King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Gamma Knife {2016}
Being asked in last week’s radio show Electronic Global Psychedelia on WEFT what I’m listening too at the moment, I mentioned the Australian band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Goat from Sweden. If you want to find me, go for the bearded, sweaty and headbanging mid-40 guy in the 5th row at a show of one of the bands I just mentioned. Or if one of them has still room for a follower in their cults, count me in or meet me in their next public mass suicide or crazy naked dance contests. I’m obviously joking. I’m aware that there’s a huge number of great neo-psychedelic bands out there and I’m just beginning to get a grasp on them. But with these two bands I felt immediately comfortable because they don’t just cite and repeat but add something new to the genre. They’re both building up a field of energy and atmosphere that is unique, unifying and freeing, especially at their live shows. I can’t help but think that they both in search for freedom in life and in the arts, already living some sort of Utopia – their own weird life and art – regardless what might turn out by doing that and without predetermined calculations.
This is the first track released from their upcoming 8th album Nonagon Infinity which will be released on April 29th, 2016 and that already can be pre-ordered. Check their whole discography and their tour dates, it’s worth it.
“”Nonagon infinity opens the door,” sings Stu Mackenzie, frontman of Australian psych-rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. It turns out, though, that once the door’s open, it never closes. That’s because the Melbourne septet has ingeniously crafted what may be the world’s first infinitely looping LP. Each of the nine, complex, blistering tracks on ‘Nonagon Infinity’ seamlessly flows into the next, with the final song linking straight back into the top of the opener like a sonic mobius strip. It’s exactly the kind of ambitious vision that prompted Rolling Stone to dub the band “one of the most compelling collectives of art-rock experimentalists in recent years.” But far from a simple conceptual experiment, the album is both an exhilarating shot of adrenaline and a remarkable feat of craftsmanship, the result of painstaking planning and an eye for detail years in the making.”