King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: 3 Albums

 

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are an Australian rock band formed in 2010 in Melbourne, Victoria. The band consists of Stu Mackenzie (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, flute, sitar), Ambrose Kenny-

Smith (vocals, harmonica, keyboards), Cook Craig (guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals), Joey Walker (guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals), Lucas Harwood (bass, keyboards), and Michael Cavanagh (drums, percussion). They are known for exploring multiple genres, staging energetic live shows and building a prolific discography, having released eighteen studio albums, ten live albums, two compilations and two EPs.
                                         

Formed in 2010 in Melbourne, Australia, by a group of friends who jammed frequently, then decided on a whim to play a show, the lineup consisted of vocalist/guitarist Stu Mackenzie, harmonica

player/singer Ambrose Kenny-Smith, guitarists Cook Craig and Joey Walker, bassist Lucas Skinner, and dual drummers Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore. They released two garage rock-inspired EPs in 2011, Anglesea and Willoughby's Beach, then in 2012 released their debut album, 12 Bar Bruise. Working at the kind of feverish pace that became their standard, King Gizzard followed up just five months later with 2013's Eyes Like the Sky, which the band described as a "spaghetti Western audio book" complete with narration by Ambrose Kenny-Smith's father, the noted Australian musician Broderick Smith.
                                     

A third full-length, Float Along, Fill Your Lungs, was released in 2013 and was quickly followed by

2014's Oddments and I'm in Your Mind Fuzz. Still working quickly, in early 2015 they released the Quarters EP, which featured four trippy, free jazz-inspired jams that each timed out exactly at 10:10.
                                        

After signing to ATO Records, King Gizzard's sound took a detour from expanded jams and fuzzy freak-outs to tightly constructed, but still weird, laid-back pop songs played exclusively on acoustic

instruments on the 2015 album Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. The follow-up, 2016's Nonagon Infinity, was recorded at Daptone Studios and featured some of the band's heaviest, most forceful psych-rock to date. It was recorded so that one track bleeds into the next, then jumps back to the beginning after the last song. They tout it as the "world's first infinitely looping album."
                                     

The band spent time touring and getting five albums ready for release in 2017. On the first of them, Flying Microtonal Banana, King Gizzard decided to investigate microtonal tuning, a non-Western way of tuning that involves intervals smaller than a semitone. They had a custom-made guitar gifted to

them, and the bandmembers bought new gear and altered the instruments so they could be microtuned in a way that made them compatible. The group's second album of 2017, Murder of the Universe, arrived two months later in March. It was broken into three long sections, each one telling a different apocalyptic tale of the human race being taken over by cyborgs and AI while featuring heavy use of synths and spoken word narration.
                                  

Just before that album's release, the band finished a collaboration with Mild High Club's Alex Brettin,

who traveled from L.A. to King Gizzard's Flightless HQ studios in East Brunswick, Melbourne, where he and Stu Mackenzie put together some rough ideas. The duo was then joined by the rest of the band to fill those ideas in. Titled Sketches of Brunswick East, the album was a heady mix of soft rock, psych-pop, and cosmic jazz.
                                 

It was released by ATO in August 2017, mere months before their next record arrived. The relatively straightforward (for King Gizzard) psychedelic opus Polygondwanaland was given away for free and

the master tapes were offered to anyone who wanted to press the album up and sell it. ATO was one of the first to take advantage of this, and several other labels followed suit. Fulfilling the group's pledge to put out five albums in 2017, they snuck in Gumboot Soup just under the deadline. The collection of thematically and sonically unconnected songs, a rarity for the group, was issued digitally on December 31, then given a physical release in April 2018.
                                 

King Gizzard took the rest of 2018 relatively easy, playing occasional shows and not releasing any

albums until November, when ATO reissued their first five records on the same day. The group took a relatively relaxed approach to releasing new music in the first half of 2019, too, issuing a single in February, "Cyboogie," that hinted at a new blues-based approach, then another in early April, "Planet B," that swerved into thrash metal territory. When their first album of the year, Fishing for Fishies, was released in late April, the sound was more like the former single, with the band digging deep into boogie rock, biker jams, and blues-rock, all fed through their unique musical and lyrical filter.
                                       

They followed in the direction of the "Plan B" single later that year on Infest the Rats Nest, a blistering

metal album that revolved thematically around the death of Earth and the population of nearby planets. It was recorded by a stripped-down version of the band, often just a trio, and released in August. Around that time, King Gizzard launched a worldwide tour; recordings made at various stops were compiled on the 2020 live album Chunky Shrapnel. A like-named feature film documenting the tour was also made and released alongside the record in late April.
                                     

Never one to let something, even a global pandemic, slow down their frantic recording pace, the band started working on an album while holed up in their respective homes in Melbourne. Taking up the

custom-made instruments featured on Flying Microtonal Banana, the group ended up making something of a sequel to that album while also adding some acid disco to the mix on the track "Intrasport." K.G. was issued in November 2020, the same day a double-live album titled Live in San Francisco '16 hit the shelves. The former was their first record without drummer Eric Moore, who left in August to devote more time to his record label, Flightless.
                                   

K.G. was only half of the results of the group's socially distanced sessions; the remaining songs were

released in early 2021 as L.W. King Gizzard weren't content to stay in one lane, as usual, and their second album of the year was one of their most audacious to date. Constructed from loops made on vintage modular synths, Butterfly 3000 is all major-key melodies, warm-as-the-sun arrangements, and positive vibes. It was released by the band's own KGLW label in June, just before the group played their first post-lockdown show in Norway.
                                 

The band were scheduled to go out on the road following the album's release, but rescheduled the dates

for 2022. Fans had to be satisfied by the steady release of archived live shows, and the release in early 2022 of Butterfly 3001, a remix album that featured a number of artists reworking songs from Butterfly 3000. Some, like Héctor Oaks and Fred P, guided the songs to the dancefloor, while others, like Flaming Lips and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, took a headier approach.

12 BAR CRUISE 2012

                                                                          

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's first album, 12 Bar Bruise, is a pummeling rock & roll record that

builds on the promise of their first couple of releases and blasts their expansive garage rock sound straight into orbit. The album barely lets up from start to finish, with the tempos set right around top speed and the guitars set to destruction. It's one ripping rocker after another, with vocalist Stu Mackenzie's vocals seemingly fed through a paper shredder and the rest of the band flailing like mad to keep up. Picking highlights is like picking a favorite child; they are all equally strong and violent, and able to knock down the garage walls and take over the neighborhood, if not the world.
                                       

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – 12 Bar Bruise
Label: Flightless – FLT001
Format:    CD, Album
Country: Australia
Released: Sep 14, 2012
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock

                                    

TRACKS

                                                        

01. Elbow  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie) 2:40
02.Muckraker  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  3:00
03. Nein  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  2:52
04. 12 Bar Bruise  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  3:47
05. Garage Liddiard  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  2:29
06. Sam Cherry's Last Shot  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  2:49
07. High Hopes Low  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  3:46
08. Cut Throat Boogie (Written-By – Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Stu Mackenzie)  2:50
09. Bloody Ripper  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  2:13
10. Uh Oh, I Called Mum  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  2:38
11. Sea Of Trees  (Written-By – Stu Mackenzie)  3:15
12. Footy Footy  (Written-By – Joe Walker, Stu Mackenzie)  1:59

MP3 @ 320 Size: 86 MB
Flac  Size: 269 MB

I"M IN YOUR MIND FUZZ 2014

                                                         

                                                                                                     
Arriving just eight months after the amiable Aussie psych-rockers' Oddments LP, I'm in Your Mind Fuzz finds King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard doing what they do best: Simultaneously assembling and dissembling semi-epic blasts of early Flaming Lips, 13th Floor Elevators, the High Strung, Thee Oh Sees, and Dungen-esque space/psych rock and having a great time while doing so.
                                    

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – I'm In Your Mind Fuzz
Label: Flightless – FLT-012CD
Format:    CD, Album
Country: Australia & New Zealand
Released: Oct 31, 2014
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock

                                

TRACKS

                                                 

                                                             
01. I'm In Your Mind     3:33
02. I'm Not In Your Mind     2:58
03. Cellophane     3:10
04. I'm In Your Mind Fuzz     2:51
05. Empty     4:10
06. Hot Water     3:23
07. Am I In Heaven?     7:05
08. Slow Jam 1     2:54
09. Satan Speeds Up     3:39
10. Her And I (Slow Jam 2)     8:15

MP3 @ 320 Size: 98 MB
Flac  Size: 282 MB

NONAGON INFINITY  2016

                                                          
                                                     

The prolific Australian psychedelic pop combo King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard aren't the kind of

band prone to repeating themselves. Over the course of their short career, they've established themselves as voracious sonic explorers who aren't afraid to take chances and never met a gimmick they didn't like. In 2015 alone they released Quarters, a jazz-prog epic featuring four songs that were each exactly ten minutes long, and the laid-back summer folk Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, which was recorded on only acoustic instruments. With such a weird and varied track record, their 2016 album, Nonagon Infinity, could have gone just about anywhere and done anything.On it, King Gizzard deliver

their best trick yet to go along with their most focused, most ferocious music to date. The album is designed to flow continuously from song to song with no breaks in what the band calls an infinite loop, and unless one is listening very closely it's hard to tell where one song stops and the next begins.
                                                

King Gizzard's inventive sound, giant hooks, and hard-as-titanium playing make Nonagon Infinity not

only their best album yet, but maybe the best psych-metal-jazz-prog album ever. That can be debated, but at the very least artists like the Flaming Lips, Ty Segall, and others who think they are doing something cool and weird should check it out and take a few notes.
(Review by Tim Sendra)

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity
Label: Heavenly – HVNLP127CD
Format:    CD, Album
Country: Europe
Released: Apr 29, 2016
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock

                                                             

TRACKS

                                               

01. Robot Stop    5:22
02. Big Fig Wasp    4:55
03. Gamma Knife    4:21
04. People-Vultures    4:46
05. Mr. Beat    4:56
06. Evil Death Roll    7:14
07. Invisible Face    3:01
08. Wah Wah    2:54
09. Road Train    4:18
                                  

MP3 @ 320 Size: 103 MB
Flac  Size: 270 MB