King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard shared the video for a new song called “O.N.E.” ahead of their rumored upcoming album, L.W. Since the album name was sleuthed by the r/KGATLW subreddit and the release date was reported to be set for February 26, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Stu Mackenzie came forward to say, “King Gizzard’s new album (y’all know what it’s called) is definitely not coming out in February.” Still, there’s a possibility that was said in sport to not spoil the surprise.

“O.N.E.” begins with a dreamy intro featuring twinkly keys and Mackenzie singing “One night everywhere” a few times in falsetto. After a jazzy transition, the rest of the band comes in to rock out. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard continue to employ the particular blend of psychedelic rock, microtonal tuning and anatolian scales the band began using with their 2017 album Flying Microtonal Banana and continued with their last album K.G. The song switches between catchy vocal melodies and wild guitar solos, falling into a new groove at the end of the song before it cuts out abruptly.

The music video collages video of the band, cut-out backgrounds, zoom-ins towards buildings and stop motion-animated drawings. Band members make faces as the background imagery moves right to left behind them, including airplanes, mountains and marching penguins. It was directed by Alex Mclaren and shot by band member Ambrose Kenny-Smith. 

Mclaren had some words on the video, “The song itself feels as if it’s constantly moving along so I tried to keep the visuals continually moving forward and sliding into different visual styles and landscapes. I felt the mix of stop motion and collage through the use of found imagery and the band would help compliment the tracks lyrics and themes as I interpreted them, of dreams, nightmares, climate change, dystopias, and utopias, as well as referencing events that took place during the making of the video over 2020. All video of the band was shot by Ambrose during the second lockdown restrictions and I had to give notes on shooting and direct remotely which was strange but so was everything during that period.”

It’s the second song the band has shared that’s predicted to be on the new album, after “If Not Now, Then When?” Recently, around the release of K.G., King Gizzard had also released a live album, Live in S.F. ‘16.

Photo credit: Sharon Alagna