King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard return with their first new music since 2017. Cyboogie b/w Acarine is a limited-edition 7” featuring two brand new songs from Australia’s freewheeling seven-piece band. “Cyboogie” is a step in a new direction for Gizz with five of the seven members playing synth on the track and not a guitar in sight. It’s an incredibly fun, upbeat disco boogie track reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, Devo, Trans era Neil Young and everything that is good.
Cyboogie comes complete with a regulation Jason Galea video, which sees the band cast as a bunch of identikit analogue droogs.
Gizzheads have been eagerly awaiting the reissues of King Gizzard’s first 4 LPs + the Willoughby’s Beach EP. With no new material being released this year (as opposed to last year’s 5 albums…) Flightless Records has in the midst of some extensive touring finally made these gems available for the fans that weren’t around for the first few years of The Gizzness. The prices of the original pressings has skyrocketed hand-in-hand with the popularity of the band over the last few years, and value has been pretty stable inbetween 400-900 USDs pr LP for a couple of years already..
Flightless Records opened up orders on their website a couple of weeks back for some really cool mailorder exclusives (most still available HERE), but as it turns out the most limited variants will be the ones that they’re distributing via ATO in the US (very limited quantities also available via Discrepancy Records and JB Hi-Fi in AU).
Flightless stated that after an extreme internet meltdown that has been immortalised the Gizz folklore, we are proud to announce that the REISSUES will be on sale at 9am AEST Wednesday September 19, 2018.
The Gizzmaster, Stu Mackenzie announced a while ago that all of the reissues are original Flightless Records pressings, with variants to be distributed by their affiliates in the US (ATO) and EU/UK (Heavenly Recordings). There has been no wording as of yet by Heavenly, but at this point one can only assume that they will eventually be stocking the standard Black Vinyl pressings of the albums.
12 BAR BRUISE ‘Muckraker Edition’
“12 Bar Bruise” is being reissued on Doublemint Green colored vinyl and features new artwork re-imagined by Jason Galea. Packaging includes a 350gsm heavyweight sleeve with semi-gloss finish and an inner sleeve on 170gsm uncoated offset paper with new blurb from Stu.
– Clear with heavy doublemint and deep purple splatter
– 140-160 gram 12″ 33rpm vinyl
– 350 gsm heavy sleeve with semi-gloss varnish
– Inner-sleeves printed on uncoated offset paper
– New inner-sleeve design with blurb written by Stu
Re-imagined artwork by Jason Galea
Record packed & shipped in a poly bag outside of sleeve
EYES LIKE THE SKY
‘Gun Smoke Edition’
“Eyes Like The Sky” is being reissued on Halloween Orange colored vinyl and features new artwork re-imagined by Jason Galea. The album is available on 12″ 45rpm for the first time and includes narrative by Broderick Smith printed on a 200gsm inner sleeve with a preface by Stu
– Clear with Aqua Blue smoke
– 140-160 gram 12″ 45rpm vinyl
– 350gsm reverse board finish
– Inner-sleeves printed on 200GSM art paper
– Narrative by Broderick Smith printed on inner-sleeve with preface by Stu
Re-imagined artwork by Jason Galea
Record packed & shipped in a poly bag outside of sleeve
FLOAT ALONG – FILL YOUR LUNGS
‘Kale & Banana Smoothie Edition’
*”Float Along – Fill Your Lungs” is being reissued on Easter Yellow colored vinyl and includes a heavyweight jacket with inner sleeve printed on uncoated offset paper, and a 24″x24″ fold-out poster.
– Pin wheel with Kelly green and piss yellow spokes
– 140-160 gram 12″ 33rpm vinyl
– 350gsm reverse board finish.
– Inner-sleeves printed on 170gsm uncoated offset paper with blurb from Stu
– 24×24” double-sided fold out poster
Original artwork design by Jason Galea
Record packed & shipped in a poly bag outside of sleeve
ODDMENTS ‘Hot Wax Edition’
*“Oddments” is being reissued on Grimace Purple colored vinyl and includes a heavyweight gatefold jacket with original art by Jason Galea and an inner sleeve printed on uncoated offset paper, featuring a new blurb from Stu
– Black & White vinyl with Cyan Blue splatter
– 140-160 gram 12″ 33rpm vinyl
– Gatefold sleeve with original art by Jason Galea
– 350gsm reverse board finish.
– Inner-sleeves printed on 170gsm uncoated offset paper with blurb from Stu
Record packed & shipped in a poly bag outside of sleeve
Original artwork design by Jason Galea
WILLOUGHBY’S BEACH ‘Ocean Death 12” Edition’
“Willoughby’ Beach” is being reissued on Red(ish) colored vinyl and features re-imagined artwork by Ican Harem. Packaging includes an embossed and spot UV deluxe sleeve with 350gsm reverse board finish and an inner sleeve printed on 170gsm uncoated offset paper.
– A-Side / B-side Reddish with Cyan Blue vinyl
– Printed on 140-160 gram 12″ 45rpm vinyl for the first time
– Inner-sleeves printed on 170gsm uncoated offset paper
– Embossing & Spot UV deluxe sleeve with 350gsm reverse board finish
Re-imagined artwork by Ican Harem
Record packed & shipped in a poly bag outside of sleeve
Like a better version of Murder of the Universe, Gizzard’s raw early side is the best. Eyes Like the Sky is the second studio album by Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. It was released on 22nd February 2013 on Flightless Records
Not only is the album unlike any other of theirs, described as a “cult western audio book”, the album is narrated and written by Broderick Smith – who tells a story of outlaws, child soldiers, native Americans and gun fights, all set in the American frontier. As it turns out, the roots of Eyes Like the Sky lie in King Gizzard’s debut album, 12 Bar Bruise.
Stu Mackenzie – “the weird, genius savant of that band” – and Smith both share a similar obsession of the Wild West, so Mackenzie approached his bandmate’s father (who is a respected musician in his own right) to pen the lyrics to a single track he had written. When asked about the album’s influences, Stu Mackenzie alluded to the spaghetti western influence throughout the album, stating “I love Western films. I love bad guys and I love Red Dead Redemption. Oh, and I love evil guitars”
It was the book My 32 Years Among the Indians by Richard Dodge where Smith found his inspiration.
“There was a section in the book called Sam Cherry’s Last Shot… about Sam Cherry who was a scout that was killed by the Indians.”
Smith took that story and narrated it for the band, and that tune became Sam Cherry’s Last Shot on their debut album. When the band looked at doing a second record, Mackenzie simply contacted Smith and asked if he’d like to do a full album. When it came to a story for the album, Smith again turned to American history. Specifically, he looked at a time in Texas in the 1840’s where Comanches (a population of Native Americans from the south) were raiding white settlements and kidnapping the young boys to raise as their own.
Smith tells. Through this historical lens, he created a story not only about American history, but one that also explores the importance and struggles of heritage and identity.
Let’s now turn to the band itself. Formed out of casual jam sessions with mates, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have become a staple on the Australian indie music scene. They have cemented themselves a place among the most ambitious artists in the world today, from having two drummers to releasing five albums in a single year.
Australian experimentalists King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard was arguably 2017’s most prolific band, releasing five full albums over the course of the year. There was the mind-melt Flying Microtonal Banana; the cyborg-narrated sci-fi trip Murder of the Universe; the yacht-rock/Brit-folk/jazz-fusion collab with Mild High Club, Sketches of Brunswick East; the psych-prog beast let loose for free use, Polygondwanaland; and now the groovy finale, Gumboot Soup, released just under the wire on December 31.
Even more impressive is the vast array of killer songs tucked among this quintet of curiosities. One of our favorites is Polygondwanaland’s final track, “The Fourth Colour,” a meandering yet propulsive groove built on dizzying, circular riffs, feverish drum fills, and a trippy vocal technique called hocketing, in which multiple vocalists sing alternating syllables.
“The Fourth Colour” itself refers to the phenomenon of tetrachromacy. The rare tetrachromat possesses four (instead of three) types of cone cells in the eye, meaning they have the ability to see millions of more colors than the average human. It’s perhaps the essence of psychedelia as we visually interpret it. For the band, it’s a gateway to divinity: “Third eye is free/I am not body/Tetrachromacy,” they chant, before their final words reveal all: “Now I am a god.” At this revelation, the instruments dissolve into a deep-space drone before resurfacing for one final bout of psych-rock delirium.
Fifth album of 2017 and it’s still this amazing. These songs were too good for the albums they were supposed to be on so instead we get a singles collection.
To many it may seem like an impossible task, but for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, the notion of releasing five albums in a year is not beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, while some were doubting the band’s plan would come to fruition, the group left it until the last day of the year to prove the doubters wrong, releasing Gumboot Soup overnight.
Following the four albums released this year, including Microtonal Banana, Murder Of The Universe, Sketches Of Brunswick East, and Polygondwanaland, the band had already released a major stack of music,
Near the end of last year, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard promised they’d release five albums by the end of 2017. As we creep closer to the end of this year, the Aussie psych outfit have thus far shared three: Flying Microtonal Banana, Murder of the Universe, and Sketches of Brunswick East (with Mild High Club). They’ll bring the tally up to four this week with the release of their latest full-length effort, Polygondwanaland.
Lead single ‘CrumblingCastle‘ opens the immersively brilliant POLYGONDWANALAND. It’s a mystical, slow-building psych-blues epic. The song sets a fine precedent for an album that listens like a cleverly constructed amalgamation other King Gizzard releases. The 60’s pop relaxation of 2015’s Paper Mache Dream Balloon, the jazzy time signatures of 2017’s Sketches of Brunswick East, the trackless rhythmic relentlessness of 2016’s NonagonInfinity, the microtonal, ancient conjurings of (also) 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, and the lyrical stories and themes so strongly present in (also, also) 2017’s Murder of the Universe. These guys have so richly explored and stretched the boundaries of their own musical and thematic universe that it’s nearly impossible for all their new stuff not to be entirely self-referential. King Gizzard can only sound like King Gizzard, and that’s a really, really awesome thing.
The album’s eponymous second track cruises upliftingly along on the burbling surface that is Gizz’s ever-deepening rivers of intertwining concept-driven song themes and stories. It opens in to the mouth of a swirling ocean, pulsing synth and clever guitar picking that spreads itself across the expansive and catchy ‘The Castle in The Air‘ and ‘Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet‘. These back-to-back tracks will swallow you up in them. Gizzard front man Stu Mackenzie delivers slightly tense, staccato vocals over a somber bass and synth combination.
A hugely 80’s synth warble that’d be at home in the middle of the Stranger Things intro opens ‘Loyalty‘ and ‘Horology‘; a back-to-back psych trip that skips along with whimsical aplomb. Mackenzie unleashes the exceptionally capable flautist within him, making sure Gizz’s trademark of deft musical ability.
Lucas Skinner’s trademark bass wanderings really come to the jazzy surface, then guitarist Joey does some more Mongolian throat singing, then there’s what I believe is a sitar for a bit, and then ‘Tetrachromacy‘ seamlessly begins, Eric and Michael begin to really warm up on the drums, and we change gears once more… goodness gracious. Always on the hunt for new horizons both thematically and musically, Gizz employ that desire and curiosity here more so than any other track on POLYGONDWANALAND. We get our first – and very minimal – taste of Ambrose Smith’s mouth organ skills, dashes of cross-album hook repetition and recycling, more glass/ tubular bells, a lyrical querying of undiscovered colours near blue, flute throughout, and some seriously swift rolls and fills from the beguilingly synchronized actions of dual-percussionists Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore (who also runs Flightless Records while seamlessly doing tandem drumming across some seriously complicated musical structures .
The album expansively closes with the hypnotic and polysyllabic wanderings of ‘Searching‘; heavily 60’s stoner psych journey in to introspection, and finally ‘The Fourth Colour‘; a staggeringly large and complicated song that both drifts and turns corners. It’s a rollicking album closer. Just put POLYGONDWANALANDon repeat and keep discovering.
If King Gizzard and the Lizard didn’t release another LP for a decade, their musical output within this year alone would still eclipse most (if not all) multi-millionaire, studio-backed, advertising-funded, marketing-think-tanked pop-star’s album releases by a wide margin. And they did it in their own houses, with their own equipment, under their own record label, while touring the world to sold out shows, running their own music festival, making half a dozen film clips, and personally sending you the merch and records from each release to save on overheads.
Tracklist:
0:00 – Crumbling Castle 10:44 – Polygondwanaland 14:16 – The Castle In The Air 17:04 – Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet 20:38 – Inner Cell 24:35 – Loyalty 28:13 – Horology 31:06 – Tetrachromacy 34:36 – Searching… 37:40 – The Fourth Colour
Sketches Of Brunswick East is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard 3rd album of five in 2017 and a collaboration with LA’s Mild High Club. Just when you think you have King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard sussed they throw a curveball – in the wake of two albums released in 2017 already, including most recently the dystopian end-times concept album Murder Of The Universe, which tackled in no uncertain terms the rise of robots and the downfall of mankind, comes Sketches Of Brunswick East, an entirely altered beast. Australia’s finest and most productive rock band have done this before, of course: while the world was still reeling from their 2014 breakthrough psych-punk masterpiece I’m In Your Mind Fuzz(2014) they casually released 2015’s expectation-confounding Paper Mache Dream Balloon(2015), a pastoral, sun-drenched acid-folk album. Sketches Of Brunswick Eastis a collaboration between King Gizzard and Mild High Club, the LosAngeles based tripster troupe signed to Stones Throw Records and led by Alex Brettin – the two bands formed a strong friendship touring together throughout the USA, Europe, and Australia. Recorded at the band’s own Flightless HQ in East Brunswick, Melbourne Australia earlier this year and mixed at Stones Throw studios in L.A. it’s the third of five projected albums to be released in 2017.
its their 11th studio album, released August 18th, 2017.
Those prolific Aussie psych-rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have shared a new ten-minute track ‘Crumbling Castle‘.
Having already released three albums in this year, the newest track looks set to be appearing on upcoming album which is rumoured to be titled Polygondwanaland.
At the start of the year the band made a promise to put out five new albums inside the calendar and, after Flying Microtonal Banana, Murder of the Universe, and Sketches of Brunswick East it looks like they’re on track. The new song – all ten minutes of it – is accompanied by a video directed by artist Jason Galea .
One of King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard’s most notable successes was the record Nonagon Infinity. Released over a year ago, it was the group’s eighth record, and since its release, the band have somehow managed to find time to release two more records,
With the release of their second album of the year “Murder of the Universe”it seems King Gizzard are already getting nostalgic as they travel back to the heady days of “Nonagon Infinity”for their latest video as they give ‘Invisible Face’ a brand new clip.
A combination of live action segments with the kind of animation which best befits an 80’s children’s TV show, and is therefore fucking incredible, makes this video one of the better ones floating around this week.
Jason Galaea and Joel Melrose are behind the brilliant visuals which also keep the coloured robes which have started to appear around the King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard camp and also befits another children’s TV show by the name of; Power Rangers. And when you think about it, is there another band you could see fighting and defeating someone named Lord Zedd?.
The clip has all you need snakes, dark landscapes, jet planes falling form the sky, the whole shebang, really. So sit back, get psyched and watch this brilliant video for ‘Invisible Face’.
A concept album to end all concepts, Murder Of The Universe is the new collection by head-bending psychedelicists King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Murder Of The Universe is a face-melting musical assault concerned with the downfall of man, the death of the planet, the murder of the whole universe.
Were living in dystopian times that are pretty scary and its hard not to reflect that in our music, says front man Stu Mackenzie. Its almost unavoidable. Some scientists predict that the downfall of humanity is just as likely to come at the hands of Artificial Intelligence, as it is war or viruses or climate change. But these are fascinating times too. Human beings are visual creatures – vision is our primary instinct, and this is very much a visual, descriptive, bleak record. While the tone is definitely Apocalyptic, it is not necessarily purely a mirror of the current state of humanity. Its about new non-linear narratives.
Lit by thunderclaps and lightning, Murder Of The Universe inhabits a sonic landscape of death, decay, ossification, fossilisation, rebirth. It is a place occupied by wandering shape-shifting beasts, bleeding skies, pools of blood, great fires and mushroom clouds; a planet rent asunder by conflict. It may take years for its true importance to be appreciated.
The Australian psychedelic rock band make their worldwide television debut on CONAN.
The Fat Angel Sings 