting a love affair with Indian music that may inform a lot of their music. This coincided with a brand new give attention to jamming and improvisation, leading to Float Alongside – Fill Your Lungs, their first really psychedelic album. “We were experimenting with synthesizers, the sitar and some odd time signatures for the first time,” Mackenzie later wrote on the band’s web site. “Music was starting to unravel and we were pulling the thread. Plenty more string to unravel, though!” The title observe, written by Mackenzie, epitomised this daring new path, a seven-minute psych-rock jam in 5/4 time which the band have repeatedly returned to throughout stay reveals as a launchpad for prolonged freak outs.
11. Newbie’s Luck (Gumboot Soup, 2017)
Launched on New Yr’s Eve 2017, Gumboot Soup made good on King Gizz’s pledge to launch 5 albums that 12 months. “I really pushed everyone (including myself) to breaking point here,” Mackenzie mirrored. “Much of this was recorded on the road between shows in hotels, venues or cheap studios on days off… I could tell the other six gizzards really just wanted to take a break. It was December after all and we’d played like 100 shows and written and recorded probably 50 songs.” Remarkably, Gumboot Soup featured a few of their most completed songs up to now. Opening observe “Beginner’s Luck,” written by Mackenzie and Kenny-Smith, was a working example, an off-kilter soft-rock gem stacked with hazy harmonies, ’67 Beatles Mellotron and delicate flutes.
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10. Iron Lung (Ice, Dying, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms & Lava, 2022)
King Gizz’s twenty first studio album was one other daring experiment, largely recorded over per week. Every day, one of many seven Greek modes of music – Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian – was explored with an prolonged multi-hour jam, which was then edited right into a tune. “Iron Lung” (within the Aeolian mode, also referred to as the pure minor scale) begins as a languid shuffle earlier than it kicks right into a spectacular jazz-funk exercise, reaching its peak across the five-and-a-half-minute mark when Kenny-Smith takes over from Mackenzie on vocals. “That was me trying to be like Bon Scott or something,” Kenny-Smith advised Spin. “That riff is mega. I think I just got to it before Stu could and screamed and squealed.”
9. Nuclear Fusion (Flying Microtonal Banana, 2017)
The primary of the band’s 5 albums launched in 2017 was additionally their first exploration of microtonal scales. Written by Mackenzie and Walker, the hypnotic “Nuclear Fusion” was typical of the eastern-inspired grooves that made Flying Microtonal Banana an important early Gizz album. The tune’s intro – the title slowed-down and pitch-shifted – has turn out to be a much-loved function of their stay reveals, both an opportunity for Walker to display his Tuvan throat singing or for a fan to be plucked out of the viewers to affix their heroes onstage.
8. Mars For The Wealthy (Infest The Rats’ Nest, 2019)
Although King Gizz had flirted with heavy rock, their second album of 2019, Infest The Rats’ Nest, was the quickest, loudest and heaviest they’d ever been. Stripped again to an influence trio of Mackenzie, Walker and Cavanagh, the band drew upon formative influences. “Growing up, a lot of the music that I loved was in the realm of heavy metal,” Mackenzie advised Beat journal. “I loved Rammstein, Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, Slayer – stuff that was aggressive and is still potent now. It’s been a part of my musical DNA forever… We wanted to take what we were doing further. We wanted it to be more extreme and more intense – just to see how it would take shape. Let’s just see what happens. It was us challenging ourselves to create something that was more brutal.”
Infest The Rats’ Nest was additionally the band’s most politically charged album up to now, a snarling and livid indictment of the state of the surroundings and political local weather. “Mars For The Rich” was typical of this, a rampaging, Motörhead-like rocker that pours scorn upon the space-colonising fantasies of the super-rich.
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7. This Factor (Fishing For Fishies, 2019)
“For years we would always talk about making a record for each member in the band’s taste,” Kenny-Smith wrote on the KGLW web site. “I was always begging for us to do a blues boogie type thing.” With Fishing For Fishies, the keyboardist just about obtained his want, save for a late-album dive into synthwave (there’s at all times a twist with the Gizz). The album was conceived on a band tenting journey and is full of stripped-back, easy pleasures with robust environmental themes. Although it’s not one of many three (!) songs on the album with ‘boogie’ within the title, Baker and Mackenzie’s “This Thing” is a heads-down blues-rock deal with. Look nearer, although, and the lyrics seem to give attention to a friendship that has gone awry – maybe an analogy for our relationship with the surroundings?
6. Evil Dying Roll (Nonagon Infinity, 2016)
Once more, taking inspiration from Mom Nature, “Evil Death Roll” is known as after the devastating looking method deployed by crocodiles to subdue and even dismember their prey. The crocodile latches on to its sufferer and, utilizing its hind legs, performs a strong and speedy spinning movement to disorientate and sometimes kill its prey King Gizz’s speedfreak riff-fest one way or the other captures the superior energy of the crocodile, making it a spotlight of Nonagon Infinity, maybe their most unrelenting album.
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5. Sense (Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, 2015)
The idea for King Gizz’s seventh studio album, the soft-focus light pop of Paper Mâché Dream Balloon was a novel one for the band – there was no idea. “After making a couple of pretty heavy, conceptual records in a row, it started to feel a bit thought out,” Mackenzie advised DIY. “Intellectualising music is a bit dumb, in a way. We started to feel like, ‘let’s just write some songs that are just songs and not these epic pieces’. That’s where this record came about.” He’d later inform Rolling Stone, “Paper Mâché… is like a nice afternoon siesta before going to work a night shift.” Opening observe “Sense” was typical of this easy-going method, all hushed vocals and chilled out clarinet. However its lyrics don’t maintain again, taking intention at those that are feckless within the face of local weather change. For a extra intense tackle the observe, try the transcendent, Grateful Useless-like 12-minute model recorded at Pink Rocks in 2023.
4. The River (Quarters, 2015)
Consisting of 4 tracks, every operating to 10 minutes and 10 seconds, the band’s sixth studio album Quarters was the band’s deepest dive but into jazz and prog waters. “We had rented a big ol’ house in upstate New York for a month to record in and we’d come down for weekends to play shows and record,” wrote Harwood within the album’s press launch. “We all went a bit crazy up there and got total cabin fever. Stu had four loose jams that felt in the pocket – so we went in there with hardly any structure and just kind of threw a few takes on the wall to see what stuck.” From unfastened beginnings got here greatness, particularly within the case of “The River,” which takes its lead (not least by way of its 5/4 time signature) from Dave Brubeck’s basic “Take Five,” earlier than setting off on a sonic journey of uncommon creativeness and wit. “‘The River’ felt like a big turning point – I think we kind of tricked ourselves into thinking we could play jazz.” It seems the Australian Recording Business Affiliation thought so too – Quarters was nominated for the ARIA for Finest Jazz Album 2015.
3. Her And I (Gradual Jam II) (I’m In Your Thoughts Fuzz, 2014)
The closing observe of the band’s breakthrough album, I’m In Your Thoughts Fuzz, is a uncommon factor for the Gizz – a (comparatively) easy love tune. It begins with a snatch of The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers” and settles right into a loved-up and lo-fi promenade tune, all doo-wop chords and devotion, earlier than blasting off into area rock territory. Mackenzie revealed in a 2022 Reddit AMA that it stays a favourite of his, which explains why it nonetheless pops up on setlists, usually reworked into an awe-inspiring jam.
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2. Crumbling Citadel (Polygondwanaland, 2017)
The fourth Gizz album of 2017 was a towering achievement, maybe their biggest to that time, a closely prog-influenced set that was years within the making. Amazingly, they initially launched it as a free obtain, encouraging followers to “make tapes, make CDs, make records” of the album. Within the press launch, the group wrote, “Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do.” Its opening observe, “Crumbling Castle,” was an 11-minute monolith that flitted between swashbuckling riffs, ethereal magnificence, Gregorian chants and coruscating noise. Whether or not the title referred to looming environmental catastrophe, the collapse of humanity or just structural injury to a listed constructing, the stakes couldn’t really feel increased.
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1. The Dripping Faucet (Omnium Gatherum, 2022)
“The Dripping Tap” turned a part of Gizz lore due to How To Intestine A Fishie, a brief ‘making of’ Fishing For Fishies documentary launched in 2019. The movie’s remaining scene is an excerpt of a wild and barely inebriated 20-minute blowout the band known as “Hat Jam,” attributable to the truth that they had been all carrying totally different headwear. On the movie’s launch, Gizz followers clamored for extra details about the jam – clearly there was one thing there. The band labored intermittently on the tune through the years till they had been able to unleash it in all its 18-minute glory on 2022’s Omnium Gatherum. It’s an environmental protest tune as epic because the local weather disaster we face. “The drippin’ tap won’t be turned off by the suits in charge of the world and or future’s hangin’ on by a thread,” begins Kenny-Smith, as if pleading with the world to see sense. From that time on, the observe detonates and barely lets up over a sequence of blistering sections, constructing to a jaw-dropping finale.
The sense of urgency is palpable, maybe due partially to the circumstances across the tune’s recording. “Melbourne’s lockdown was long, brutal and strict, so we didn’t get together a lot for a very long time,” Mackenzie advised Spin. “‘The Dripping Tap’ was the first thing that we did when we got together… it was this jam that we had floating around that we had never finished. It felt like something that we didn’t need to conceptualize. We didn’t need to plan and rehearse; we could just pick up our instruments, hit record and go. We recorded for hours, capturing everything and keeping the best bits. That was what felt right at the time after being not social, not together and not interacting.”
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