King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have yet to leave fans wanting more because they always put out new music before anyone can ask. What’s more impressive is that they always manage to do this without diluting their brand. As the Australian psychedelic rock outfit prepares for their upcoming North American tour, the release of three new albums next month will have people flocking to their shows to watch them perform new material live for the first time. Earlier today, they put out a single to remind us that October is theirs. Check out “Ice V” below:
Though band usually goes into the studio with prepared material, they decided to take a different approach while recording Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava (release date: 10/7). The album was put together out of seven days worth of studio jams.
“All we had prepared as we walked into the studio were these seven song titles,” frontman Stu Mackenzie said. “I have a list on my phone of hundreds of possible song titles. I’ll never use most of them, but they’re words and phrases I feel could be digested into King Gizzard-world.” (Brooklyn Vegan)
“Naturally, each day’s jams had a different flavor, because each day was in a different scale and a different BPM,” he addeds. “We’d walk into the studio, set everything up, get a rough tempo going and just jam. No preconceived ideas at all, no concepts, no songs. We’d jam for maybe 45 minutes, and then all swap instruments and start again.”
Laminated Denim (release date: 10/12), which will feature two 15-minute tracks, is an anagram of “Made In Timeland,” while Changes (release date: 10/28) is an album the band began working on five years ago.
“I think of Changes as a song-cycle,” Mackenzie said. “Every song is built around this one chord progression – every track is like a variation on a theme. But I don’t know if we had the musical vocabulary yet to complete the idea at that time. We recorded some of it then, including the version of ‘Exploding Suns’ that’s on the finished album. But when the sessions were over, it just never felt done. It was like this idea that was in our heads, but we just couldn’t reach. We just didn’t know yet how to do what we wanted to do.”
The band also note that limited stock of Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava will be available at their Greek Theater show in Berkeley, copies of Laminated Denim will be available at the Red Rocks Amphitheater show in Morrison, CO and Changes can be bought a day early at the Orpheum in New Orleans.
Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava
1. Mycelium (7:36)
2. Ice V (10:16)
3. Magma (9:07)
4. Lava (6:41)
5. Hell’s Itch (13:28)
6. Iron Lung (9:05)
7. Gliese 710 (7:49)
Laminated Denim
1. The Land Before Timeland (15:00)
2. Hypertension (15:00)
Changes
1. Change (13:04)
2. Hate Dancin’ (3:16)
3. Astroturf (7:34)
4. No Body (3:42)
5. Gondii (4:57)
6. Exploding Suns (4:41)
7. Short Change (2:51)
Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna
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