Is there anything King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard can’t do? These insanely prolific Aussie workaholics began as Oh Sees devotees but grew by leaps and bounds almost immediately, embracing prog, jazz, thrash metal, microtonal instruments and more. Now here they are with their second album of 2023 that has them putting their guitars and drums back in their cases and picking synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers. The band dabbled in this territory before on “Butterfly 3000”, but this time they are fully committed with only electronic instrumentation.
“We come at electronic music from an amateur angle,” says frontman Stu Mackenzie. “I play the Juno synthesizer like a guitar, I don’t really know how to play it. But I wanted to be at peace with being the rock band pretending to know how to use modular synthesizers. We’re in uncharted waters, we’re further out to sea, but leaning into it, and we got to a spot where we were really happy with what came out.”
King Gizzard may be electronic neophytes but they don’t sound like amateurs on “The Silver Cord” which proves they’re as good at bangers as they are rippers. There’s a wide variety of styles on the album, most of it from the ’90s: house, acid house, ambient house, jungle / drum-n-bass, and “electronica” are all represented. There are even a couple songs that go in a Technotronic / Inner City direction with Mackenzie having a (credible) go at rapping in that early-’90s house-pop style. But it’s still clearly made by King Gizzard and full of their trademarks, from frequent “WOOOOs” and growls that sound like a didgeridoo, to the clearly impressive musicianship.
“The Silver Cord” comes in two forms: the “regular version of the album” which clocks in at a mere 28 minutes (one of their shortest), and the “extended version” which stretches out all the songs to over 10 minutes each, totalling a whopping 1 hr, 28 minutes. The extended versions aren’t just longer in the way ’80s extended mixes were, these go in different directions and often have additional lyrics. “I love Donna Summer’s records with Giorgio Moroder,” Mackenzie says. “I’d never listen to the short versions now – I’m one of those people who wants to hear the whole thing. We’re testing the boundaries of people’s attention spans when it comes to listening to music, perhaps – but I’m heavily interested in destroying such concepts.”
Both the “short” and “extended” version of “The Silver Cord” have the songs segueing seamlessly into the next and while I do prefer some of the extended versions of songs, the shorter version of the album plays more like a DJ mix with better flow, while the long one has spacier transitions. They’re related but very different beasts and both are worth checking out (but start with the short one). Will they ever play this one live in full? I hope some electronic or psych festival gets them to do it. I also hope they make another electronic record. Meanwhile, I am down for whatever zig they zag next. Bring on the King Gizzard reggae album.
The Fat Angel Sings 