King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard maintain their prolific streak with another experimental voyage into instrumental brilliance.
When you hear the term independent music, there are a few bands that have charted way further in their sonic discoveries. Many have lost, but some have returned bearing tales they will tell their progeny. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard always played music for the thrill of it, and it seems like they spent all their time doing it. Call it a true fever of passion, but the band has been nothing short of genius in making music in possibly every style of live music known to mankind.
Have they stumbled along the way? When a band is having fun, there are no stumbles. There are happy coincidences, missteps that sound different. You and I, listeners of this genre (if not, I recommend you find your ecstasy in this) tend to classify what we’re listening to in tiny fractures for the mind to absorb. Music made by people who want to do this their entire lifetime, makes it a study of revelry.
When a band is having fun, there are no stumbles. There are happy coincidences, missteps that sound different.
That is what King Gizzard is able to achieve in their time here. It is not just discovery, but an affirmation that music continues to be an art form that will never extinguish the spirit. Phantom Island has 10 songs, not of epic lengths like we’re used to listening to from the band. This is an interlude’s fever dream, and the band finds purpose in what might be ignored by many other musicians.
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King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are out to have fun. You’ll find yourself roaming open fields like a Deadhead-tye dying your wits out and having a ball.
Deadstick is where you get to see their avatar really blossom. The group is willing to fool around, for this is the kind of mellow indie dance rock they’re subjecting us and themselves to. While the world seemingly descends into a dystopian oblivion, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are out to have fun. You’ll find yourself roaming open fields like a Deadhead-tye dying your wits out and having a ball. Are we finding ourselves a theme here? That’s where you’re wrong.
Lonely Cosmos shifts the prism ever so slightly to bring us to a realm of instrumental fluorescence. As groovy as it is, it pays respect to many retro acts that have formed their ideas of music now as well. Does the band still have the sludge chaos that they will undoubtedly perform live? It’s all a matter of what mask they want to wear today. As of now, the band is embracing solace on Phantom Island, and the surveillance is leading to some great learning about the band. Not rock/metal/jazz-nothing of that sort. A band that is willing to see what all their minds and their instrument-appendages can do.
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Does the band still have the sludge chaos that they will undoubtedly perform live? It’s all a matter of what mask they want to wear today.
Why does it feel like that? Sometimes KG&TLW are noodling, doodling, and using instruments. We have heard it before, and I think that’s how they have found their chemistry. They spend an awful lot of time developing songs together, genuinely enjoying each other’s company. Or, as cosmic luck would have it-you’re listening to a band with geniuses in music, and you better be grateful for the time and place you’re in.
King Gizzard &TLW spend an awful lot of time developing songs together, genuinely enjoying each other’s company. Or, as cosmic luck would have it…
Visionaries from only one angle? Their Bootlegger program has had them release music to several independent record labels. Call it the contrast of the Streisand effect. Want people to listen to music? Increase visibility (by ear, I guess) to maximum, and watch it spread like wildfire.
Songs like Panpsych have threads of what you might have heard in their prior song builds. Yet-they are able to build a kaleidoscope of sound that isn’t anything like what they have released earlier. Remember Flight b741? A type of hog rock, you were able to hear them thoroughly enjoy what they had chanced upon. Like writing a book, they’re able to derive a certain perspective of sound that premeditates what they’re going to do next. Then, they masterfully deceive the notion by going another way.
Like writing a book, they’re able to derive a certain perspective of sound that premeditates what they’re going to do next.
The 6-piece jam band doesn’t stop there. Spacesick sees them enjoying and layering instrumentals with softer, more pronounced vocal parts. Tonally, they strip back the levels to ensure you’re more inclined to listen to their lyrics as well. It is a funky rock number that is about to transform into a prog rock number at any point. Though it might build to the peak, we’re safe in the arms of simple, enjoyable grooves.
Tonally, they strip back the levels to ensure you’re more inclined to listen to their lyrics as well.
By the end of the album, you wonder what you’re doing with your life. This is a band that is ready to reach into any realm, compare it with the dreams we can conjure, and the life we’re living. These are epiphanies they discover through music, and they share them through the same medium. In appearance, they are still the same band that started making emotive, psychedelic, experimental music to tantalise the senses so many years ago. Perhaps that’s why they’re able to continue, without a care in the world:
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